Whoosh

How to Explain It

"Stand in a circle. There are several kinds of energy you can send around: whoosh passes it in the direction you are facing, whoa stops it and sends it back, zap sends it across the circle to someone specific, and zoom reverses the direction. I will introduce them one at a time. Whoosh."

Objectives

Whoosh develops immediate physical responsiveness, the ability to track multiple rules simultaneously under time pressure, and clear signal-sending. The layered introduction of moves makes the exercise progressively demanding: players who have automated the basic Whoosh must immediately integrate new moves without pausing to reason through the rules.

Diggles on the Layered Approach

Diggles introduces moves one at a time, demonstrating each before adding it to the active vocabulary. This structure teaches the exercise itself and simultaneously models how to learn new rules under pressure: accept the new information, incorporate it, continue. The exercise is thus a demonstration of yes-and applied to a learning situation.

Applied Improv Uses

Dudeck frames Whoosh Bang Pow as a failure-tolerance exercise: errors are visible, the group witnesses them, and play continues. The debrief can address the relationship between risk, failure, and full engagement. Dudeck notes that "failure actually is a sign that the game is being played" at full intensity, a reframe particularly useful in corporate or educational contexts where participants have strong failure aversion.

Kramer uses Whoosh Bong with autistic students, noting its clear structure and rule-based format support engagement for participants who benefit from explicit, predictable frameworks.

Common Coaching Notes

• "Send the impulse clearly. Your partner needs to see who it's going to before it arrives."
• "Receive before you decide what to do with it. Don't prepare your response before the Whoosh has landed."
• "If you make an error, bow and continue. The bow is part of the game."

No single originator is documented in published improv sources. The exercise circulates under multiple names (Whoosh, Whoosh Bong, Whoosh Bang Pow) and is documented across traditional improv training, applied improvisation, and special education contexts, suggesting it developed independently in multiple communities.

Dan Diggles provides the most detailed documentation of the layered teaching structure in Improv for Actors. Joanna Dudeck and McClure codify "Whoosh Bang Pow" in the Applied Improvisation workbook (2018), connecting the game to frameworks of risk tolerance and learning from failure.

A separate technique called the Whoosh edit shares the name but not the structure. Kozlowski describes the whoosh edit in The Art of Chicago Improv as a sweep edit variant in which the editor spreads their arms like wings and says "Whoosh" to signal the end of a scene. Leep cites Kozlowski in documenting the same technique. The whoosh edit and the Whoosh circle game are distinct exercises that happen to share a sound.