Group and opening games

Group Monologue

The whole group speaks as a single first-person narrator, one sentence at a time, telling one continuous account.

Group and opening games · 4 or more players · 5–6 minutes

Also known as: Group Voice, One Voice

How to run it

  1. Stand in a loose group facing the audience.
  2. Anyone may begin with a first-person sentence.
  3. Anyone may say the next sentence, continuing the same voice and the same story.
  4. No character voices and no dialogue — it remains one person speaking.
  5. Run until the account reaches a natural ending, then edit into a scene.

What it teaches

A shared voice and a shared point of view. It exposes immediately whether a group is listening or competing.

Coaching notes

If two people speak at once, do not restart — let the group absorb it and continue. The recovery is part of what is being trained.

Where it usually goes wrong. Players introduce contradictory facts because they were composing their sentence instead of hearing the last one.

Related reading: long form and the Harold, listening and the second line.

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: Group Monologue on YouTube. Quality varies enormously — prefer recordings from working theatres over tutorial channels.