THE PATTERN GAME

The most ubiquitous, most storied, most important opening in long form improv’s relatively short history is The Pattern Game. In particular, The Pattern Game is a frequent opening for Harolds performed on Harold Nights at improv theaters across America and the story would have you believe it was the first opening used for Harolds, or at least the first common opening used for Harolds. It is the Grandad of all openings.

(If you’re unfamiliar with openings generally, see this post to get an idea of a wide range of different, common, long form improv openings and why/how they are used.)

The pattern game has many, many variations, practically as many variations as there are teams that have undertaken it. Each variation has its own do’s and don’ts that strive for their own results, but you might separate most variations into two buckets: versions that look to identify funny ideas that can be initiated as premises, and versions that look to establish themes.

Really good pattern games often do both. 

On a basic level a pattern game might just look to expand the amount of ideas a team can initiate off of instead of being tied to a singular word or suggestion for an entire set. So you get the suggestion orange and someone free associates to McDonald's and now you can do a scene as a fry cook.

THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF A PATTERN GAME

Using a suggestion a team will free associate away from that suggestion and then return to it. Players, often in groups of around 8, will take random turns providing one free associated idea after the next, always working off of the last provided idea.

For example, say a group was working off of the suggestion Baseball. You might get something like the following list:

Baseball

Competition

Status

High fashion

Dieting

Doctor

Expensive

World Series Tickets

Baseball

That’s a little fast to get back to the suggestion, but you get the idea. Probably you want a typical loop to be at least twice as long?

THE PATTERN GAME AS A THREE LEAF CLOVER

The Pattern Game visualized.

Typically a pattern game will free associate away from the suggestion and return to it three times before being completed. Since each journey away and back to the suggestion is a loop, people often visualize a three loop pattern game as a three leaf clover. This is a useful tool for thinking about the structure of a pattern game.

For example, a coach might give a note like, “The first leaf of your pattern game was really good. Everyone got involved and even though lots of ideas were explored, it wasn’t too long. Your second leaf, though, felt like it went on forever and really just three of you contributed almost everything, and you mainly stayed fixated on one idea. Not great.”

Eh, maybe you could just say The Pattern Game has three loops and talking about it in terms of loops would be just as effective, but there’s something easy about The Three Leaf Clover imagery that makes learning The Pattern Game feel simpler. I know it helped me a lot when I was learning it and lots of students I’ve worked with have taken to the concept quickly.

GOING A TO C

A powerful tool when playing the pattern game is the concept of going A to C. This means free associating to ideas not directly next to each other. If you do free associate with words right next to each other you might end up getting lists that don’t really explore the suggestion. 

For example, say the suggestion was BATHROOM and the first clover leaf worth of exploration was:

BATHROOM

SHOWER

BATHTUB

TOILET

TOILET PAPER

SINK

TOOTHBRUSH

TOOTHPASTE

SOAP

TOWELS

BATHMAT

BATHROOM

That loop didn’t really explore that many ideas and exploring ideas is the whole point of openings.

You can range out by going A To C. That means keeping your first idea to yourself and free associating off of that word again before speaking. 

Think of it this way. The suggestion is BUTTON (That’s the A). If BUTTON makes you think of SHIRT then that’s your B, but SHIRT feels very close to button. So  you ask yourself what SHIRT makes you think of and come up with DRY CLEANING (your C).

So going A To C means keeping your B hidden by free associating twice in a row before speaking. Now you might have free associated off of SHIRT and come up with a C like COLLAR, which feels very close to your A (BUTTON). If you were trying to go A To C and that happened, no big deal, just keep that C to yourself and free associate again until you come to a word that feels farther away.

Working this way you might get a loop like the below:

A: BATHROOM

B: (SINK - keep to yourself)

C: DEPRESSION (becomes the new A)

B: (MEDICATION - keep to yourself)

C: BOTTLE (becomes the new A)

B: (TINY SHIP - keep to yourself)

C: HOBBY (becomes the new A)

B: (MODEL TRAINS - keep to yourself)

C: ALL ABOARD! (becomes the new A)

B: (STEAM POWER - keep to yourself)

C: TEAPOT (becomes the new A)

B: (Scandal - Keep to yourself)

C: FUGITIVE (becomes the new A)

B: (Harrison Ford - Keep to yourself)

C: WOOKIE (becomes the new A)

B: (NERDS - Keep to yourself)

C: CAVITIES (becomes the new A)

B: (TOOTHBRUSH - Keep to yourself)

C: BATHROOM

As you can see, by going A To C, The Pattern Game can generate much broader ideas to draw from for a set of long form improv. 

Going A To C can also be helpful when initiating a scene off of a suggestion you think is boring or in bad taste. Or it can be used to spice up your ideas in your improv in a more general sense. And the muscle you use when going A To C is also very helpful when thinking up true stories to use as monologues in a monologue opening.

