Theatre Exercises

• In the first exercise, similar to the classic television show “What’s My Line?,” each child is assigned an occupation but is not told what it is. Working in pairs, students zero in on the occupation by asking questions about how the person would do the job. Through the exercise, students learn to ask effective questions and use questioning techniques to create detailed characters.
• In the improvisation exercise “Sorry, I Must Be Leaving,” students rotate through a scene, devising appropriate plot and dialogue to move the scene forward and account for their actions. They compare the exercise to creative writing techniques and explore the notion that improvisation is like “writing in our heads.”