As mentioned before, Improvisions are a direct vehicle for classroom involvement. With this unit, dealing in the literary/dramatic areas, students will be eager (or become eager) to show how dramatic they can be. What better way to warm up these students than by direct acting in front of their peers! This exercise can be done with the Full Group . . . it is called Silent Scream and is one of the host of theater games that have been borrowed and reconstructed by educators throughout time.
Objective
To help the student-actors feel emotion physically (inner action) ask the seated group to scream without making a SOUND. Teacher must coach them: Scream with your toes! Your eyes! Your legs! Your stomach! Your back!
When they are responding physically and muscularly as they would verbally (to a vocal scream)—and this will be evident—call: Scream out loud! The sound here should be deafening.
Another Physicalizing Exercise for the class is: inabilitiy to Move
This is done with a single player, others are the audience. Player goes in front of the class and presents a situation in which he is physically immobilized and is being threatened by an outside danger. With the students I have, living in the inner city, they are very much in tune with this event. For example: Paralyzed man in a wheelchair senses a group of teens with chains and bats behind him on the city street. Point of concentration: inability to move. How does it feel to be in this situation? How will it be portrayed? Interestingly enough the students will find a variety of on the spot ways to do this.
