High school drama class games

Divide the group into teams of four to six people and have each team choose a spot around the room. The teacher calls out a scene such as Spiderman at the scene of a bank robbery, a birthday party gone wrong or a television awards show and then counts down from Teams have 10 seconds to organize a tableau and then freeze. The teacher then goes around and views each tableau before choosing a winner for that round. The winning team receives a point. Every student from the team must participate in the tableau or the team will be disqualified from the round.

Tip: Remind the students about the use of levels and facial expressions at the start of the game. Choose two to four students to start onstage and give them a scene to start such as lifeguards rescuing someone from drowning.

The other actors will need to improvise and join in the new scene. It must be completely different to the scene that was happening before. The teacher selects one person to be a gravekeeper, and they stand off to the side. The other students lie on their backs on the ground with their eyes open. They must stay completely still, with a straight face. They are not allowed to touch the person on the ground. Anyone they succeed at making laugh is alive again and joins the gravekeeper in going around and trying to make the other students laugh or speak.

This is a great game for helping your students learn stage directions. The teacher calls out stage directions, such as downstage right or center. Any students who move there otherwise are eliminated. Try to keep the calls coming quickly to keep the game interesting. Then the Seeker enters, hoping to figure out which student is the Whoozit. Standing in the middle of the circle, he or she gets three guesses while the Whoozit tries their best to switch actions without being noticed.

By giving the students a common goal, this team helps to ignite a sense of camaraderie among the group. In this fast-paced game, the instructor stands in the center of the circle. He or she names a setting and a situation and then points to one of the students at random. Using improvisation skills, the student begins telling a story with a single sentence. To prevent it from becoming too challenging, treat the rhymes as couplets, meaning that the students are only tasked with creating two rhymed lines at a time—the next chosen player creates a new line of the story with a new sound.

The improvised tale goes on until a student fails to produce a rhyme. Then he or she sits in the middle of the circle and the group starts a new story.

This goes on until the circle shrinks down to one or two champions. Instructors should make certain to increase the speed as the game progresses.

This fun activity is sure to bring lots of laughs as students create an absurd story when put on the spot. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. If they feel particularly hyperactive or unfocused, use a focus exercise, like Collectively Counting to This first exercise is great to increase the students' focus.

This is the right opener for you if you feel your students aren't particularly focused at the moment, or if your next exercise requires extra focus and you want to prepare them for it. The players form an intimate circle, standing shoulder to shoulder.

The players count in random order from 1 to Whenever two players use the same number simultaneously, the game starts over. Tip : the group will think up tricks for cheating. For example, a small cough beforehand. I found it helps to ask the students to close their eyes, or to make them look at the ground.

Once you get their attention with a solid warmup exercise, let's keep increasing focus. With this game, we want them to be attentive to each other. Increasing awareness can be difficult for high-schoolers. I found that by increasing their awareness, they will open up and become more playful and have more fun during class.

Two players are facing each other. Player A starts to move and player B mirrors player A's movements and facial expression as closely as possible. Knee Tag is a great high-pace exercise. It really helps to activate them, especially when energy is low. Suitable as a warmup and ending exercise. Players position themselves facing each other. Everyone uses one hand to tag and one hand to defend.

Players want to tag each others knees. With the defending hand, players may protect themselves to try to avoid getting tagged. Please note: if you end with this game, your students will be hyperactive when leaving the classroom. So make sure the next class isn't maths. This game teaches them to be spontaneous and gets them to stop thinking and simply start acting. That's why it's a great warmup. If you teach this class regularly, this one is great to repeat every single time.

After a couple of times, they become really good at it - which increases enjoyment and engagement. All players are standing in a circle. The game leader picks who goes first. The players pass on the sound to the person beside them. It doesn't matter which way. Lastly, the game leader introduces 'ZAP'. You want to play this game at high speed. If a player moves before they're up, or make a wrong move or sound, it's game over. Players that are out sit down on the floor. At the end of the game, only two players will remain.

The class will have to come up with their own way to determine the winner ie. This is the last warmup exercise. Now you've got their attention, energy is high and they are focused and playful. Let's take a look at some great main exercises, which will require more focus and engagement, which is why we started with these games. The following exercises go a little bit more deeply into drama techniques.

I like to spend the majority of the class on these exercises. This exercise focuses on the group instead of the individual. Also, it requires them to pay close attention to each other, which means they will become more attentive. One person walks. The rest of the group stands still. There needs to be one person that walks at all times. It's the group's responsibility to ensure this. Whenever the Walker stops, someone else needs to start walking immediately. The transition needs to be seamless.

Also, whenever someone starts walking, the Walker needs to stop walking immediately. The group will quickly find its own rhythm. After a while, they will probably walk and pause for the same amount of time every time.

So make sure they stay present and switch it up. Let them speak their lines to one another. The idea of this exercise will be to get them to open up to one another by listening. Have one actor sit with their backs still facing one another. Have one actor turn to face the other. You can mix and match different aspects of this exercise with the intention of getting your students to listen and respond.

This building up of aware of one another will help to break down barriers between them and make room for stronger connection. For this exercise have your actors sit at a table together. They are going to mime having breakfast. No verbalization for this exercise. Each actor must be dedicated to making the other actors breakfast as satisfactory as possible. There are strong elements of care and concern that may resonate. This does consist of where you are with your actors in terms of blocking the scene or as we prefer to say, the movement of the scene or choreography of the scene at hand.

You may have choreographed the scene already but your actors come off as stiff. There can be a number of reasons for this. Scenario : Let us assume that there are two actors within the scene but they are coming off tense and rigid. Let us also assume that you have previously choreographed the scene.

Here are a couple of solutions that may get things moving in the right direction to help free things up. Go back to the beginning and have your actors sit side by side, reading their scene out loud.

Do not have them make any contact with their eyes.