Theatre games for very young children

Anything goes in this exercise. Encourage students to really tell a story and give detail. Students sit in a circle, and the teacher explains that they are going to create the atmosphere of a place with sounds.

Ideas may include the seaside, school, London, the jungle, the zoo, or fairy land. Ask someone to start: they must repeat their chosen noise, or the phrase, over and over again. Then the person next to that student adds their noise; then the person next to them adds their own noise, and so on.

Students lie down and a piece of music is played. Students can listen to it lying down for about 30 seconds or more, and when they are ready, they stand up and move around the room in response to how the music is making them feel. The music may inspire them to be a wizard, skipping to wizard school, to walk through a cave terrified, or to sit quietly reflecting on happier times.

Whatever the music inspires, the students must follow their intuition and go with that, not paying attention to anyone else in the group. Maya reacts how she likes. Then Maya will then pick someone else in the circle and approach them to apologise for something. Mark out a square or rectangle that is about the size of the floor space in a lift. Ask four actors to think up an objective for the character they will play. They get into the lift in character, and the improvisation begins.

Divide the group into teams of four to six people and have each team choose a spot around the room. The teacher calls out a scene such as Spiderman at the scene of a bank robbery, a birthday party gone wrong or a television awards show and then counts down from Teams have 10 seconds to organize a tableau and then freeze.

The teacher then goes around and views each tableau before choosing a winner for that round. The winning team receives a point. Every student from the team must participate in the tableau or the team will be disqualified from the round. Tip: Remind the students about the use of levels and facial expressions at the start of the game.

Choose two to four students to start onstage and give them a scene to start such as lifeguards rescuing someone from drowning. The other actors will need to improvise and join in the new scene. It must be completely different to the scene that was happening before. The teacher selects one person to be a gravekeeper, and they stand off to the side. The other students lie on their backs on the ground with their eyes open.

They must stay completely still, with a straight face. They are not allowed to touch the person on the ground. Anyone they succeed at making laugh is alive again and joins the gravekeeper in going around and trying to make the other students laugh or speak.

This is a great game for helping your students learn stage directions. The teacher calls out stage directions, such as downstage right or center. Any students who move there otherwise are eliminated. Try to keep the calls coming quickly to keep the game interesting. Related Posts. Drama Games for Language Classes — Online This unique one-month CPD course in February with David Farmer shows you how to use drama games and strategies to engage your students in foreign language learning as well as in mother tongue learning.

Read More. Hopefully the students have learnt a few names and it is a good way to solidify names for you and the other students. Tip: encourage students to relax and focus. If they get flustered and panic it disrupts the flow of the game. Difficulty: Medium Age Range: 7 and above Learning Outcomes: coordination, teamwork, movement, concentration. For new groups, Zombie Tag is a great way of incentivising the learning of names: if you want to survive, you better know who everybody is!

Tip: With smaller classes, you might want to restrict the playing space. Difficulty: easy Age Range: all ages Learning Outcomes: concentration, team-building. This is a really simple exercise for a large group which encourages connection and focus. It requires students to be hyperaware and really focus. Tip: encourage your students to be clear and direct. Also make sure that all the students get a turn. This game is played by professional theatre companies, and can also work really well with late primary and high school kids.

Tip: Stress the importance of keeping the rhythm steady. Groups tend to naturally speed up quite quickly. Students often find this game particularly funny, so try to keep them focused. Tip: If the rhythm is too confusing, try a simple game of word association around the circle instead.

A warm-up classic! Tip: Enforce a rule saying whoever is sheriff has final say. Students will learn to police fairness themselves and treat each other with respect and honesty.

More students will get themselves out not listening or reacting than they will actually being slow. This games works as a great warm up for more extensive improvisations. Tip: This can be a great exercise for talking about improv basics with younger students: talk about status not walking into the space with more power than the first student. Tip: Ask students what they might be able to do interpret a pose in an unexpected way: could a karate chop be a handshake?

Difficulty: medium Age Range: all ages Learning Outcomes: vocal projection, movement, confidence, writing. This is a great improvisation game. This is arguably the most famous of all improvisation games, and is played slightly different all over the world.

Here is my version:. Tip: Try to encourage a diverse range of scenarios. You often see the same stuff over and over. Tip: This can work with larger groups of up to 12 students.

You may need to keep track of scenarios to help them along. This game requires a bit of set-up and explanation for a class, but is a fun improv game that is both entertaining to participate in and watch for larger groups. Tip: Make sure you encourage your watching students to be friendly and warm audience members.

Encourage laughter, cheering and applause at the appropriate times. Once you have played a few basic games you might want to up the difficulty level and explore some longer form improvisational games. These are best played with 15 years and up high schooler groups, beginner adult groups or experienced actors looking to work their craft in a different way.

Difficulty : Medium Ages : 15 and up Learning Outcomes: acting, writing, team-building, characterisation. This game is all about creating a scene using minimal dialogue. Write these four phases on a whiteboard or an easily accessible surface that the performers can see. Pick two people to get up onstage, they must create a scene and tell a story using only these phases as dialog. Get suggestions from the audience about their characters relationship, environment and what happened last time they saw each other.

Encourage them to really focus on telling the story with their vocal and physical choices within the limits of the specified dialog above.