Acting Improvisations: Kindergarten and Trip to New York

Acting exercises:

Kindergarten Class:

Drama Teacher's Survival Guide

Pages 28 - 30

Character and Objective:

Teacher: to have students sit quietly and listen to a story

Student A: to have teacher notice what a polite child he or she is

Student B: to get the teacher to allow him or her to go to the bathroom

Student C: to listen to the story

Student D: to be helpful to the teacher

Student E: to play with a toy in his/her pocket

Student F: to get close to and get the attention of Student A

Student G: to get Student E in trouble without getting in trouble him/herself.

Student H: To get Student C to look at him or her

Student I: To give a piece of candy to Student D to make D like her or him.

Student J: To get a piece of candy from Student I

Student K: To get Students F and H to look at a picture of her/his puppy.

Take the students aside and tell them their objectives.

Have one student play the principal who comes in to check up on the teacher. All the kids are terrified of the principal and do not want to get sent to the office.  The teacher may send a disruptive student out with the principal. If the teacher does so, then the student must leave the scene.

After the improv, ask the actors the following questions:

Were the actors playing children able to draw on their own experiences to help them in the scene?

Did the actors actually feel the experience of being a child in a kindergarten class?

Did the actor playing the teacher feel any genuine emotion in the scene? What were they?

What was each actor's objective? 

Trip to New York:

Drama Teacher's Survival Guide

Pages 30 - 31

Set up chairs to suggest a bus, with a table for the ticket seller in a corner. Choose twelve students who will each play a character with an objective the director will give them. They are not to divulge their objectives before the improv. 

Character and Objective:

1. Teenage girl who is going to meet her boyfriend whom her parents do not like.

2. A guy who's pretending to be a cool, rich guy.

3. A nervous woman who is going to meet her online boyfriend for the first time. 

4. A middle-aged person who is going to be a stage actor in New York.

5. An old person who is going to visit her grandchildren

6. A person who is trying to convince everyone the end of the world is near.

7. A young woman who is about to be deployed to Iraq to fight.

8. A young man who is upset that he didn't get the job he applied for. 

9. A nervous person who is trying to skip town before he/she gets arrested. 

10. An undercover agent who is following a suspect to arrest

11. An eight year old child who is waiting for her mother who never arrives. 

12. A young person enrolling in NYU for her freshman year of college.

A ticket-seller, the bus driver and a security guard are also in the scene. 

The scene opens with the ticket-seller, the security guard, the bus driver and the 8 year old child already on stage. 

The actors must follow their objectives truthfully, without stereotypes. The scene ends when the director ends it; the actors cannot force an early conclusion, such as a bomb exploding or the bus driver dying. 

After the scene, the audience shares what they observed about the actors' characters and motives. 

Ask the actors the same questions that the kindergarten actors answered. 

"This is a Duck":

This exercise teaches timing and concentration.

A student In a circle passes an object to the person to her left,  and says, "This is a duck." The second student asks, "A what?" The first student replies, "A duck!" The second student asks again, "A what?" First student, "A duck!" The second student replies with,  "Oh, a duck!"  And then the second student turns to the next student to her left and repeats it until it goes around the circle.

Then another one syllable object is added and goes around the circle along with the original object. More objects are added and go around with the other objects.

"Yes, May I?"

This exercise teaches timing, concentration or focus, and cooperation. 

Students stand in a circle. A student makes eye contact with another student on the opposite side of the circle and asks, "May I?" The second student replies, "Yes!" And then immediately turns to another student and asks, "May I?" The second student does not move until the third student says, "Yes!" When she receives permission she moves to the third person's position. The second student must leave before the first person arrives to take her place. 

To make it more difficult, the students do not say, "May I?' but make the request nonverbally, with eye contact and pointing only. If the student moves without getting permission first, or is still standing in her position when another student arrives to take her place, then the student must go into the "moshpit of shame"! 

Living Statues

"Telling a Story by Tableaux" 

This teaches concentration, cooperation, creating a story through the physical

Black out - audience's eyes closed

Lights up - audience's eyes open

Telling a story by tableaux

The students break into groups of three to create a story by using three connected tableaux. Each tableau, or frozen scene, should tell a story or a situation. All three actors do not have to be in every "scene" or tableau.  Each tableau or scene should be connected to the previous tableau/scene and the third and final tableau/scene should be the climax or brings the story to a close. The final tableau/scene can be funny, ironic or sad. 

Actors create a story with 3 tableaux:

One actor says, "Blackout!" and the audience closes eyes

The actors assume the first tableau

The actor says,"Lights up!"

Audience sees the first tableau

The actor says, "Blackout!" and the audience closes eyes

The actors assume the second tableau

The Actor says, "Lights up!" and the audience opens eyes.

Repeat

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“I am, I feel, I want!”

Students stand in a circle. Someone steps into the circle and says, “I am_______”, accompanied with a gesture, which everyone mimics while saying the last word of the phrase, “I am ­­­­­­ ________!” The student then says, “I feel_______!” accompanied by a gesture, which everyone mimics while saying the last word of the phrase, “I feel________!” The student then says, “I want________!” accompanied by a gesture, which everyone mimics while saying the last word of the phrase, “I want_________!”

Second part of this exercise:

The actor walks onto the stage and says, “I am_______! I feel_________! I want_________! “ The audience writes down two adjectives describing you and two adverbs describing how you walked on to the stage, how you spoke or how you acted: for example, “She walked on to the stage quickly.”

The audience then shares their impression of you.

Redo: For those who are not satisfied with the audience’s impression of them, they may incorporate the adjustments and redo their “I am, I want, I need.”