Drama Activities

 

1.      Drama and Language games

      Drama and language games can be used to get students prepared for role-plays as well as improvisation. Some of the drama and language games include brain-teasers and ice-breakers which are games for short time that can be used for both starting and concluding activities. These are designed for stimuli mind and body and to motivate students.

2.      Role-plays

      Role-playing is the most known activity. This is a speaking activity in which students get involved in roles to represent somebody else or just act, thinking about an imaginary situation. With this activity students can have the opportunity to interact and also improve their understanding of the language.

3.      Improvisation

      Improvisation may be one of the most spontaneous and funny way to get students engaged in roles or in a total activity. When doing this, students are forced to act, speak, interact, move and react without previous preparation, which allow students to improve their language skills, lose fear and to be more confident. At first it might be difficult for shy students, but after some sessions they will become enthusiastic. 

4.      Mime

      Mimes are referred to non-verbal representations of a story or role such as gestures and body movement. Something important and advantageous of this, is that helps students become comfortable when performing.

5.      Simulation

      In this activity, students become participants who have roles in a determined situation that involve problem-solving. What differs from improvisation is that, improvisation is not a situation with instructions, meanwhile in simulation, students are instructed to act in circumstances of real-life situations.

6.      Readers theatre

      It is known as readers theatre to the activity in which a lecture is presented by more than one reader. The scrip that is read is also performed and focused on vocal expression.

7.      Frozen image building

      This activity consists on students creating frozen pictures, which are later developed and performed in different situations. This can be done with a partner task so that students are encouraged to work cooperatively. As the frozen images must be performed, students will have to guess some of the different possible ways to interpret the situation, making them use their creativity, language input and master the language.

8.      Scriptwriting

      Scriptwriting activity is one of the most interesting drama activities. Here, students are asked to write their own scripts so that they can create their own scenes, their own lines and phrases and also, they will remember the dialogues easily. In addition, they can set the setting, the cues for movement. This activity can be done individually as well as in pairs or groups. One of the language skills that is most taken into account with this activity is writing, since students can write a draft, re-edit their script and improve their writing with the appropriate corrections, as well as using vocabulary in context, register and fluency. Once the script is finished, students can perform.

9.      Skits

Skits can be the performance of a short scene become a full production. The creation of the task of this activity includes the three C’s of the structured approach of teaching drama which are cooperation, communication and creativity.  

10.  Masked Drama

The main objective of using masks while performing drama and overacting is that the students feel less inhibited or shame and therefore be more active during the activity. As a normal class they are given a script to play, wear the masks and pretend or get into the character properly.

11.  Puppet plays

Showing puppets instead of their bodies and faces will make students to loose fear of speaking. They don’t feel inhibited to do or say what is written in the script, therefore they will play the act efficiently. Students can work as a team and improvise if needed.

12.  Radio Drama

It is similar to script reading, but there are other additional factors like sound effects. Here in Radio drama painting mental pictures is important as they have to use their imagination and be creative to understand or recreate the stage that is happening.

 

13.  Performance poetry

While reading or reciting a poem, the students have to act the story, as they are short stories and not a complete script it is possible to make several groups where they will have to work in teams and loose themselves to complete the acting of the poem.

14.  3D Living Pictures

Pictures, photographs and illustrations can give inspiration to students, as they are easy to be brought to life in freeze frames. Besides brining to life any illustration, students can improvise and create a scene that they think is happening or give it a twist and performs completely different as it may seem in the illustration. Examine the picture with the participants, highlighting any issues you want to discuss such as relationships between the characters and where the picture is set. The teacher can explain to the group that they will bring the picture to life by making a three-dimensional activity. Students have to look carefully at the picture and to locate themselves in the room as one of the characters. As they enter each student have to explain which character is bringing to life and make a freeze frame of their character as accurately as possible. This activity will permit students to take control of the scene and develop their creativity.

15.  Action clip

A short activity where improvisation and creativity is essential. The students will start with a freeze frame of any scene of a movie, play or soap opera. Before starting the teacher have to use thought tracking to find out which character will be played and to know what they are thinking or feeling. The scene will come to life during a few moments with speech and movement and the key word to start can be “Action” as in a movie. The students will start improvising and acting and the signal to finish the scene can be “Cut” or “Freeze”. This activity give students the opportunity to work in short scenes and enjoy it, they don’t have to worry about the end as it is a short scene and the teacher has the control if they run out of things to say the word to end the scene is said and it concludes there.

