Location
A long-form where every scene takes place in a single location. Performers shift characters and time periods, revealing the space from different angles.
Players
4β8
Duration
20-30 min
Difficulty
Intermediate
Full description
Setup and Launch
Get a single location from the audience β say, the Post Office. That place is your entire world for the show. Make it clear to all performers: no matter what happens, every scene takes place right here.
Flow
1. Establish the Location
Open by grounding the space physically. Use gestures, mime objects, react to sounds β a creaky door, a bell above the entrance, the hum of fluorescent lights. The audience and your fellow performers need to see and feel the place before any story begins.
2. Play Scenes in the Same Location
Different characters wander in and out of the space. A postal clerk on a Monday morning, a couple mailing wedding invitations, a teenager picking up a package years later. You can jump forward or backward in time, replay a moment from a different character's perspective, or shift relationships entirely. The location stays fixed; everything else moves.
Key rules
One location only β Every scene takes place in the same space. A post office stays a post office. This sharpens focus on physical detail and forces discovery instead of invention.
Shift characters and time β Each scene can feature different characters or jump to a different era. A morning crowd, a night janitor, a flashback to the grand opening β the location connects them all.
Format structure
Context
What to try next
Similar formats, so you can keep the rehearsal moving without stopping to search.
Motel
Long-form Harold variation where every scene takes place in the same motel room. Three storylines unfold through rounds of scenes and secret-revealing monologues.
Chairs
A long-form where two performers build interwoven storylines by rearranging two chairs β each configuration establishes a scene's location without a word of explanation.β¦
Time Line
A long-form where performers play scenes from characters' lives at different points in time β jumping between past, present, and future in non-chronological order.
Parallel Stories
A short-form where two pairs play separate scenes simultaneously on a shared stage, each in an audience-suggested location. Trains peripheral awareness, group mind, and β¦
Harold
The foundational long-form format: one audience suggestion spawns three independent threads that organically converge through callbacks, heightening and group mind. Haroβ¦
Meanwhile
A long-form where you build one shared story by jumping between parallel scenes in different locations or times. The format trains coherent plot and clean scene transitiβ¦