Marriage Counsel Endowment
Marriage Counsel Endowment is a short-form game in which two performers play a couple seeking marriage counseling, while a third performer plays their therapist -- but with a twist: the couple has been endowed by the audience with specific secret traits, relationship problems, or behavioral patterns that the therapist must identify through the counseling session. The game combines the endowment mechanic with relationship scene work and the guessing-game structure of therapeutic inquiry.
Structure
Setup
One performer is sent offstage to play the therapist while the remaining two performers and the audience agree on secret endowments: specific character traits, a shared secret history, or a behavioral pattern that each member of the couple exhibits that the therapist does not know.
Progression
The therapist enters and conducts a counseling session with the couple. The couple behaves in ways consistent with their endowments while the therapist asks questions, makes observations, and attempts to identify what is driving the relationship dynamics.
The performers playing the couple drop clues through behavior, emotional responses, and oblique references without stating their endowment explicitly. The therapist pieces together observations and makes therapeutic interpretations.
Ending
The round ends when the therapist correctly identifies the endowments, after a set number of attempts, or when the host determines the scene has reached its comic or dramatic peak.
How to Teach It
Objectives
Marriage Counsel Endowment trains the ensemble skill of maintaining a consistent behavioral endowment across a scene while layering clues at a rate that allows the guesser to progress without arriving too quickly or too slowly. It also develops the therapist's active listening and deductive reasoning under the pressure of an improvised clinical frame.
How to Explain It
"Your endowment is your truth. Every choice you make as the couple comes from that truth -- how you respond to the therapist's questions, how you react to each other, what you avoid saying. Drop the clues deliberately, but don't hand them over. Make the therapist work."
Scaffolding
Begin with simple, physical or behavioral endowments (the couple always agrees immediately then disagrees privately; one partner never remembers names) before introducing more abstract psychological dynamics.
Common Pitfalls
The couple sometimes makes the endowment so obscure that the therapist cannot progress, leaving the scene stalled. Coach the couple to calibrate their clue-dropping to the therapist's inquiry -- more explicit when the therapist is stuck, subtler when they are close.
How to Perform It
Audience Intro
"Our couples counselor has some new clients, but they don't know everything about this couple yet. Tell us -- what's the couple's secret, and what should the therapist be trying to figure out?"
Cast Size
3 performers: 1 therapist and 2 in the couple. A fourth performer can play a walk-in character who adds complexity to the session.
Staging
Counseling office staging: three chairs or a couch plus chair, with the therapist in a distinct position. The couple sits together, creating the visual of the relationship dynamic the scene is exploring.
Wrap-Up Logic
End when the therapist identifies the core endowment or the scene reaches a naturally comic or emotionally resonant peak. Avoid running the scene until the audience has long since identified the endowment and the therapist has not.
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How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Marriage Counsel Endowment. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/games/marriage-counsel-endowment
The Improv Archive. "Marriage Counsel Endowment." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/games/marriage-counsel-endowment.
The Improv Archive. "Marriage Counsel Endowment." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/games/marriage-counsel-endowment. Accessed March 17, 2026.
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