Freeze

The great game of Freeze.

Some call it Freeze Tag, or Tag. I like to just call it Freeze out of habit.

The game works like this. 2 people start a scene until another player yells "freeze." Instantly, the two players on stage freeze their positions. The person who yelled "freeze" tags one of the players out, and starts a completely different scene.

Why I like this game:

• Freeze is a great warm-up exercise to get creative juices flowing.
• Freeze emphasizes quick thinking, and ready, fire, aim mentality
• Freeze rewards active scenes, and punishes "talking heads."
  
• Freeze is also performance worthy; great for the Ridilin generation.

Variations on the theme: Try these great variations to mix things up.

• Blind Freeze-- the team stands with their back to the action, and freezes in.. but, they don't know what scene they're going into until they turn around. Great for breaking team members of the "I have to know where everything is going before I act" mentality.
• Assassin Freeze-- the team can only freeze other players in, not themselves. Ex. Tim yells, "Freeze, Jack," and Jack has to go in and start a new scene. (This is especially funny if the scene has a really compromising position, and you make somebody else go in).
• Gibberish Freeze--It's the same game, only people can only speak gibberish sounds... good for teaching team to use their actions, since there's really no other choice.
• Timed Freeze--Have the team in a line. Set a timer to ring the bell every 15 seconds. Whenever the bell rings, the first person in line freezes in and starts a new scene.
• Alphabet Freeze--The game is played like The Alphabet Game, as players must continue with the next letter of the alphabet, even when they freeze in.
• Adding Freeze--Instead of tagging people out, you can also add a character to the scene when you yell freeze.
• Anything Goes Freeze--Play Freeze with all the above variations, and feel free to direct/add any other rules you can make up as you go along.