Blind Hunt
Blind Hunt is a spatial awareness exercise in which blindfolded players navigate the room to locate a specific target, guided only by sound or verbal cues from the group. The exercise builds trust, listening skills, and comfort with physical vulnerability. It requires careful facilitation to maintain safety.
Structure
Setup
Clear the performance space completely - no chairs, tables, or obstacles. One player is blindfolded. A "target" is designated: this can be a sound (someone clapping or ringing a bell from a fixed position), a vocal guide (a player using only words like "warmer/colder"), or a physical object the blindfolded player must find by sound alone.
Basic Version: Sound Beacon
The target player makes a continuous sound (clapping, humming, gentle bell ringing) from a stationary position. The blindfolded player navigates toward the sound. The group watches silently.
Advanced Version: Moving Target
The target player moves slowly while making sound, requiring the blindfolded player to track a moving location.
Advanced Version: Group Guidance
The entire group provides verbal guidance simultaneously. The blindfolded player must synthesize conflicting or overlapping instructions, deciding which to trust.
Safety Protocol
This is a high-trust, high-vulnerability exercise. Requirements:
- The facilitator or a designated spotter stays close to the blindfolded player at all times.
- Players watching must not interfere, but may gently catch someone about to walk into a wall.
- The blindfolded player should move slowly, hands slightly extended.
- Brief the group before beginning: "Safety first. If you see someone about to get hurt, say 'stop' calmly."
Duration
One to two minutes per round. The disorientation accumulates; don't run consecutive rounds with the same player.
How to Teach It
How to Explain It
"You're blindfolded. Your job is to find [the sound/the person/the bell]. Move slowly. Trust what you hear. Everyone else: your job is to keep them safe. One designated spotter stays with our blindfolded player."
Why It Matters
Blind Hunt creates a genuine experience of physical vulnerability and trust. The blindfolded player must fully surrender the visual information they normally rely on and develop sensitivity to auditory spatial information. For performers who are overly visual in their scene work - constantly tracking partner faces, not responding to the full physical environment - this exercise redirects their attention. The trust component is equally important: the exercise only works when the group takes the safety role seriously.
Common Coaching Notes
- Safety is not optional. Brief the group explicitly on the spotter's role before starting. The exercise fails if anyone treats it as a comedy exercise (pushing the blindfolded player, leading them into walls).
- Let the disorientation develop. The first 15 seconds, players move with remembered spatial orientation. After 30 seconds, the genuine navigational challenge begins. Don't cut it short.
- Debrief the spotter's experience too. The spotter develops a protective awareness that is relevant to ensemble care in performance.
- Not for all groups. If a group has low trust or if any player has a known vestibular sensitivity, skip or adapt this exercise.
Debrief Questions
- What did you trust when you couldn't see?
- How did your relationship to the space change?
- What does this tell us about listening to more than words in a scene?
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Related Exercises
Blind Stalker
Blind Stalker is an awareness exercise in which one blindfolded player moves through the space while others attempt to approach without being detected. The blindfolded player points toward any sound they hear, and detected players are eliminated. The exercise sharpens auditory awareness and develops the ability to move with control and intentionality.
Blindfolded Scene
Blindfolded Scene is a scene game in which performers play a scene while blindfolded, unable to see their partners, the audience, or the space. The restriction heightens all other senses and forces players to listen, communicate position verbally, and trust their partners completely. The game reveals how much performers normally rely on visual cues.
Mine Field
Mine Field is a trust exercise in which one player is blindfolded and must navigate through a space scattered with obstacles, guided only by a partner's verbal instructions. The exercise demands precise communication from the guide and deep trust from the blindfolded player. It is widely used in improv and team-building contexts to develop listening and mutual reliance.
Blind Line Up
Blind Line Up is a nonverbal communication exercise in which blindfolded players must arrange themselves in a specific order, such as by birthday or height, without speaking. The exercise demands creative problem-solving and alternative communication methods. It builds patience, cooperation, and trust.
Alliances
Alliances is a spatial awareness exercise in which each player secretly selects one person in the group as their ally and another as their enemy, then moves through the space trying to keep the ally positioned between themselves and the enemy at all times. No one announces their choices, so the resulting group movement becomes complex, organic, and unpredictable as every participant simultaneously pursues their own spatial objective. The exercise produces a constantly shifting formation that resembles flocking behavior, with sudden accelerations, direction changes, and clusters forming and dissolving. Alliances develops spatial awareness, peripheral vision, and the ability to read and respond to group movement patterns without verbal communication. It also demonstrates how simple individual rules can generate complex group behavior, a principle that applies directly to ensemble scene work.
Assassins
Assassins is a group awareness exercise in which each player secretly watches one specific person in the space. When the facilitator gives a signal, every player simultaneously points to the person they have been watching. The exercise reveals the web of attention in the room and is used to discuss group dynamics, observation, and the experience of being seen.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Blind Hunt. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/exercises/blind-hunt
The Improv Archive. "Blind Hunt." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/exercises/blind-hunt.
The Improv Archive. "Blind Hunt." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/exercises/blind-hunt. Accessed March 17, 2026.
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