featured article from the january 2004 issue

Your Kids are
doing WHAT?
Teaching Kids Improvisation
by John Cosper

I just got home from drama practice, having laughed
my head off at two actresses who went for five minutes straight playing the questions game. If you've never seen Who's Line Is It Anyway? "Questions" is an improvisation game in which two players act out a scene by only ask-ing questions. It's a trickier game than it appears, and even the best get stumped very easily. So it will be all the more amazing to you when I tell you these two young ladies were only in the third grade.

Teaching improv and acting with younger kids is easy for one big reason: They don't know it's hard. Many people would shy away from teaching such skills to kids thinking they just aren't ready, but I've found that as students get older, their self-doubt and inhibitions grow with them. Get them while they are young, and you'll make actors for life.

The first thing I tell kids is that acting is a game. I usually start classes or workshops by playing a nontheatrical game. It not only gets the kids laughing and loosened up, but it opens the door to talking about game playing. After we finish, I ask them about the game, and how it is played. Then I teach them the rules of a game called “improvisation.”

Improvisation has only two rules:
1. Never say no, and 2. If your acting partner says no, do it anyway. These rules are often taught as the rules of agreement. The purpose is to keep the scene moving forward, and if an actor tells his partner "No," he not only stops the scene, he insults his partner by rejecting his ideas. The second rule, "do it anyway," is a way to get out of that situation. The "no" creates conflict and opens the door for telling a story.

This leads to the second point I make with the kids: Acting is storytelling. Storytelling involves three things: a story, a storyteller and an audience. In acting, the actors are the storytellers, playing out the story rather than reading it. And the rules of agreement in improv are designed to help the actors tell a story.

Once the rules are explained, I teach the kids a series of games that progressively move them into acting out scenes. First is a game called Word Ball, which I learned from the guys in Happy Fun Time. Actors get in a circle and pass an imaginary ball around the circle, saying a word as they do so. The idea is to get the kids to be spontaneous, saying the first word that comes to mind and not hesitating to speak. That way, scenes they act out will flow quickly and not be stalled.

Second, I play the storytelling game from Who's Line. I start a story, and a team of four students continues the story. Each kid takes a turn and passes the story on. The game is designed to get kids used to the idea of making a story move forward, and to make sure they are listening and accepting their partner's ideas.

Next comes a game called “Yes, and…” . In this game, every line of the scene starts with the words "Yes, and." The idea is that the students are accepting each other's ideas and building on them. Team-work, cooperation and creativity are emphasized in this game, as this is when I emphasize being detailed and creative in the lines they create. Humor in improv comes from making connections, not telling jokes. By listening, and by being specific, the kids begin to create laughter in the audience.

The next big step is a game I call The Principal's Office. In this game, two actors play students who are in trouble at school, and a third plays the principal. I tell the actors what the students have done wrong, usually something like gluing their teacher's head to the desk. The actors playing the students must make up a story together and convince the principal it is the truth. We've heard everything from aliens to Bobo the Clown perpetrating the crime, and it's always funny.

Once the kids have mastered these games, they are ready to tackle any scene, but when I work with the same group over a long period of time, I keep repeating each of these games. Like fundamentals in basketball, these are the exercises that will get your kids loosened up and more comfortable acting on stage and without scripts. What's more, it will help you build a team atmosphere. I tell the students that acting is a team game and that there is no room for superstars. Either they work as a team or they will fail.

The spiritual parallel is obvious: Unless we as believers unite, we cannot serve the Lord as a com-munity. And any drama ministry, be it for the young or not-so-young, must function as a team.

This leads to my final point: Drama is a ministry. If you are gifted in theater arts, then it stands to reason God has a plan for you to use those gifts. Whether you serve in the church as part of a ministry team,
or whether you work in community, school or professional theater, God desires you to live a life pleasing to him, and to be a light on and off stage. Teamwork, building your gifts, and using those gifts in ministry are all a part of being that light. And that is the most impor-tant thing to teach kids as you grow their gifts in acting.