Mikl Em's Exquisite Corpse

The audience writes a play for character actors they just met. Each writer sees only the last line the previous writer left behind. The improv actors perform each act cold, minutes after it's written, for the audience that wrote it.

A note from the main developer:

The Exquisite Corpse collaborative stage performance system is the brainchild of the late, great Mikl Em. I admire Mikl so much and was honored to be asked to implement the first version of this system, which was used for three absolutely wonderful production runs at the Stage Werx in San Francisco ~ 2014. I am bringing back this system in hopes that other production troupes can make use of it to create amazing collaborations in their own communities. I believe it is what Mikl would have wanted.

How it works (audience view)

Picture this: the audience arrives at the theater for a play with a specific theme, e.g. Film Noir. Instead of heading to their seats though, they mingle for 20 minutes or so with other audience members and the cast of the play on stage where there is food and drink. The actors (the hard-boiled private detective, the mysterious "victim", the secretary, etc) are in costume and in character, improv-ing with each other and the audience.

Each audience member is given a number in a queue. When their number is called they are given access to a script writing system (either led to a laptop, or in the modern version, via their phone) where for 5 minutes they can select characters from a menu and type in dialogue and stage directions. When they start, they only see the last line from the previous script-writer's input (this is the exquisite corpse part).

When enough lines have been written for act one, the audience takes their seat and the play begins. The actors are cold-reading the script, written by the audience, live on stage. Acts two and three continue to collect lines while act one is going. In the dozen or so shows we did, it always ended up as exquisite chaos where everyone has a great time — especially when their five minutes of contributions hit the stage!

How it works (production view)

This was 100% Mikl's department, so take my advice here with that grain of salt. This is from what I recall.

Pre-production, cast. Obviously you start with a strong cast of stage performers comfortable with improv. Pick a theme, assign the characters. Since obviously you do not have the script, rehearsals are about exploring these characters and their general relationships to each other, so that you can use the initial mingling period to guide the audience's imagination. As I recall, our productions generally had a webpage with photos of the characters and a little bit of color for them. Also useful to practice cold reading from random scripts.

Pre-production, tech. The Exqcor system is designed to run centralized on one laptop or PC that is on a Wi-Fi network at the theater. Depending on how you want to do it, either (A) the audience members' phones or (B) a laptop/PC for each act are also connected to the same Wi-Fi network. In the case of using the audience phones, you provide a QR code that will load the web app for them on their phones. Before the show starts you create a new production in Exqcor and add in the characters and props that will be available, set the number of acts and other configurations as needed.

Show-time tech.

• Collecting audience lines — the old school way was to give each audience member a number and call them one at a time to sit down at one of the laptops off stage. If using the audience phones, then this is handled through the web app on their phone: they just need to enter the queue and the UI will let them know when their time has come. An admin view can be followed by someone in the production to monitor line collection and in general unblock things so lines are being collected continuously. Note that if using audience phones, they can continue to contribute from their seats.
• Closing an act — the admin also can make the call when an act is ready to be closed and distributed to the actors.
• The stage scripts can either be printed to paper (one for each actor with their lines and stage directions highlighted) or viewed by the actors on their own phones/tablets.

How it runs

One laptop runs a single exqcor executable (Windows, macOS, or Linux — no installer, no runtime). It serves the whole show over the venue's Wi-Fi:

• Admin opens the production desk in a browser: set up the show, run the queue, print scripts.
• QR codes are printed from the admin console: audience, writing-station, and cast codes each open the right interface on any phone/tablet/laptop browser (Android, iOS, anything).
• Audience members scan in, get a writer number, and their phone buzzes when they're called — to a backstage writing station, or to write right on their phone, per production.
• Timers, the hand-off, and the queue update live (SSE). Every line is saved the moment it's written; the server can be power-cycled mid-show without losing anything.

Repository layout

• server/ — Go server: SQLite storage, show runtime, HTTP/SSE API, and the embedded web UI. One static binary per platform.
• web/ — Svelte SPA (all four surfaces: admin, station, audience, script views), built into server/internal/webui/dist and embedded.
• docs/SHOW-NIGHT.md — the operator runbook. Print it.
• original/ — the 2012–2014 Rails 3 app (reference).
• modern/ — a Rails 8 rewrite of the data model/API (reference).
• Apple/ — an abandoned SwiftUI client experiment (reference).

Development

make dev-server   # Go API on :8080 (uses tmp/dev.db)
make dev-web      # Vite dev server on :5173, /api proxied to :8080
make test         # Go tests
make build        # production build: web + single binary at server/exqcor

Releases: push a v* tag; GitHub Actions builds the frontend, runs tests, and GoReleaser publishes archives for Linux (amd64/arm64), macOS (universal), and Windows.