Growing and shrinking

Also known as "Fir tree", "Pyramids", "Space Jump", "Zap" or "Onion".

The first player establishes and plays a scene alone. A second player comes in, establishes and plays a completely new scene with the others that has nothing to do with the first. A third player steps in, establishes and plays another scene with the others, and so forth. When all the players are on the stage and the last scene is played, the players leave the stage in reverse order (starting with the last player). The departures should always happen for a reason and have a motivation. When a player leaves the stage, the remaining players fall back to the scene they were in before the player who just left entered the stage. Finally, the only player left on stage is the one who played the first scene at the beginning.

Number of players: 4 or 5. Duration: approx. 10 minutes.

Problems and suggestions

Sometimes people forget what scene they are supposed to fall back into.

When the scene changes, you don't have to take over the poses like in Freeze Tag.

Sometimes it makes sense to jump time between the first and second, (the "shrink-scene").

Each of the players can provide one guideline which (only) concerns the scene he/she established. The guidelines should be related to different things (e. g. color, occupation, tool, hobby, tick).

Variations

The characters and the place stay the same, but each incoming player has a previously requested emotion that they and the others display as soon as the actor enters the stage. Important here: make sure to choose a focus and a space, or rather an event in a space, where there are many people (such as an open-plan office or a wedding shower).

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjJ5XPtv66U