Love Hearts
Love Hearts is a short-form game in which performers play scenes centered on declarations of affection, romantic overture, or emotional vulnerability -- typically with an audience-assigned relationship, scenario, or emotional constraint that shapes how the love or longing is expressed. The game explores the comedic and dramatic possibilities of performed emotional sincerity and the contrast between what characters feel and the circumstances in which they must express it.
Structure
Setup
The host collects a suggestion: a relationship type, an unusual setting, or an emotional constraint that will frame how the characters interact. Two performers take the stage.
Progression
Performers play a scene in which genuine affection, longing, or emotional vulnerability is the central dynamic. The suggestion shapes the circumstances -- the relationship history, the setting, the obstacle -- but the emotional content of the scene is sincere rather than satirical.
The game may use a format in which performers must declare their feelings explicitly at some point, or may allow the emotional content to emerge through the scene naturally. The host may intervene to raise stakes or introduce complications that require the characters to continue expressing affection through increasingly difficult or absurd circumstances.
Ending
The scene ends at a natural emotional peak -- a declaration, a resolution, or a moment of genuine connection or loss that provides a clear stopping point.
How to Teach It
Objectives
Love Hearts trains performers to sustain sincere emotional content in a scene without deflecting into comedy, and to find the comic or dramatic energy within genuine emotional expression rather than by undercutting it.
How to Explain It
"The game is real. Whatever the setup is, the feelings are real. Don't play it for laughs by being ironic about the emotion -- play the emotion fully and let the situation be funny. The scene is only interesting if we believe that these people actually feel something."
Scaffolding
Begin with straightforward romantic scenarios before introducing unusual or constrained framings. For groups that habitually deflect from emotional sincerity, coach explicitly on staying in the feeling when the impulse to make a joke appears.
Common Pitfalls
Performers often use the unusual or comedic framing of the suggestion as permission to satirize the emotional content rather than playing it genuinely. The game requires performing sincerity within absurdity -- not satirizing the sincerity itself.
How to Perform It
Audience Intro
"We're going to explore what it looks like when two people who have feelings for each other are in a situation that makes it complicated. Tell us -- what's the relationship, and where are they?"
Cast Size
Ideal: 2 performers. Can be played with 3 performers in a triangulated dynamic.
Staging
Intimate staging. Performers in close proximity to each other, positioned to allow genuine eye contact and physical presence rather than playing outward to the audience.
Wrap-Up Logic
End at an emotional moment of completion or genuine shift -- a confession accepted, a realization reached, a departure that feels final. Avoid ending on a joke that deflates the emotional sincerity the game requires.
Worth Reading
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How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Love Hearts. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/games/love-hearts
The Improv Archive. "Love Hearts." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/games/love-hearts.
The Improv Archive. "Love Hearts." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/games/love-hearts. Accessed March 17, 2026.
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