Character Interview
Character Interview is an exercise in which a performer stays in character while the group or a facilitator asks probing personal questions. The performer must invent a coherent backstory, opinions, and emotional responses on the spot. The exercise develops deep character commitment and the ability to sustain a persona under interrogation.
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Related Exercises
Cliched Characters Instant Depth
Cliched Characters Instant Depth is an exercise in which performers begin with a stock character type and progressively add layers of specificity, contradiction, and humanity. The exercise demonstrates that any character, no matter how familiar the starting point, can become compelling through committed detail work. It trains the skill of transforming a surface choice into a full person.
Truthful Scenes
Truthful Scenes is an exercise in which performers are challenged to play scenes with complete emotional honesty, avoiding joke-seeking, deflection, or ironic distance. The exercise builds comfort with vulnerability and teaches that sincere, grounded performance often produces the most compelling and genuinely funny work.
Emotions Characters
Emotions Characters is a character-building exercise in which performers construct a character whose entire identity is defined by a single dominant emotion. Rather than playing a character who experiences an emotion, the performer plays a human being for whom that emotion is the organizing principle of their existence: a person constituted entirely by joy, or anger, or longing, or fear. The exercise develops the skill of using emotion as a generative foundation for character rather than as a surface-level behavioral quality.
Who Where Why Am I
Who Where Why Am I is a scene exercise in which a performer enters a space and must quickly establish their character, location, and purpose through physical behavior before any dialogue begins. The exercise prioritizes physical storytelling and teaches performers to communicate essential scene information through action rather than exposition.
Personalize It!
Personalize It is a scene exercise in which performers draw on their own real experiences, opinions, or emotional truths to inform their characters rather than inventing from scratch. The exercise pushes players past generic choices toward specific, grounded work. It builds the muscle of accessing personal material while maintaining the safety of a fictional frame.
Character Study
Character Study is an exercise in which performers spend extended time developing a single character through exploration of physicality, voice, biography, and behavior. The focused work produces richer, more specific characters than the rapid choices of performance typically allow. It provides a foundation that improvisers can draw on in scene work.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Character Interview. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/exercises/character-interview
The Improv Archive. "Character Interview." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/exercises/character-interview.
The Improv Archive. "Character Interview." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/exercises/character-interview. Accessed March 17, 2026.
The Improv Archive is a systemically maintained repository. The archive itself acts as the corporate author.