Blog Seattle Repertory Theatre
It’s all fun and games until…
October 26th, 2011 by Seattle Repertory Theatre
Since the characters in Circle Mirror Transformation spend so much time going through theatre exercises on stage, the play’s director, Andrea Allen, wanted to put the cast through a “Creative Drama Boot Camp” before starting rehearsals.
She enlisted teaching artist Gillian Jorgensen to lead the cast through a series of exercises like the ones featured in the play. Below, watch what went on at the Boot Camp (get ready for some interpretive movement!), and Gillian shares her thoughts.
Have you ever played a theatre game? Tell us your favorite in the comments and you’ll be entered to win two tickets to the show!
November 2nd, 2011 at 3:31 pm
My absolute favorite game is good for physical warm-ups and for getting everyone’s breath flowing and their laughter flowing, too.
It’s called Enemy and Ally. Everyone (secretly) choses someone else in the group to be their Enemy, and someone else to be their Ally. You have to keep your Ally between you and your Enemy.
I love doing this, and I love teaching it, too. The group always sets up a fascinating pattern of movement, just based on everyone’s random choices.
November 2nd, 2011 at 8:05 pm
I’m not involved in theater, so don’t normally play any theater games. But I do enjoy Charades. Would that be considered one? It gets the mind moving, and creative juices flowing. And it is fun and great interaction with a group of people no matter what skill level you are at.
November 3rd, 2011 at 1:15 pm
alphabet
Two players have to improvise a scene, but they must start their sentences using every letter in the alphabet in succession. They are given a topic to start.
November 9th, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Freeze Tag improv was always my favorite. Fun to see what people turn a pose into.
November 9th, 2011 at 1:07 pm
Smile if You Love ME
November 11th, 2011 at 2:25 pm
I love the game, “the party”. Everybody writes a name of someone or something, like for example: last time I played in drama class someone wrote bush or maybe someone wrote a person who can’t say the word yes. But so four people pick something & then a 5th person pretends their having a party, the host. each of the 4 people come in, act like who they pick & the host has to guess who they are, then of course another favorite is freeze which was already listed.
Thank you1
November 11th, 2011 at 3:21 pm
I always like the ‘game’ ……not sure what its called (The Counting Game???) where the actors get in a circle and close their eyes and count as high as they can. The caveat is that there is not set order to who says a number and the counting must be done with only one person saying the next number ….if two people speak a number at the same time the group has to start over at zero. A good way to both calm down before a show and to get the cast to get in sync with each other
November 11th, 2011 at 3:44 pm
My all-time favorite theatre exercise is called Group Juggling. It’s awesome because you can play variations on it with groups as young as kindergarden all the way through adults! It works with 4 to 20 people! Even with groups of mixed ages!
Basically, you sit in a circle and gently roll a single ball (tennis is best) across the circle from person to person. Each person should receive the ball only once, everyone must remember the person who sent them the ball & the person they sent the ball to, and finally, the exercise must be completed silently, using eye contact only for communication. Once the pattern has been established, you repeat it to make sure everyone remembers their two people. Then, you repeat it several times, each time adding more and more balls to the system. Between rounds you discuss what the group did well and what strategies the group could employ to be even more successful. With older groups, you can graduate to standing up and tossing the balls. For advanced groups, once there’s a focused rhythm to the tossing, you have everyone continue the pattern while walking around the room randomly—even reciting lines from the show!
When I debrief the exercise, I ask the group to think of the game as a metaphor for theatre. What connections can you make about team work? When someone “drops the ball” etc…? When everyone does their job and the show seems to magically click?
November 11th, 2011 at 4:01 pm
Amoeball! One ball, no double-taps (you can only hit the ball once at any given time), the ball must stay in the air at all times and the ensemble counts the number of taps in unison. When you break 100 taps you feel about as accomplished as if you’d invented the rocket engine.
November 11th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
I love playing improvisation games. Not only do they help you act quickly on your feet and keep your mind sharp, but they really help open you up. I remember once playing an improv game in an acting class when we had to invent new names for candy, on the spot, when we were pointed at. The answers we had were hilarious.
November 11th, 2011 at 6:58 pm
Thanks, all for entering. We picked the winner at random, and it’s Kim (comment #2)! We’ll get in touch about your tickets, Kim.