Pockets

How to Explain It

"Empty your pockets. Look at what you have. Two of you are going to play a scene. The object in your pocket belongs to your character. It matters. Use it."

Objectives

Pockets trains rapid justification: the ability to receive a concrete, random object and immediately construct a meaningful frame around it. The game also develops character specificity through objects rather than through stated biography, reinforcing the improv principle that what a person carries reveals who they are.

The monologue variant develops sustained solo narrative: the performer must maintain an audience's interest through a sequence of object-driven revelations without scene partners to prompt or redirect them.

Scaffolding

For groups new to object justification, begin with the mimed variant and let performers choose their own objects before moving to the real-objects version. The constraint of using actual pocket contents pushes players outside their comfort zone in useful ways once they have the basic justification skill.

For groups with facility, increase the speed: the performer must pull out an item and begin the justification before fully registering what the item is. The physical commitment to the find-and-present sequence should run ahead of the verbal justification.

Common Coaching Notes

• "You found it. It means something. What does it mean?"
• "This object tells us something about you that you would not say directly. What is it?"
• "Do not apologize for the object. It is perfect. It belongs to this character."
• "Connect this item to the last item. Build a life from the accumulation."

Audience Experience

The real-objects variant of Pockets provides the audience with a second layer of pleasure: they can see what the performer actually pulls out and watch in real time as the performer improvises a justification for an ordinary or unexpected item. When the item is genuinely surprising (a tampon, a hotel key, a child's toy) and the performer commits to the justification without flinching, the gap between the mundane object and the character story is the source of comedic and dramatic energy.

The monologue form works especially well as a quiet, character-driven piece within a mixed short-form show, offering contrast to faster games built around competition or heightened pace.

Casting

Pockets rewards performers with strong object-work skills and quick narrative association. The game is less suited to performers who work primarily in dialogue; it requires sustained solo voice and the ability to invest genuine meaning in physical objects.

The use of pockets and their contents as a theatrical device reflects a long theatrical tradition of revealing character through objects. Object theater and physical comedy from commedia dell'arte onward have employed the pocket as a site of comic and dramatic surprise.

In the context of improvisational performance, the Pockets game belongs to the cluster of object-justification exercises that also includes transformation of objects exercises documented by Viola Spolin in Improvisation for the Theater (1963) and related games in the short-form repertoire that use random real-world items as prompts for character or narrative.

Bill Grasberg documents a related structure in Great Group Skits in which players use things they have in their pockets, or things they pretend they have, as offerings within an ensemble game context, demonstrating the pedagogical use of pocket contents as generative material.

The specific Pockets game format, in which justification of pocket contents is the explicit game mechanic, circulates widely in short-form improv curricula. No single documented originator has been identified.