Creative Thinking Exercise: Party of 1

I have this toy wooden robot and sometimes I play a game called: What Would Mr. Robot Do? I move his body into different positions and I make two assumptions:

1 ) Robots have feelings

2) Robots can talk

(Let's be real at some point very soon, in the near, near future this is will probably be realized and I will be watching a team of robots do improv on a stage. Until then, us humans still have the creativity market cornered.)

I study each position and assign it an emotion. I make up a few lines of dialogue and a story based on the robot's body language and his feeling. 

"I'll show those ungrateful kids I can still live alone!" She yells. This robot is an old woman who's fallen in the bathroom and can't get up on her own. She's angry because her selfish kids want to put her in an assisted living home, and she knows they're right. She needs assistance. 

This Robot dude is trying to impress his new girlfriend. Her favorite movie is "Dirty Dancing" so he's dancing like Baby in that scene where she and Johnny have do some sexy lip syncing to the song, Love is Strange. Except Robot dude is actually singing loudly and badly, "Baby, my sweet baby..." He's happy because she's laughing her head off (girlfriend Robot not pictured).

This exercise is great to get your creative juices flowing by yourself. Of course I'm partial to the Robot toy but any toy will do. 

Tell a story about the toy. Who is he or she? Where does he live? Where does he work? Where did he grow up? What are his hobbies? What are his life hopes and dreams? 

Remember when you were a kid? You played like this all the time. You didn't think, you knew the story by heart. I dare you to be a kid again.

Challenge: How many different stories can you tell about one position/toy? How does the story change when you apply a different emotion?

Also see Creative Thinking: Part 1