Description
Students watch one another and imitate one another's physical actions. The prompts for movement can be motivated or just fun improvisational. Students can explore their physical instrument and expand the limits of their creativity. (Also good for getting students (and directors!) to learn names of their fellow students.)
Materials
None.
Space Required
Large space (stage) where students can spread out.Instructions
Improvisational style:
Students spread out to give room for all students to move in their own small space. A student is chosen to be "It" first. This student says any word that they want. (This can be limited, if desired, to specific topics, themes, abstract or concrete words, etc.) The "It" person says "Elephant" (for example), then "Go". All of the students then phyiscally enact what the word "Elephant" means to them. The phyiscality should be a small snippet of action and should develop into something repeatable. "It" watches all of the students as they develop their movements. Once "It" finds a student that has developed some action that is repeatable that she likes, or is most interesting, "It" yells, "Freeze", then "watch Lori". The student, Lori, that was selected, then repeats her performance of "Elephant" for all of the students to watch. "It" then says, "Lori's elephant, Go!" Then, all of the students (including "It") do an exact replica of Lori's elephant movement while Lori watches. After a few movements, Lori (now "It") yells, "Freeze", and then announces her new word, "Popcorn" (for example), then "Go". And the exercise continues.
Adaptations
Motivated style:
The "It" element could be eliminated altogether, and the director of the exercise can call out words from a list of words to be explored. For example, directing the show Annie, I had a list that included the words "orphans", "dirt-poor", "billionaire", "Easy Street", e.g. We used some of the phyicalities that the students discovered to create organic dance movements for particular numbers.