Today, Rob Watzke, an improv teacher/performer/friend of Riswold’s came into W+K to give 12 a lesson on trust, collaboration, and bouncing back from failure.  

This lesson took the form of a variety of activities and games, including (but not limited to):

- “Alien, Tiger, Cow”

- “Airplane/Traffic Controller”

- Group Juggle

- “Assassin”

- Slow motion group fighting

Although it was really fun to roll around on the ground and mime tug-o-war, the most valuable activity was probably “Rope”.  The idea behind “Rope” is that two people get on stage.  Person 1 faces away from the other performer.  Person 2 faces the audience and pantomimes an object “they are holding” (ex: apple, yo-yo).  When given the go-ahead, Person 1 walks over to Person 2 and says a total non-sequitur like “That ant farm is really out of control!”. The goal is for Person 2 to respond in a way that somehow makes sense and also integrates their pantomimed object.  If Person 2 is successful, the audience applauds and they take a bow.  If Person 2 fails, the audiences yells “ROPE!” (as in, “that was bad, string yourself up”) and then Person 2 still bows as though they had succeeded anyways.

As Rob told us, this game is set up for the participants to fail.  The point of the exercise is not to always have the perfect response, but to accept your failure with a good attitude.