Improv Fun & Games: Speed Props

Here’s a quick and easy improv exercise you can use when you have a few minutes of time to fill in class, or whenever you want to spread a little kindness with your students. You’ll need a timer and a paper and pen or note-taking app. Part 1: One-Minute Kindness BrainstormQuickly match up students into small groups of three to four. Have one student act as scribe, using a pen and paper or a note-taking app on their phone. In one minute, have each group list as many of the following: • Ways to say kind words and/or phrases • Kind actions or acts of service • Ways to help a friend or family member • Good advice to give others • Ways to help your community • Other unique acts of kindness Feel free to have the full class brainstorm about any or all of the topics, or assign a different topic to each group. After one minute has elapsed, have each group choose their five best ideas and share them with the rest of the class. Use these brainstormed ideas for part 2. (Feel free to collect all the brainstorm lists and use these ideas for future classes when devising scenes, playwriting prompts, journal prompts, or actions that your class could undertake for random acts of kindness.) Part 2: A Minute of KindnessHave students sit or stand in a circle. Select two students to go into the middle of the circle. Select one of the brainstormed ideas at random for students to create a one-minute improvised scene. Use the timer to indicate the end of the scene. Remind students that they can use any kind of scenario for the scene; it doesn’t just have to be two students displaying acts of kindness. It could be a parent and child, a person and their pet, two co-workers, two aliens, two dinosaurs — whatever they want to try, as long as kindness is at the heart of the scene. Improv is all about “yes, and…” so encourage your students to make big choices. Once the minute is up, send in two more students and have them take a turn creating an improvised scene. Continue until all students have had a turn, or you run out of time. For a Challenge: If your students are improv pros, you can add surprise parameters to the kindness scene. Write these suggestions onto slips of paper and have students draw one out of a hat: • Standard improvised scene • +10 seconds • -10 seconds • Improvised mime scene • Improvised tableau series (three frozen pictures) • Improvised scene using only voices (act behind the audience) • Interpretive dance • Improvised musical (all lines must be sung instead of spoken) • Add a third student to the scene • One actor must mention pickles at some point during the scene

In this activity, students will demonstrate their knowledge of a selected play or musical and combine it with their creative and artistic skills to make their own theatrical board game. They’ll design and present a racing-style board game, like The Game of Life or Candyland, complete with a customized game board and tokens and an entertaining storyline based on important moments from the show. This activity is great for partners or small groups. An evaluation rubric is included at the bottom of this article. 1. Decide on a game journey.Have students select a show you’re currently studying or performing, or a different show of their choosing. Students will create a timeline of the major events in the play or musical, which they will use throughout the game to tell the story of the show. Map out a list of the important moments throughout the play that they need to include, and put them in chronological order. Determine how these moments will fit onto the game board or into the game. For example, will the moments be written on game spaces for the players to read, or do the players need to solve a show-related riddle or puzzle to win? The goal for the “game journey” is for the student game designers to demonstrate that they know the important plot points from the show’s storyline, while making the game fun at the same time. 2. Determine the gameplay and rules.Students will need to decide how the tokens will move around the board (e.g., using dice, playing cards, or another counting method) and any special spaces, such as “lose a turn,” “move back ___ spaces,” or “advance token to ____ space.” Special spaces can be game-related or action-related. For example, if the group chose The Phantom of the Opera for their game board, some special space examples might be, “You receive a threatening note from The Phantom — lose a turn” or “You’ve joined the corps de ballet — demonstrate your best moves and gain an extra three spaces” or “Madame Giry demands that you answer a trivia question to earn an extra dice throw.” Some board games include drawing extra cards or gaining bonus tokens for various reasons. Students are encouraged to add a unique slant to their games, whether that be answering trivia questions, completing physical tasks, collecting bonus tokens from landing on certain spaces, or something else related to the play or musical basis for the game. A game based on Alice in Wonderland might have game players collecting vials of “Drink Me” potion throughout the game, while a game based on Peter and the Starcatcher might require game players to retrieve bags of starstuff. Students will type up the rules and include them with their board game, ensuring they are clear and concise. (Nobody wants to spend ages reading through the rules before getting into the gameplay!) 3. Design tokens and a game board.Using their design skills, students will create a colourful and elaborate game board and unique playing tokens for their game. If students are studying The Addams Family, they might choose to make tokens that look like Morticia, Gomez, Wednesday, and Lucas Beineke, with a board designed entirely in black and gray. A Wizard of Oz game might have the game board divided into different zones such as Munchkinland, the spooky forest, the poppy field, and the Emerald City — with the Yellow Brick Road as the game track of course! For this assignment, students must also include a three-dimensional feature to their game board, similar to a scale model set design. They might wish to design a game backboard that looks like the French Taunter’s castle from Spamalot, have high rise buildings in each corner for a How to Succeed in Business… game, or build a miniature bed stacked with many mattresses for tokens to climb for a Once Upon a Mattress game. The possibilities are endless! 4. Play the game!Have each group pair up with another group, and test play each group’s board games. Then, give each team notes. What worked well? What needed improvement? How well did the team integrate the source play or musical into the design of the game? As time permits, have students try out a few different games. If you wish, have them vote on their top three games!