CREATING COMEDY OUT OF A TO C PATTERN GAMES

Let’s look at the leaf of a pattern game we created by going A To C and compare it to the first leaf where we just free associating.

A To C Version: BATHROOM / DEPRESSION / BOTTLE / HOBBY / ALL ABOARD / TEAPOT / FUGITIVE / WOOKIE / CAVITITIES / BATHROOM

A To B Version: BATHROOM / SHOWER / BATHTUB / TOILET / TOILET PAPER / SINK / TOOTHBRUSH / TOOTHPASTE / SOAP / TOWELS / BATHMAT / BATHROOM

Notice anything? 

Many of the words next to each other in the A To C version sound like sketch names if you combine phrases. Like ALL ABOARD TEAPOT. Maybe a player initiates a scene and predicts teapots are the next big thing, everyone is jumping on board!

Or how about TEAPOT FUGITIVE? You could have a scene where two criminals size each other up by sharing their crimes. One is a murderer and the other made off with his mother’s teapot.

Or WOOKIE CAVITIES. Do I need to describe how a scene might play out in order for you to agree it sounds like a sketch?

Eh, maybe you could do something pretty good with TOILET PAPER SINK or TOOTHPASTE SOAP, undercutting my argument that going A To C leads to better comedic ideas, but those names feel cut of similar cloths and less surprising.

By hiding the Bs you create distance between words that translate into surprising combinations. And surprise is where most comedy in improv, maybe comedy of all types, originates from.

ROOMS AND HALLWAYS

So Pattern Games can generate funny ideas, or they can generate thematic ideas, or just generally interesting ideas. When doing a Pattern Game it can be helpful to think about ideas you're interested in (regardless of their nature) as “Rooms” and the words connecting them as “Hallways”.

When your free association hits on an idea you are interested in then you can explore, flesh out and define that idea by staying close to it; staying inside its “Room”. When you are done exploring an idea you can leave the “Room” by exploring in an unrelated direction, thereby traveling down a “Hallway”.

A good way to signal to the other people in a Pattern Game that you want to explore an idea (or enter that idea's room) is by repeating it in a slightly more defined or expansive way. For example, let's say we wanted to explore TEAPOT FUGITIVE. It might sound something like this:

BATHROOM 

DEPRESSION 

BOTTLE 

HOBBY 

ALL ABOARD 

TEAPOT 

FUGITIVE 

KITCHENWARE CRIMINAL (Here we have reworded and repeated the funny idea)

GRAND THEFT UTENSIL

SNITCHES GET DISHES, CRACKED ON THEIR HEADS

That’s a lot of TEAPOT FUGITIVE info, so maybe it is time to leave this idea alone and get back to looking for more ideas in your clover leaf. You can signal to your team that you think it’s time to leave the TEAPOT FUGITIVE room by going A To C (free associating to something that feels unrelated to TEAPOT FUGITIVE). You can think of this as entering a “HALLWAY”. 

It might sound like this:

BATHROOM 

DEPRESSION 

BOTTLE 

HOBBY 

ALL ABOARD 

TEAPOT 

FUGITIVE 

KITCHENWARE CRIMINAL

GRAND THEFT UTENSIL

SNITCHES GET DISHES, CRACKED ON THEIR HEAD

HEALTH INSURANCE (Here we have moved out of the TEAPOT FUGITIVE room by adding something fully unrelated)

And boom, we’re in a hallway.

I’ve given a room example of a funny idea, because that’s more my thing. But you could just as easily go into a thematic room or an interesting idea room. 

One clover leaf worth of Pattern Game exploration might have anywhere from one to three rooms in it. Probably not four, because you want to keep your overall Pattern Game somewhere between 2-4 minutes, and hopefully you are closer to 2 than you are to 4.

PATTERNS ECHO AND SO DO PATTERN GAMES

Just as the Pattern Game repeatedly returns to the suggestion, the set that will follow often returns to the ideas generated within the

Pattern Game. This phenomenon is a theme throughout long form improv: ideas within a set echo.

The idea of a long form set echoing or rhyming with itself is connected to the popular improv saying, Remember, Don’t Invent. What comes next in your improv set? How about something that came before?

In a way this is just Yes Anding. Your teammate suggests TEAPOT FUGITIVE in your opening so you initiate a scene about it. You are embracing their idea and adding to it.

The echo is Yes And, meaning it is in the fundamental nature of improv.

The implications of this are broad.

I remember doing a Pattern Game (very badly) in my level 2 class as a student. One of my classmates said a word with emotional energy. I spoke next in my normal way.

The teacher stopped the game and asked me why I didn’t support my teammate’s suggestion. What did he mean? Afterall, my word was related to his?

He meant I should have adopted a similar emotional energy; I couldn’t just ignore the big decision my teammate made. The same goes for physical choices, vocal choices, structural choices, any and all choices (or contributions really).

Unsurprisingly, my improv teacher wanted me to Yes And when improvising.

This is the nature of improv, of The Harold, and of The Pattern Game. We are meant to Yes And everything in it. There are no mistakes.

