Celebrity/Stereotype Party

Objectives

Icebreakers/Warmups | Communication | Breaking Down Stereotypes

Group Size

Medium | Large

Materials

Nametags, Marker, List of Celebrity Names or demographic characteristics (see variation below)

Set Up

Writing out the names on the tags ahead of time saves time, and also have brief bios of the people to help

with the debrief.

Directions

From the participants perspective, the object of this activity is for each group member to discover the

personality that is written on their own back.

You begin by assigning each group member a “personality” by sticking a nametag with the name of a famous

person or character to his or her back. DO NOT show this nametag to the participant! Participants should be

able to view the personalities of all other group members, just not their own.

You then instruct the group to mingle, and ask questions of the other "guests at the party." Individuals can

ask yes or no questions about their personalities of others in the group, such as “Am I a woman? Am I a

singer? Etc.

Instruct participants to ask each member of the group only one question at a time, moving on to another person

after each question. Encourage participants not to offer hints.

Variations

• You can also use this activity to adress issues of stereotypes by intentionally diversifying our group of

celebrities or simply assigning demographic characteristics instead of famous people e.g.

• • an asian-american divorced father of 3
  • a gay male iraqi war veteran
  • a single female bank president
  • an african-american congresswoman

Debrief

• what was challenging about this activity?
• What did you notice about the kinds of questions you or others asked?