Glass Cobra

Glass Cobra - a Prui-like game of gathering, was yet one other theaterish game that Son-in-Law Tom introduced to me and us with great panache and success at Esalen. He learned of it in Augusto Boal's apparently much-beloved book Games for Actors and Non-Actors. Boal writes:

Everyone stands in a circle (or in two or more lines if the group is very large), with their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them. With their eyes closed, they use their hands to investigate the back of the head, the neck and the shoulders of the person in front. This is the glass cobra in one piece.

Then, on an instruction from the joker, the cobra is broken into pieces and each person sets off around the room, sitll with their eyes closed. In Brazilian legend, this type of cobra, 'the glass cobra', shatters into a thousand pieces; but one day the pieces find each other again, these small fragments which are harmless on their own, but become dangerous the moment they get back together, because when they do they turn into the dangerous steel cobra.

The cobra in the legend is the people, obviously! In the game it is simply the participants who, after having moved around the space for a few minutes, on a signal from the joker must find their way back to the person who was in front of them before the cobra broke up. They must reconstitute the cobra(s). As in the legend, this can take time...

Despite its legendary significance, the game is great fun, leading to a lot of safe touching and lost-and-foundness.

I had never heard the game leader referred to as a "joker." I think I like it.