Games & Exercises

This exercise combines fine art (photography) with drama class. Students will select physical items reminiscent of a play or musical, and arrange them to create a styled still life photograph....

When students are presenting scenes in drama class, the most typical setup is actors on one side of the room with the audience facing them on the opposite side, like a typical proscenium arch...

It’s exciting when well-known books, films, and television shows get turned into stage productions. Plays and musicals like The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, The SpongeBob Musical,...

Theatre is all about conveying emotions onstage through our voices, gestures, facial expressions, and body language. With middle schoolers, who are often in the midst of learning how to deal with...

What is the difference between marketing and advertising? Marketing is the process of identifying potential customers and getting them interested in your product or service — in this case, the show...

This rehearsal exercise takes its name from one of my favourite improv games, Scenes from a Bag. If your actors are feeling a bit shaky or uncertain with their lines during the rehearsal process,...

Live special effects are exciting! They create memorable moments onstage that audience members will talk about long afterwards. But how is this theatre magic created? What elements go into bringing...

It’s easy for students to downplay their accomplishments, brush off compliments, and outright tear themselves down mentally or verbally. Negative self-talk can seriously affect students’ confidence...

In this article you’ll find instructions for a playwriting choice board exercise. For this exercise, students should bring in a photo of them as a baby or toddler. It needs to be a physical copy,...

Here’s a choice board exercise that’s all about emotions. You can use this list for students to complete single tasks (just have students select one assignment out of the many advertised below), or...

If you have a smartphone, it’s a guarantee that you’ve used emojis. Emojis are more than cute graphics on your phone — they’ve evolved into a unique visual language. While emojis themselves are a...

This group exercise has layers. It combines planning, teamwork, performance skills, and introductory sound design. Students will create three tableau scenes to tell stories that evoke various...

This costume challenge builds on the costume design skills that students practiced in two recent blog posts: Rehearsal Blacks, Elevated and One Item, Three Ways. Students will work in pairs to...

In our last post, we challenged students to create elevated costume looks using only black clothing and accessories. This time, we’ll have one costume item and challenge students to style it...

If you’re working on a show with a tiny budget, one way many drama teachers have saved funds is by having student actors wear “rehearsal blacks” onstage — plain black pants and long-sleeve shirts....

This exercise was inspired by one of my favourite theatre games, Tableau Scenes from a Book. If you haven’t tried that game with your students yet, do that first! In the original version of the...

A common acting exercise for students is to imagine what their character is doing next when they exit a scene, and what they’re doing when they aren’t onstage. We’re turning that exercise into a...

If you’ve had to deal with more absences than usual, or you’d like your students to learn more about the roles of understudies and swings, or your students just need a good problem-solving...