I work with middle school students and they always love it when I introduce them to the "Numbers Game," or the "Greetings Game." It allows me to emphasize that's it not always "What you say, but how you say it." I'm sure many of you already do some version of this theatre game, but if not...
I first partner my students up (Or have them pick a partner) and then have them stand across from each other with a single aisle between all the pairs. Then, one at a time I have them greet each other with a generic, "Hello, how are you," to which their partner replies, "I'm fine, thank you." Once the basics are established I then take away their words and give them numbers instead. "Hello, how are you" becomes, "1-2-3-4" and "I'm fine, thank you" becomes "5-6-7-8." Once they get the hang of greeting and replying to each other in this way I then begin to introduce different emotions or characters. My students enjoy it, because they get to greet their partners as if they're angry and then the next time as if they're terrified of each other. The possibilities are endless as to the emotions or characters you can have them greet each other as. It's also a great way for them to practice using and/or listen to others use foreign accents.
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Danny Hobson
7th Grade Theatre Teacher
Hellstern Middle School
Springdale Arkansas
Original Message:
Sent: 11-03-2015 14:15
From: Ginny Butsch
Subject: Character voices?
Jessica Harms has been sharing some pretty valuable ideas through her Community blog. Her latest one, Creating Character Voices, explained some exercises she uses to help students be more creative with their voices.
What kinds of games or lessons help your students with vocal creativity?
In one of my theatre classes, we were instructed to interview someone with an accent different than our own and to write a monologue (based on the stories they told us in the interview) that we would then perform for the class in that accent. If the person wasn't someone we regularly spoke with, we recorded the interview so we could refer back to it. I worked with a foreign exchange student from Australia and it was a pretty fun way to learn a new accent and build a character based on our conversations.
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Ginny Butsch
Community Manager
Educational Theatre Association
Alexandria KY
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