Round-Up: Essential Exercises and Great Games for Beginning Drama Students

These games and exercises are my go-to activities for teaching beginning drama students. They’re fun, engaging, effective, and give students a well-rounded overview of topics such as drama classroom and theatrical etiquette, various nonverbal and scripted performance techniques, introduction to scene and character analysis, and more.

First Week Essentials

• You and your students can learn each others’ names using the Silent Line-Up game, the ABC Name Game, and the Action Name Game from 3 Tips to Learn Students’ Names Quickly, and get to know a bit more about them by playing Move Yer Butt and Mixer from Getting to Know You Games.
• Practice and reinforce classroom rules and theatre etiquette guidelines with the Act It Out game.
• Creating a set of Community Agreements is an essential first week activity for you and your students.
  
• And here’s even more First Week Activities for you to use. Ensemble-building and trust-building are key topics to cover through warm-ups, games, and classroom exercises.

Nonverbal Theatrical Techniques: Mime, Tableau, Dance & Creative Movement

• Elephant Walk is one of my favourite nonverbal warm-up games.
• Start by teaching students about neutral position (from 3 Tips to Help Student Actors Stop Fidgeting), which helps them learn focus and body awareness.
• Our Middle School Miming series has great tips for teaching students about miming technique. Try Preparatory Skills; Big, Small, Heavy, Light; and Interacting with a Wall to start. And of course, the Mirror Exercise is a classic mime exercise that everyone should use.
• We’ve got lots of tableau exercises here at the Theatrefolk blog, but my go-to is Tableau Scenes from a Book.
• Dancing in the Drama Classroom is another way to explore nonverbal storytelling and creative movement.

Group Scene and Monologue Preparation & Practice

• Always be sure to warm up the voice for speaking and singing, including breath control and enunciation exercises.
• Scene analysis exercises help students gain a deeper understanding of the character they’re playing and the scene as part of the whole play. Don’t start rehearsing without doing some preparatory work first!
• Teaching Students How to Rehearse in the Drama Classroom helps them use their in-class rehearsal time effectively.
• Students also need to know the basics of stage directions. Try playing Trapdoor to learn the difference between upstage, downstage, stage left and stage right.
• Once students have a good foundation, they can start working on partner and group scenes (which are generally less nerve-wracking than jumping right into monologues). If you need some great scripts for students to study in class, check out Theatrefolk’s Top 10 Plays for Scene Work. Work on analyzing, rehearsing and then presenting their scenes for the rest of the class.
• Then, move on to monologues, both for performance and as part of an audition. I always have my students do mock auditions, so they get to practice going through the audition process before actually auditioning for a show.

Specialty Topics

• Improvisation is a vital skill for beginning drama students to help them think on their feet and work as a team. Here are the Top 10 Tips for Teaching Improv. Some of my favourite improv games include Scenario Generator, Props and Word at a Time Story, Commercials, and “Yes And…” and “No, But…”.
• Puppetry is a great topic for students of all ages and levels of ability. Puppet Dance Parties are a fun starting point for introducing puppetry to your class.
• Stage combat should only be taught by a qualified and experienced fight director, but you can introduce stage combat safety, responsibility, and fight analysis without even throwing a punch or picking up a sword.
• You can teach introductory technical theatre topics to your beginning students, even if you aren’t the most technically inclined teacher. Costumes, props, makeup, sets, lighting, sound, special effects — there’s a technical area for just about everyone. We’ve got a collection of 15 Tech Exercises for the Non-Technical Teacher that don’t require a lot of equipment or extensive technical theatre knowledge.
• You can bring together and show off all the skills your students have learned and developed over your time together with a class showcase. It could be a private performance for just your class or a public presentation with an invited audience — whatever works for you and your students.

You can end each class with a quick verbal check-in with your students, or give them a few minutes to respond in writing to an exit slip prompt. Check out the giveaway below for a collection of exit slip prompts that you can adapt to many different lessons.

Related Reading:
Curriculum Planning: Introductory Skill Building