In improvisation, one of the first rules that drama students are commonly taught is to always say, “Yes, and…” to continue the story. Basically, agree with presented concepts to keep the scene moving forward. If Partner A says, “Wow it’s so hot today!” and Partner B says, “What are you talking about, it’s freezing!” Partner B is stopping the scene from moving forward. But what if the suggestion that one of the scene partners presents makes the other partner uncomfortable? Teachers can try to circumvent awkward or uncomfortable improvised scenes by using prompts to direct the focus of the scene, but you never know where a student will take a scene or what they’ll bring up in the moment. We also can’t know what might be upsetting for a student until it occurs. Once students have learned the basics of improvisation, including “Yes, and…” introduce “No, but…” as an option to take the improvised story in a different direction. This provides a way for students to reframe an uncomfortable situation. Students are still responsible for participating in the scene, adding information, and not derailing the plot (for example, if your partner says something like, “Wow it’s so hot,” then that’s a given for the scene). But they can pivot and adjust where the scene is going. If Partner A says, “Hi Donna!” and Partner B says, “Guess what, I changed my name last week, you can call me Dean,” Partner B is saying No, but also adding information. Having the ability to say “No, but…” is an important aspect of consent within the drama classroom. If students cannot say no, then their “yes” isn’t meaningful, because they don’t have a choice in the matter. Knowing that they have the ability to say no and adjust the scene tells students that their voices are being heard and respected, and that their feelings are important. This is not to say that students should be allowed to not participate in scenarios they just don’t like or feel silly doing. We want to encourage our students to try new things, make mistakes, and explore. But it’s good to have a safeguard in place as well. And, when used sparingly in improvisation exercises, “No, but…” can be an interesting and creative way to contribute to the scene. And sparingly is the key word here. Here’s a quick game you can try with your students to practice “Yes, and…” and “No, but…” You’ll need a timing device and a noisemaker, such as a bell. 1. Start by discussing with your students the concept of “Yes, and…” Remember, students don’t need to say that specific phrase — it simply means going along with suggestions and adding more to the scene. The goal is to keep the scene moving forward; you don’t want to derail it by denying the information your partner has given you. 2. Introduce the concept of “No, but…” Discuss scenarios in which students can pivot and adjust the scene if an uncomfortable situation occurs. It’s not to be used in every scene, or just because a student doesn’t like a given suggestion. Give a sample prompt or scenario and let the full group brainstorm different ways they could apply the idea of “No, but…” to the scenario (with or without the specific phrasing) that move the scene forward. 3. Have students form pairs. Select one pair of students to start an improvised scene. Let them know that each pair will be limited to one minute maximum for the scene. Students will focus on the spirit of “Yes, and…” to the best of their abilities. 4. When the timer reaches the 30 second mark, sound the noisemaker. Whoever’s line is next must use the “No, but…” prompt, and take the scene in a different direction. It doesn’t need to be wildly different, but it needs to go in a new direction while still being related to the earlier work in the scene (for example, same character names). 5. The scene will then continue until the end of the remaining time while going in the new direction from the “No, but…” prompt. Don’t worry if time runs out and the scene hasn’t ended. Sound the noisemaker to indicate that time is up and end the scene where it is. If possible, repeat with the next pair of students until everyone has had a chance to try. 6. Debrief with your students: • How did “No, but…” affect the improvised scene? • Was it difficult to take the scene in a new direction with “No, but…”? Why or why not? • Why is it helpful to have a “No, but…” technique available to use? Some students may find it difficult to say no to others, particularly if they’ve been taught continually about always saying yes in improv. While we don’t want to derail the scene going on, we want students to know that there is an option for them to say no to something that is upsetting for them. Having a consent-based option like “No, but…” ensures that students’ feelings are being respected, while keeping the improvisation fun and forward-moving. Additional Resources: • Top Ten Tips for Teaching Improv • Improv Game: Creative Defiance