Lugares
Lugares is a scene-building exercise drawn from Spanish-language improv traditions in which the physical location ("lugar") is established as the primary creative force driving the scene. Characters and situations emerge from the performers' relationship to the space. The exercise trains environment-first scene work and demonstrates how place shapes behavior.
Structure
Setup
- The exercise begins with the playing space defined as a specific location: a kitchen, a hospital corridor, a bus terminal, a forest clearing, a cramped apartment in summer.
- Performers enter the space and interact with it before they interact with each other.
- No scene premise is given. The location is the only instruction.
Environment-First Scene Work
- Performers begin by inhabiting the space: handling objects that belong there, moving in ways the space requires, responding to the sensory qualities of the location.
- Character and relationship emerge from this relationship to the place. Two people in a waiting room develop different dynamics than two people in a kitchen.
- The scene grows from the location outward: who would be here, why, what history does the space carry.
What the Exercise Trains
- Scene work that begins in a specific environment rather than a premise or idea.
- Physical specificity: performing in a kitchen means using the objects in the kitchen, moving around the physical constraints of the kitchen.
- The understanding that setting is not decoration. The place shapes who the characters are and what they want.
Facilitation
- The facilitator names the location and allows performers to enter the space without further instruction.
- After two to three minutes, the facilitator may name a new location, requiring immediate physical transformation.
How to Teach It
How to Explain It
"You are in [location]. That is all I'm telling you. Go into the space. Touch what's there. Move the way that space requires you to move. Who are you, in that space, right now? Let the place tell you."
Common Notes
- Performers who enter the space and immediately begin talking have not engaged with the exercise. The physical relationship to the location must come first.
- Coach specificity: "You are in a kitchen" is less useful than "You are in a kitchen that smells like burned coffee, where one of the burners doesn't work, and there's a note on the fridge you haven't read yet."
- The best scenes from this exercise develop situations that could only happen in that specific kind of place. A scene that could happen anywhere has not found the location's gift.
Common Pitfalls
- Performers use the location as a backdrop and immediately begin a scene driven by premise or idea.
- The physical relationship to the environment is performed rather than felt: performers mime cooking in a kitchen rather than actually cooking in an imagined kitchen.
- Characters are too generic to have a specific relationship to the place. The location should feel inhabited, not visited.
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Related Exercises
Location
Location is the archive label for foundational exercises that train players to establish where a scene takes place through physical behavior, object work, and spatial detail. Across the confirmed source base, the core demand stays consistent: the audience should understand the setting from what the players do in the space, not from a quick verbal label. The exercise develops environmental clarity, specificity, and the habit of treating the setting as an active part of the scene.
Acceptance
Acceptance is an applied improv exercise in which participants hear a new location, answer together with "Yes, let's," and immediately populate that environment as people or objects inside it. The exercise turns acceptance into visible behavior: participants must receive the new reality, enter it quickly, and adjust when someone else has already chosen the role they wanted.
Scene Painting
Scene Painting is an exercise in which performers verbally describe a detailed environment before or during a scene, building the world through spoken imagery rather than relying solely on physical mime. The technique teaches players to create rich, shared spaces that ground the emotional reality of a scene. It is a tool for making improvised worlds more vivid and specific.
Warehouse
Warehouse is a fixed-location scene exercise in which every scene must take place in a warehouse. Performers discover varied dramatic scenarios within the single setting across multiple scenes, discovering how much narrative and character variety a single location can sustain. The constraint teaches specificity within sameness and challenges performers to find what makes each individual scene unique despite sharing a setting.
In-Out
In-Out is a scene exercise in which performers practice entering and leaving scenes with purpose and clarity. Each entrance must contribute something specific and each exit must feel earned. The exercise trains awareness of when a scene needs a new element and when a character has served their function.
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.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Lugares. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/exercises/lugares
The Improv Archive. "Lugares." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/exercises/lugares.
The Improv Archive. "Lugares." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/exercises/lugares. Accessed March 17, 2026.
The Improv Archive is a systemically maintained repository. The archive itself acts as the corporate author.