Improv games are a wonderful way to break the ice with your new cast, review and build skills, and help your actors find themselves in the characters they’re playing and the script you’re working on with them. Through exercises and improvisation games, the actors learn to respond quickly to changes in their environment and to create in the moment a new way of looking at, responding to, or expressing feelings about a situation that has also been created spontaneously.
As director of young performers, I have developed a repertoire that I would like to share here, of games that I feel work well with children and adolescents. These are not all original products, in fact most of them have been around for a long time, but I include them here not as my own inventions, but as games that I have found particularly useful and popular with my young actors. .
park bench – This is usually the first game I teach. It is simple and happily played by people of all ages. Believe it or not, I have met the team of 5-8 year olds who continue to play this game for an hour or more! I start by asking for a volunteer to be the first innocent sitting on a bench. I tell the bench keeper who is sitting minding his own business when a new person comes and sits next to him, and here I encourage the next child to come and join the first. The second person’s job is to say or do something to make the first person go away. The work of the first person -and this is an important point to emphasize- is let the statement or action of the second person to make him want to leave. When the first person gets up and leaves, the second person moves in their place and becomes the next innocent sitting on the bench and receives the next child in line who will now make them leave. The innocent original park bench keeper goes to the back of the line with the rest of the park bench’s future antagonists to await his own turn.
Freeze – Another old standby, Freeze has been around forever and is enjoyed by actors of any age. It begins with two volunteers taking the stage. The director asks the audience to give the two volunteers a setting to start a scene: a place, an activity, and who the two actors represent. Leaving no time for the two actors to think much, the director instructs the volunteers to begin the scene. The scene progresses for a few minutes and then, when the actors are in an interesting physical formation, the director yells “Stop!” and the two actors must freeze their bodies at that instant.
A new volunteer is chosen and that person comes up on stage and gently taps on the shoulder of any actor who is in a position that inspires them. The intervened actor leaves the stage. The new actor assumes his position and uses that pose as a stimulus to start a completely new scene.
Martha’s game And no, no one knows why it’s called “Martha’s Game.”
An actor is chosen to be Martha. Martha has the pleasure of choosing where she is, what she is doing and what she is and she announces it to the group and freezes into an action pose. The rest of the students, one by one, say what they want to be in the scene (any character or environmental aspect of Martha’s set is fair game, including inanimate objects) and add themselves, frozen, to the picture. When all the actors have chosen their addition to Martha’s stage, the director will clap three times and the image will come to life, moving and speaking, even inanimate objects must speak as if what they are portraying could speak. This results in a wonderfully wildly chaotic crazy scene. This game is not for the faint of heart.
Tell me again? – This game originated with me and starts with a set of pre-written sentences on strips of paper that can be used to start a scene. Some examples:
I don’t believe this. I’m tired. Do not tell me that. What do you mean? wow. What do you know? It’s great to see you.
Two students choose a sheet of paper with a sentence printed on it, enter the play space, and begin a scene with their sentences. The problem here is that the only thing students are allowed to say is that sentence in their hand. They must use their bodies, faces, actions, and inflections to vary the scene and portray different intentions. The fun really begins when the director adds more actors, each with their own one-sentence script to play. The game is great for teaching about the many ways a line can be pronounced, as well as a nice way to show that it’s not so much what we say as how we say it.
The Game Show Game – An original variation on the old standard The Dating Game. Three children are chosen to create characters, whose identities they do not reveal. The characters can be anything from SpongeBob SquarePants to a bunny and mac and cheese. The three characters sit in a row of three chairs, with enough space between them to allow them to move physically while portraying themselves. A contestant is chosen who is then seated on the far right of the character row stage and the announcer, the director, begins the game.
Announce: Welcome ladies and gentlemen to our show The Game Show Game, where our contestant will have five rounds of questions to determine who these three characters could be. Here’s our contestant for today: Tom. Number one character, say hello to Tom!
The characters go down the line, each saying a characteristic “hello” to the contestant. When this is accomplished, the announcer says, “Tom, please ask your first question.”
The characters answer a series of five questions posed by the contestant, who gathers information from the answers that hopefully leads to the answer about who the characters really are. This game works well as it involves many children at once and even the children representing the audience are participants, as if the contestant cannot guess the identity of a character, the announcer says, “We turn to the audience members from the audience. …do you have a guess for this character?” At the end of the round, when all characters have been revealed, the contestant returns to the audience, all characters move stage right one chair, character number one becomes the contestant, and a new character number three is chosen. of the audience, and the announcer launches into his introduction once again…
These games are just a sample of what is available for principals to play with their students. Some useful improv game links are:
http://www.createdrama.com/teatro
http://www.improv4kids.com/ImprovGames
Improv games provide the director with a myriad of ways to expand her fledgling actors’ rehearsal and acting skills in uncharted territory, while also providing opportunities to develop social skills and build camaraderie among students. The director will enjoy watching the student actors grow as they play, laugh with their co-stars, and become more spontaneous and creative.
