Objective: To establish and heighten organic group games collaboratively as an ensemble.
Category Archives: exercises
Kick The Duck Red Rover Full Lesson video
Here’s a video of me teaching the group the Kick The Duck, Red Rover exercise. It’s long, containing many iterations of the exercise by the group with lots of rambling by me in between those iterations. But talk about a progression! Watch them grow:
Two Truths & A Lie scene exercise
Objective: To build scenes by exploring and heightening committed perspectives.
Let Me Show You My Room: an exercise about honesty, details and mime
Objective: This exercise is about channeling personal memories to evoke details and define mime.
Continue reading
Comic Strip Based Subsequent Beats exercise
Objective: To focus on strong initiations that heighten established games with new stakes, situations, characters and relationships. Continue reading
Tertiary Moves Drill exercise
Objective: To practice initiating and supporting moves from the bag of tricks players utilize when entering scenes-in-progress as a tertiary addition. Continue reading
2.1 – “Two Person Scene” Practical
We’re going to build “two person scenes” on patterns of emotional behavior.
LET’S WARM-UP Continue reading
Crazy Eights warmup exercise
CRAZY EIGHTS – Together (teacher included) everyone shakes out their limbs – right arm, left arm, right leg, left leg – in descending counts starting at 8 each and ending with 1 each.
KEY – Everyone commits to having their heads up, and to making eye contact with every other player at least once during the warm-up.
You can’t be in your head – or looking at your feet – worried about looking silly. If we’re all committed and playing without shame, what happens? We’ll smile at each other. We’ll laugh.
Improv is mutually assured embarrassment! But the only person who looks “silly” is the person who’s not committing to the group.
Name Thumper warmup exercise
NAME THUMPER – Going around the circle, each person (teacher included) associates their name with an action or adjective – “Punching Patrick,” or “Pouting Patrick.” Go around once more so everyone knows everyone else’s name and action. Then play progresses with an individual doing their name/action and then another person’s name/action; that person then does their name/action and then another person’s name/action; etc. You can introduce them to the starting chant – Everyone pats their thighs. You say, “I’m going to say, What’s the name of the game?”, and you’ll say, “Thumper.” Do it. You say, “I’m going to ask, Why do we do it?”, and you’ll say, “To get warmed up.” Do it. You say, “I’m going to ask, how do we do it?”, and you’ll say, “Fast!” Do it.
Pass “Yes” Around acceptance exercise
PASS “YES” AROUND – A player points at / makes eye contact with another player who accepts by saying “Yes.” The accepted player walks across the circle to stand in the place of the player who said “Yes.” The player who said “Yes” points at / makes eye contact with another player who says “Yes” so they can exchange physical position. And repeat.
Lessons:
• Choose and accept – don’t waste time worrying, over-thinking or obsessing about looking silly