Park Bench or The Chair Game

There is an improv game that young actors like to play that is called Park Bench. The set up is very simple: two actors and a chair. One actor tries to get the other actor to let them sit in the chair or ‘on the park bench’.

The actors that have the persuading role often come up with outlandish and wild reasons for the other actor to get out of the chair. It’s a great deal of fun for the actors and the audience watching. And on the surface, it looks like a decent enough acting exercise.

The trouble is that the exercise is bullshit.

On the surface is seems like quite an active game: there is an objective, there is an obstacle, and there is a real actor to work off.

However, the players never get involved enough in the truth of the moment to be move or be moved.

The young actors pretend to be old and see if that will get the other to move.

The young actors pretend a giant monster is coming and see if that will compel them to move.

The young actors pretend that a crime has been committed and their help is needed – in order to compel them to move.

BUT the other actor will not move, or if they do, it is by arbitrary choice or through some amusing creative choice on their partner’s part.

Nothing will compel the seated actor to get off the chair. Because their role in the exercise is the sit in the chair.

But the audience hoot their love of the actor’s ingenuity and the drama teacher who doesn’t know any better claps along and celebrates the inventiveness of the extroverted young actors.

But they’ve missed the point of the game. This exercise is not about getting the person up by inventing crazy reasons, it’s about compelling the person with what you do to them.

You can’t touch them or the chair, so that cuts down the options.

This exercise is about being real with the other person, not pretending, not lying, not even being creative, but actively and really compelling the person to move.

And yet it isn’t about getting them to move (although that’s what you need to do). It is about the truthfulness of your attempts to get the task completed.

Your attention must be 200% on the person in the chair, watching to see if any of your tactics have hit home and made an impression. If they do, you can’t rest on your laurels, you must continue, but if they haven’t, there’s no point in just banging on, you must change tactics. In a game like this, with no character to hide behind and no fictional reasons for them to get out of the chair for, you have to use the truth of the moment. When you allow this to happen, the results are incredible, and you get to see the person in chair go from defensive, to suspicious, to concerned, to suspicious again, then caring, and even bursting into tears. But it requires a vulnerable, responsive actor to allow the truth of the moment and the words and tactics of the standing actor to affect them.

The reason for sitting in the chair doesn’t really matter and some bullshit made up pretend reason won’t help. You’re trying to sit in the chair because that’s the task you’ve been asked to complete. If we want to add urgency to the game, we can.

This game is about trying out tactics for real and watching and learning about real responses. It’s not about ‘true lies’ or ‘pretending to be truthful’, it’s about actually affecting the person. It’s difficult but it teaches an important lesson: when you are fully engrossed and engaged in a task like this, and you are full of real conviction for what you are doing, you are compelling to watch.

Again, the game is not about whether or not you get them out of the chair, it’s about truthfully attempting to do it. Not trying, but going after it with all your will.