That’s why there are so many variations to the Pattern Game. Someone plays it slightly differently and their team Yes Ands it.

Some people play the game where you can only say one word at a time. Some play it where you can say entire sentences or paragraphs. It is all okay so long as everyone playing insists it is.

This is so true that there is a rumor that all major long form improv openings stemmed, at some point, from The Pattern Game. Years ago I was in a class taught by an improv OG and he told us that very rumor: That over the years in Chicago every long form opening mutated out of the Pattern Game during performances and practices, mostly by semi-accident.

His theory went like this: 

A team is playing the Pattern Game, which is built on Yes And, so whatever someone brings to the game, everyone else picks up and heightens. If a player brings an emotion to the way they participate, pretty soon the whole team is playing that emotion, or maybe a whole bouquet of emotions. If somebody starts moving a certain way, everyone moves that way. If somebody starts sounding a certain way, everyone sounds that way.

And one time, Mike said, (his name was Mike) a group was playing the Pattern Game and the way one person took their turn sounded less like word association and more like they were describing a room. Everyone Yes Anded it. And before anybody knew what had happened, they were doing Scene Painting. 

A brand new opening, born live, out of nothing, except people agreeing with each other.

The story continued.

One time a Pattern Game felt more like someone speaking in a documentary and Whammo, you got the Documentary opening. Another time it felt like a Sound & Movement, and guess what was born?

Now. 

I do not know if this is true. Frankly, the existence and the documented origin of the Invocation and the Deconstruction pretty much guarantees that it is not true, at least not as a clean origin story for every opening. I should also mention that it was pretty obvious to the whole class that Mike had come in that day high out of his mind.

And yet. 

It is a beautiful idea, and it feels so deeply in keeping with the spirit and the values of improv that I want it to be true. That the major openings in long form improv are essentially the fossil records of a thousand happy accidents, each one a moment where a team agreed so hard that a new opening was born. 

Also, for whatever it is worth, every single one of Mike’s notes that day were spot on, as his notes always were. So maybe it is true.

Either way, it is a good reason for you to play The Pattern Game. Maybe you’ll add a twist to it that your team will support hard and you’ll communally create the next big improv opening. If that sounds like an attractive idea to you (as it does to me), I hope this blog post will help you in your efforts.

REAL WORLD PATTERN GAMES AND NOTES

Here is a pattern game from a creativity workshop I ran for an ad firm in Dallas followed by notes. My notes on the day were focused on creativity and professional development. Here I’ll simply note the pattern games as an improv coach:

Keyboard

Adrenaline

Skydiving

Fear

Public Speaking

Sweat

Deodorant

Advertising

Manipulation

Politics

Debate

Interruption

Rudeness

Etiquette

Keyboard

Piano

Practice

Discipline

Military

Uniform

Costume

Halloween

Candy

Dentist

Drill

Anxiety

Waiting Room

Magazines

Outdated

Fashion

Runway

Keyboard

Shortcut

Cheating

Exam

Pressure

Volcano

Eruption

Evacuation

Family Reunion

Awkward.Silence

Meditation App

Subscription

Regret

Budgeting

Spreadsheet

Keyboard

A pretty good pattern game if all you are looking to do is free associate words. There were really no surprising moments here. They weren’t going A To C, they were going A To B. On that day a lot of the players needing coaxing to participate, but you can’t see that here.

There weren’t really rooms and hallways, just hallways. But if all you were looking to do was expand out from a word and generate more ideas, this had a lot of that. You could do a skydiving scene, or a scene at a volcano, or at a dentist office, and have it feel like it came directly from the opening.

Here’s one from an indie team I coached in NYC. Great team that really supported each other:

Subway

Plague

Castle

Alligator

Retirement

Divorce

Piano

Stage Fright

Chemotherapy

Insurance

Ponzi Scheme

Orange Jumpsuit

Poetry

Japan

Raw

Therapy

Subway

Assembly Line

Union

Baseball

Blindness

Cave

Canyon

Postcard

Wedding

Contract

Loophole

Yacht

Shipwreck

Reality Show

Diet

Soup

Subway

Casino

Poker Face

Politician

Wedding Ring

Debt

Doorbell

Heart Attack

Electricity

Umbrella

Nanny

Curfew

Rebellion

Regret

Gym Membership

Marathon

Subway

Here we have a much better example of going A To C. No rooms and hallways again, but along with a wide variety of ideas (a scene at a rebellion, maybe Star Wars base reality, scene at a castle, scene at a wedding, etc…) you also had lots of potentially funny ideas. 

How about a door to door salesman who sells electric umbrellas? Or Doorbell Debt? I wish I could marry you, Susan, but it wouldn’t be responsible. I just spent way too much on my doorbell. I also like the sound of Divorce Piano, Orange Jumpsuit Poetry, and Postcard Wedding.

Look through the list. Do you see any funny ideas I’m not highlighting? If you do, how would you initiate them?