Predator/Defender
Each player secretly chooses a predator and a defender. On 'Go,' everyone must keep their defender between themselves and their predator. Illustrates interconnected systems.
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Related Exercises
Wink Murder
Wink Murder is a social deduction game in which a secretly designated murderer eliminates players by winking at them. Surviving players must identify the murderer through observation before the group is eliminated. The game trains alertness, subtle communication, and the ability to read nonverbal cues across a group.
Opposite Side Speech
Each player chooses the opposite side of a non-issue and presents a committed defense. Success comes from being convincing in delivery despite the obviously wrong position.
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.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Predator/Defender. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/exercises/predator-defender
The Improv Archive. "Predator/Defender." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/exercises/predator-defender.
The Improv Archive. "Predator/Defender." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/exercises/predator-defender. Accessed March 17, 2026.
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