You know what the first drama rehearsal, or maybe the first day of drama camp, is like. Some of the kids are unsure of themselves and covering that up with an attitude of indifference. Those who know each other are in animated little groups, isolating themselves from the rest. Cliques are forming in front of your eyes. Yikes! From this, you have to build an ensemble?! I’ve learned not to start with openings like, “Tell us who you are and why you’re here.” You’re just inviting trouble if you go there! “To get away from my little brother.” “My mom made me.” Or the worst: “I don’t know.” Not exactly a rousing start! Instead, when working with upper elementary, middle school and high school actors, I begin with theater games that build skills like listening, memorization and focus. Even investing 20 minutes of time in the most basic theatre game, like the “Circle Alphabet Name Game,” is quite beneficial. By the end of this icebreaker, they will know each other’s names and be amazed at how quickly they were able to memorize twenty compound sentences just by listening and focusing on the task at hand, all while having a good laugh together. It’s a great way to start a drama class or rehearsal and lays the foundation for an ensemble of actors who work well together. In case you’re not familiar with this particular memory game, read on. Say you have twenty kids in a circle. Have the person on your right start off by saying her name, “My name is Alice” and then add something she likes that begins with the same letter as her first name. So it’s “My name is Alice and I like apples.” The person to the right of Alice repeats Alice’s information before adding in his or her own: “Her name is Alice and she likes apples. My name is Drew and I like dogs.” It goes around the entire circle like this with each person repeating all previous information before adding their own, so by the end, they will have 19 names and nouns to recite in addition to their own. By the time it gets to person five, the listening becomes intense. They’ll want to help each other… the beginnings of an ensemble. I often play Round Two of this game in reverse order, so now Alice, who had the easiest time of it the first round, now has the hardest part. For Round Two I ask them to think of something different they like, not the first thing that comes to their minds but something unusual, which will be more memorable. It’s a great icebreaker to laugh together when Alice likes Albania and Drew shares his fondness for the Dewey Decimal System or his duodenum! |
