Teaching improvisation for confidence and acting skills is a fundamental for drama students, beginning actors and veteran actors need to utilise to master their practice. It involves spontaneously creating characters, and developing scenes, in a moment in time without the use of script or lines.
Improvisation has the student or actor create, act out a moment in time, or short scene in a theatrical space. Usually the scene is simplistic in nature and often has a humorous element.
Many well known actors have used improvisation techniques to help create scenes in movies, plays, television programmes with success. Television programs such as; ‘Whose line it is Anyway?’ is involves actors playing various characters in scenarios with other actors. They are required to think on the spot to achieve the set requirements by an audience or scene presenters.
Beginning actors and students need to begin somewhere when they are embarking on the dramatic arts and their acting journey. What better way to get them into the art of acting than getting them to create characterisations, simplistic plots and interactions with fellow actors.
Benefits of Teaching Improvisiation
The benefits of improv is for students to develop their creative imagination and confidence using space and fellow actors to forward a scene.
Improvisation games help students to enjoy the process of developing confidence and their imagination at the same time. They also gain physical and voice awareness during the exercises.
Student also gain the awareness of how import working as a team is. Acting and drama are about the process and team around them. It isn’t solely about the one person or star of the show.
They build cooperation, collaboration, communication and working together.
How To Begin To Teach Improvsiaiton.
Begin by establishing safe rules such as making sure that they keep to your rules, no deliberate sabotaging and hurting others. This is particularly so with the younger students.
There are many games and exercises a drama teacher, tutor or lecturer can use in their classes when teaching students the art of improvisation.
Circle of Imitation
This exercise helps students get into their bodies and spontaneously mimic others in an exaggerated way. Students stand around in the circle. The teacher or tutor says to count five people to their right. They must mimic or imitate every little movement or mannerism which they see their person of interest.
For example, if one person slightly flares their nostril, the observing person will do the same. Hopefully the person observing that person will do the same and so on and so on.
The exercise usually ends up with everyone exaggerating movements and is quite hilarious and fun.
Fairtale Speed
Like the title suggests, the audience picks a fairy tale for students to act out in three minutes from beginning to the end. The next time they are to act our the same scene in just 30 seconds. In the third part, they are to act out the scene in 10 seconds. This is agreat way to get young students to enjoy acting a simple scene which most people know in an enjoyable way.
One Word At A Time
This can be taught to the class as a whole to begin with. Have students arranged in either a semi circle or in a line infront of you. Explain that the students are gong to act out a scene on the spot and will do this in pairs.
When working in pairs, you can have students link arms and they operate as one person or you people speaking as one.
You will ask the group of a location, action, they are participating in. For example; you are in a hot air balloon with a pink elephant. From there the students need to speak one word at a time while forwarding the action.
Their spoken sentences must make sense and be grammatically correct. While speaking, they action their words as they go. For instance, if they say they are going to fall out of the hot air balloon, they then enact that activity.
Have students need to find a natural way of ending the scene. Conclude with an ending which makes sense or is satisfying for the audience.
Family Portrait
As per the title, the teacher should put students into group of five or more. Upon saying begin, the students arrange themselves in a family portrait. Different scenarios and themes could be introduced.
- drunk uncle
- angry teen
- pious mother
- awkward child
Another way to play this game is to have students on the count of 10 to organise themselves into a family of dog breeders, skiers, artists, or doctors to name a few. They have 10 seconds to FREEZE into place. Discuss their stance as you walk around and ask them questions while they are in place.
Foreign Film Subtitles
Students are to act out simple scenes and have a film dubber or subtile to speak aloud what is going on in the scene as-well as what they are saying to each other. All students should be making offers and moving with the offers as they move forward.
Mood
Designate half the stage area to one particular mood and the other half another. For stance on side of the stage is joyful and other other is despair. The audience/students have the scene a location, and action to help anchors students into the scene. When move from area to area, they are to change their moods as they go. This keeps them on their toes because they have to be aware of the mood which is going to greet them.
Author
One person acts as the narrator or author of the story. Two or more actors come on stage one at a time to act out their character and scenario according to the author.
The author may set up the scene for actors to say lines by saying; “And so Jeremy says…” and Jeremy needs to pick up the lines and forward the scene. They author may pick up the scene at any point, particularly if the scene is floundering.
The scene must have a clear beginning, middle and ending and be coherent throughout.
Click on this link to take you to the grandmother of all Improv (Amazon link)
Sentence At a Time
Have three or four students standing in front of a pointer. the pointer has to point at anyone of the actors standing in front of them. When pointed at, the actor takes on a sentence in role and must keep forwarding the story without hesitations and stopping.
When the pointer has finished with a person she or he will then point at another person to carry on with the story. The second person must carry on as though they are the narrator which is grammatically correct and makes sense.
If there are hesitations or they fumble over their words, they are out of the game. The last one left is the winner. This game teaches listening skills, imagination and voice clarity.
Yes And
This is one of the most fundamental games a beginning actor or student would try. Yes And requires the student or actor to make an offer in a scene such as; “Let’s go to Jamaica and play in a Reggie band!” The other actor might add on…”Yes and let’s take our special glitter coats and saxophones.” The other actor would forward on the scene be adding; “Yes and we can jet ski on my power super charger booster ski to get there!”
As each person adds to the story by not blocking, they must both act out the each offer to forward the scene. The scene would end when a person finds a natural place to end. The skills learned here are listening skills, imagination, physicality, teamwork and humor.
Scene Stealer
This is a basic exercise where two students are asked to stand on stage and try to draw the audiences attention. They can do any antics such as jumping, cartwheels, singing, exaggeration, facial expressions, miming and mimicking. Basically they can do anything to win the audiences attention. The skills learned here are, confidence building, audience awareness, working the audience, imagination, and bodily expression. This can be a challenging exercise when faced with a super extravert, when you are an introvert, but it makes you work hard.
Prop Manipulator
This exercise requires students to use a variety of props and work the into a scene. For example; you might have a long pool tube and you need to make that into workable imaginative situation. This could act as a skipping rope, or a weird scarf which is awkwardly thrown around the neck.
If working in groups you can give each group a prop and they must negotiate what they will make their prop into.
The skills they learn are: teamwork, imagination, confidence building, trust, working with props.
These are just some of the many great improv ideas you can use with students and actors to help with a variety of acting and performance skills.
