Drama Menu

Theatre Games in Three Courses

Glyn Trefor-Jones

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781848422858
• eBook ISBN: 9781780016030
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

Drama Menu is a brand new concept for planning and delivering dynamic, progressive drama lessons and workshops. Packed with over 150 tried-and-tested theatre games, exercises and improvisation ideas, it's an essential resource for any drama teacher or workshop leader – guaranteed to deliver delicious drama sessions every time.

Simply make a selection from each of the three courses, and your whole drama session will come to life with new-found energy and focus:

• Appetisers are fast-paced warm-up exercises to energise and enthuse the group;
• Starters are the intermediary course to challenge the players and encourage creativity;
• Main Courses provide the central part of the session, culminating in a final performance piece;
• And a few Desserts are also provided, if you have some space at the end of your session for something sweet.

Drama Menu is the recipe book that will relieve the stress of planning lessons and workshops. Now you can get on with what you do best: delivering creative drama sessions that will have your groups hungry for more.

Join the online Drama Menu community, browse and share other recommended menus, and download a comprehensive Resource Pack and selection of sound effects, providing everything you need to start playing straight away.

Acting Attack

Encourages vocal modulation and emotional attack in performance.

Have the players form groups of four or five and instruct each group to prepare a scene that includes four very distinct vocal dynamics:

1)	Hysterical laughter.
2)	Desperate crying.
3)	Blood-curdling scream.
4)	Silence.

These can occur in any order but insist that the storyline/subject matter reflects the high-energy/risk nature of the sounds.

Encourage the players to fully commit to the laughter, crying, screaming and silence, and ask that they remain focused and emotionally connected at all times in order to make the piece engaging and believable.

Allocate ten to fifteen minutes for rehearsals (or more/less depending on your time constraints), give a title for the piece (i.e. ‘Caught in the Act’) and away you go.

As they rehearse, encourage the players to ‘let go’ as much as possible so that there is a very clear contrast between all four vocal qualities – this contrast will give colour to the piece and help to maintain the interest and attention of the audience.

A simple premise that has been shown to produce extremely energised and committed acting work.

Silent Start

Promotes strong focus in performance and demands that players connect with their fellow performers.

Divide the players into groups of two or three and ask them to prepare a scene that starts with at least ten seconds of silence. But – silence for the sake of silence is not interesting or engaging, so insist that the silence is focused. What are they to focus on? Well…

Explain that the piece begins in the aftermath of a significant/serious/dramatic moment. The audience won’t see/hear the moment that precedes the action, only the actors know what has happened – this is their focus and what drives the silence, so we are thrust directly into the aftermath. Cue ten seconds of silence.

Giving a few examples usually gets their creativity going:

*	A parent has just told her child that she’s adopted.
*	A wife has walked in on her husband having an affair.
*	A daughter has informed her parents of her test results.

You get the idea. The more significant the scenario, the stronger the focus will be and the more intense the ten seconds of silence will become.

The scene opens with the characters silently digesting what has just happened/been said. This silence must last for at least ten seconds before the vocal onslaught begins. The players should use the ten seconds to connect to the mood of the piece and to their fellow performers – this should give a stronger, more intense performance when the dialogue begins.

This simple exercise often produces memorable moments of focused/connected/electric theatre. The silence really helps the performers to get ‘in the moment’ and I have known some stunning work to be produced from this premise. Police the ten seconds quite stringently, as less confident performers will try to get away with less.

Sound Script

Sound scripts encourage players to bring huge vocal attack to their work – simply reading words aloud is not enough, actors must work a script in order to bring it to life.

These scripts are a great deal of fun to write. They should be relatively simple but crammed full of onomatopoeic words that can be injected with energy and vitality by the performers.

ONEWoooo!! Are you scared?

TWONo!

THREEHee hee! Yes, she is!

ONE & THREEHa ha ha!

TWOI’M NOT! I just wanna get out of here!

THREEAwww, little baby needs her mummy!

ONE & THREEAwwww, diddums!

TWOUgggh! You’re so annoying!

ONE & THREEUgggh! You’re sooo annoying! Ha ha ha!

TWOOh, very clever! You can copy me – well done!

THREEAll right! Don’t get stroppy! Just get in there and tell us what you see!

TWOWhoa! I am NOT going in there!

ONEWhy not?!

TWODuh! Look at it!… It’s dark, it’s wet, it’s freezing!

THREEJust take a look! One look and then we’ll go! Come on!

TWOOkay, OKAY! Anything to get you off my back!

ONE & THREEBOO!

TWOAggghhhhh!

ONE & THREEHa ha ha!

TWOYou’re so horrible to me!! Boo hoo hoo!

(A selection of Sound Scripts form part of the Resource Pack.)

Try to punctuate the lines with ‘Uggghh!’ ‘Agghh!’ ‘Boohoo!’ ‘Hey!’ ‘Whoa!’ – words that the players can inject with energy and attack.

Sound scripts can bring out energised performances from the meekest performer and are a great tool for inspiring confidence and self-belief in inexperienced players.

Phone Focus

A very effective exercise that encourages players to change focus quickly and truthfully in performance.

For this exercise you will need a phone-ring sound effect (available at www.dramamenu.com) and some prop phones (or you could allow the participants to use their own phones if you prefer).

Div...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Appetisers
• Starters
• Main Courses
• Desserts
• Appendices
• Suggested Combinations
• Exercises by Category
• Index of Games
• Copyright