THEATER

You can use improvisational theater to create your own short play. Take these steps and see what you come up with.

1. Get to know your group dynamics by working through as many improv games as you can find. Either tape record or video tape your skits.
2. Take notes on what characters, settings and movements were particularly effective.
3. Revisit the effective skits and start to develop characters, dialogue, and motivations. Continue to write down your results.
4. Write your script based on the work of steps 1-3. As you rehearse and try out the dialogues, continue to add, change and cut. As a group, decide on a deadline for this working stage; after this date, no more changes.
5. Rehearse your script, adding actions, props, costumes and set.
6. Perform! You can perform for your class, your school, or your friends!

• Story Chain (Popcorn)
  Take turns creating a story and pass it along to someone by saying "Popcorn!" followed by the person's name. The trick is to catch someone unaware or inattentive. If you don't pick up the story, you sit out for the rest of the story.
  
  
• Automatic Writing
  Think of the first word that comes to mind. Add to this word a second, third and forth word. With these words, write a 100 word story which links all your words together. Another way to encourage writing is to play a particularly emotional piece of music: "The Eroica Symphony"(Beethoven), "Firebird Suite," (Stravinsky), or any other selection.
  
  
• Justification Line
  Divide the class into two lines. The two at the end of the lines turn away from each other, while one begins to do a physical action (lifting legs alternately, waving arms, etc.). The other, who cannot see the movement, delivers one line of dialogue-whatever he or she can think of. The student making the motion follows with one line which justifies his or her action in the context of the two dialogue lines. The play returns to the first speaker, who must guess what the movements is. They bother turn around and the game goes on the next pair.
  
  
• Swedish Storytellers
  To pass the cold, cold evening of Scandinavia, many Swedish families would play at storytelling. The game would involve three objects named by the group, which the storyteller must incorporate into a story. If you divide into groups, each group should use the same objects...at the end of the activity, compare your stories.
  
  
• Advancing, Expanding
  A very straightforward game, this theater experience involves taking a typical action (scratching your nose) and making it more interesting when another student calls out "ADVANCE!" (scratching your nose with your scratching arm under your knee). The interesting part comes when the actor can pass the action back to the caller by responding with "EXPAND!"...and the caller must do the same action and expand it!
  
  
• Emotional Boundaries
  Divide the classroom or stage into three areas. Each area will be designated a particular emotion: Angry Zone, Excited Zone, Left Out Zone, etc. Each player, or pair of players, starts a dialogue as they are walking around the stage. When the actor(s) cross the zone boundaries, they must switch emotions. It is important that the actors move through all the areas, and that they don't plan out their movements so that they must think on the spot about their emotions. Try switching the zones into scenes (settings) like Bus Stop, School Lunchroom, Doctor's Office, etc.

• Build A Machine

This is an activity that will help to develop creative thinking and build classroom relations. One child starts this theatre game by creating a repetitive rhythmic movement. The movement should have a clear pattern that can be identified as a "purpose". The child will then add a noise to accompany the movement. Once the movement and sound combination is established, the next student can figure out a way to add-on to the machine with a new movement and sound. Each child maintains their original function until all students have connected to the machine. This is a great way to spin-off into a writing project about the function and purpose of the machine they created.