Short-form games
Alphabet Game
A scene in which successive lines begin with successive letters of the alphabet.
Also known as: Alphabet Scene, A to Z
How to run it
- Take a suggestion for a location and a starting letter from the audience.
- Player one's first line begins with that letter.
- Player two's line begins with the next letter, and so on, wrapping from Z to A.
- A wrong letter or a long hesitation ends the game, or costs a point if you are scoring.
- The scene should still resolve rather than simply stopping at the letter before the start.
What it teaches
Working under an arbitrary constraint while still playing a genuine scene.
Coaching notes
Watch for dialogue that exists only to satisfy the letter. The best players hide the constraint so thoroughly that the audience forgets to track it.
Where it usually goes wrong. Panic at Q, X and Z, which is inevitable and is most of the fun if the players commit rather than apologise.
Related reading: short form.
See it played
We do not link individual videos we have not watched end to end, so this is a search rather than a recommendation: Alphabet Game on YouTube. Quality varies enormously — prefer recordings from working theatres over tutorial channels.