At Halloween, people like to dress up as all sorts of scary things. Here are some improv-inspired costumes.
I’ve started with an easy one. With this costume you can basically wear your own clothes but hang a spatula, a whisk, a DVD of The Maltese Falcon and a dildo around your neck.
This one is a little more advanced. Construct a tiny theatre around yourself such that your chin is resting on the stage itself and your face is obscured by a red velvet curtain. If someone uses the miniature pulley system to open the curtain, say Boo! in a spooky way.
For the slightly more conceptual improviser. Dress entirely in black and then just sort of waft around the room looking like you don’t quite know what you’re doing. Whenever anyone says something, hunch down beside them and start rhythmically chanting it - get louder and louder with every repetition and let your eyes dart from face to face in mounting panic. Start spinning and flailing your arms around. End by telling a story about how you were bullied at school.
So many possibilities here. How about a man with telephones for hands? Or a woman who carries out conversations whilst tipping a drink down her throat? This costume makes a particularly impressive entrance as you can burst through a door without actually opening it.
Come, thrill to the grisly spectacle of Harold - who was cut into three separate pieces. And then those pieces were divided thrice again. Yay, gaze upon this exquisite corpse, this study in gory trifurcation. Note how it’s lower extremities have been twisted together to provide some kind of grotesque thematic resolution. Ignore the group games, they don’t fit into this metaphor.
<aside> 💡 Hey, my name’s Chris Mead. I write an article about improv almost every week. You can get the latest in your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter. Or check out the archive.
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