Rejection Game - the movie

John-Paul Flintoff, 24 January 2015

About 12 people joined a group to play and talk about the experience of playing The Rejection Game, devised by Keith Johnstone.

Participants included: Karen Wilson
Francis Christeller Justin Murray Eleanor Foulkes Dom Hutten

Jason McKell Natalie Wilson Hugh Chapman and others

The session was called by John-Paul Flintoff, who is planning with his colleague Steve Chapman to make a film of The Rejection Game.

In the game, there are four players on stage. One must be rejected by the other three, and it mustn't be you. The game teaches a lot about what excludes and includes people in everyday life.

The idea for the film is to play several times, and to capture it all with a camera on

each of the four players, and with excellent audio, so that the audience can then watch what players do well and not so well - what gets them rejected.

Rather than just talk about it, we tried playing the game. We tried a variety of different scenarios. First, two Arsenal fans on a train with two Liverpool fans. The players were all being “nice” in this first game, and not rejecting anybody.

Every so often we stopped to point out where a player was in danger, and what might help them get out of it.

Other scenarios we played included students competing for internships at parliament, a queue at the cinema, and two couples meeting for dinner.

Afterwards participants came up with a number of great suggestions for how to enrich the film.

1. give participants a questionnaire to think about rejection and inclusion in the following days. Then film interviews with them after a week, to capture those stories.

2. Show the filmed games to a variety of audiences and capture live tweets showing what they think at every moment.

3. interview participants about their individual experience of the game, and what it says about their everyday life.

Images:

Tags:

game, rejection