16.  Spotlight

It is a useful technique for sharing improvised drama if the class is divided in small groups. Everyone have to sit down in the floor, the teacher will walk around the class and ask each group to perform their act or scene. As the teacher comes closer each group stands up and show what they have prepared. Each group will have to participate and as the teacher leaves the group they have to sit down again. This technique is useful to control the time that each group has because if the teacher leaves they have to give a closer to the scene. This is like a real spotlight, it focuses the attention to one group in a room at a time and it is clear which group’s turn is.

17.  Hot sitting

The traditional approach is for the pupil playing the character to sit on a chair in front of the group (arranged in a semi-circle), although characters may be hot-seated in pairs or groups. It is helpful if the teacher takes on the role of facilitator to guide the questioning in constructive directions. To help students begin you can try hot-seating children in pairs (e.g. a pair of street urchins) or in groups (e.g. environmental protesters, refugees).

If the background of the character is familiar to the pupils, then it may not be necessary for those playing the characters to do much preparation. Although some roles obviously require research you may be surprised at how much detail students can add from their own imaginations. It is important that the rest of the group are primed to ask pertinent questions. Do not get bogged down in facts during hot seating but concentrate on personal feelings and observations instead.

18.  Narration

Narration is a technique whereby one or more performers speak directly to the audience to tell a story, give information or comment on the action of the scene or the motivations of characters. Characters may narrate, or a performer who is not involved in the action can carry out the role of ‘narrator’.

19.  Tableaux

Students stand in a circle, or around the performance area and a theme is given.  One by one, they step into the space and establish freeze frames in relation to one another until the tableau is complete. At this point, thought tracking can be used to find out more about each of the characters.  The scene can also be brought to life through improvisation, with the teacher clapping her hands to signal the beginning and end of the action.

Once students are familiar with the technique, they can also work in small groups on different aspects of a theme.  The class can discuss each group’s tableau in turn, mentioning what they can see happening, what they would like to know more about and what they think could happen next. Afterwards, each group can comment on how these viewpoints compared with their initial intentions.

20.  Whoosh! Bringing stories alive through drama

This engaging and interactive storytelling technique enables any kind of story – simple or complex – to be brought alive, even without prior knowledge of the characters or plot. As well as being the storyteller, the leader has a guiding role like that of an orchestral conductor or theatre director. Participants play characters, objects, places, or events in the story, for example, a window, a church, a ship, the sun, or a storm.

To do it, the whole group stands or sits in a circle. Explain that everybody will have an opportunity to participate in the telling of a story by becoming characters or even objects in the tale. If at any time you say “Whoosh!, they should quickly return to their places. Begin the narrative and as soon as a key character, event or object is mentioned, indicate the first student to step into the circle to make a shape or pose. If two or more characters are introduced, then they can step in at the same time.

21.  Drama game

As the name says, it is about creating drama. It emerges in order to engage students into the activity, or, as a learner-centered activity, in which students think, decide and cooperate to accomplish with the goal, which is encouraging students to dramatize with their actions and make it spark to life, so they can develop theatre skills while having fun, showing confidence, and letting their imagination fly. As a matter of fact, participants will imagine and create their own setting. That setting can involve music, dance, sports.

22.  One-Word Story

This activity is perfect for gaining students attention. In like manner, it is about creating a story word-by-word, so both teacher and students add one. The goal is to foster students’ imagination and creativity, without repeating the words in order to create a unique and interesting story. To carry it out, the teacher starts establishing the goal of the activity, which is related to the learning outcome and topic. For example, the teacher sets the tense of the story, and students must use it while adding the words. Then, students add a word in turns, until it finishes.

 

23.  Charades

This activity is related to mime. A students uses their body, makes gestures, while his/her classmates try to guess what he/she is representing or trying to communicate. Its purpose is to link the movements with the spoken language, as students would do it while acting and dramatizing something.

To do it, students will have a card. These cards represent a verb, noun, adjective or a specific context, as movies, animals, vegetables, and so on. Students must act the card they choose or have, and the other must guess it rapidly, as they will have a timer set by the teacher, students or both. Once students have guessed their students’ performance, the students who did it must do the same.

24.  Story, Story, Die!

It is also an activity for encouraging students to be concentrated on what it is said. This activity consists on having storytellers and a pointer. The pointer chooses a person for starting or creating a story, and he/she also, randomly, switches among the storytellers to continue the story. The objective is that the story must continue and have sense in a specific time, otherwise, the storyteller will die, and he/she will have to exaggerate its death to make it funnier. The last storyteller who does not dies, wins.