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I'm going to explain the icebreaker game, red light, green light. That's right, red
light, green light. You might already know this game cause you probably played it when
you were a kid, but some of the games we played as kids still work as adults if we have the
right spirit, and this is one of them. So how it works, you're going to get most of
the group lined up against a wall and one person's going to be at the other side of
the room as the stoplight. The goal of the people lined up against the wall is they're
going to try and be the first person to get to the opposite side of the room and touch
the other wall. The person who's standing here by themselves is the traffic light and
they get to conduct when people can move and when they can't move. So they start by saying
green light and turning and then they say red light and turn again. If by the time they're
turned around they see anybody still moving, they call out their name and send them back
to the starting line. That's also one of the things I like about this game, is you get
to use names as well. It's another name game. So there's an incentive to play it safe and
not get caught moving, but if you play it too safe you'll never win. So it's a good
game to actually teach risk taking. How much risk should be taking in this game? If you
never get called out, you're probably playing it too safe. If you get called out every time,
you're taking too much risk. Actually so much risk that it's not really dangerous at all
cause you know you're going to get caught out. So it's fun to play right on that edge
of like almost getting caught. That's where the excitement is in improv and that's where
the excitement is in game play. So you play that until somebody touches the opposite wall.
That person gets to be the new stop light and start a new round. So this is a fun game
to get people moving, to get people thinking about taking risks, and to get people to remember
people's names. It's a simple school yard game, but I still think it has lots of applications
for us grown-ups, and it's red light, green light.