• Introductions (TV news interviews-one student interviews another as a reporter)
• Explain rules and objectives for class
• Review main aspects of improv:
o Imagination – “When stories clash”-Huck Finn meets Harry Potter
o Play – Kids at play-1st graders at playground, babies in crib o Trust – Gibberish
o Observation – Whisper/Normal/Shout
o Listening – “One line each” scene
o Focus/Concentration – “No questions” scene
o Impulse – “Surprise prop” scene – prop of unknown origin suddenly appears in scene
Week Two:
• Warm-up exercises
• Sense Memory/awareness
o Lie on back, eyes closed, and sense being at different locations (park, movies, etc.)
o Dive through it – walking in circle, imaging swimming through various things (pudding, salsa, etc.)
o Play ball – pretend to play “catch”, but ball changes sizes, weights, etc. at various points
• Fun exercise – Surprise prop
Week Three:
• Warm-up exercises
• Sense Memory/awareness
o Students walk around in a circle, with different physical traits (limp, just woke-up, etc.)
• Emotion memory
o Overdone faces, hands, bodies, feet, and voices to express various emotions
o Emotion jump – scene starts as normal, but then each actor is assigned a specific emotional state in which he/she needs to immediate take on
Week Four:
• Warm-up exercises
• Who, what, where, when, why, and how exercises
The Term Paper on What is Memory?
Memory refers to a mental process that is used to gain, gather, and recover information. The information that is stored in our memory with the help of our senses will be processed by numerous systems all through our brain, and it will be accumulated for later use (Mason, 2003-2006). Gordon and Berger (2003) said that there are two basic kinds of memory: ordinary and intelligent memory. Ordinary ...
Week Five:
• Warm-up exercises
• Voice work
• “Sound effects” scenes-students act out scenes, while others on sideline make the necessary sound effects • “Japanese movies” scenes-students act out scenes, while others on sideline do the necessary voice-overs • Fun exercises
• Surprise prop
• Add-a-person – 2 students start a scene, and a 3rd enters mid-way through
Week Six:
• Warm-up exercises
• Physical characteristics
o “Age walk” – Walking in circle, students walk like different aged people o “Family portraits” – 4 or 5 students stand up in front of class, and have to instantly get in position as a “family” for a photo (family of fish, snakes, babies, wrestlers, etc.) • Scene transitions
o 1 student plays the same part throughout, but must show change in relationship as they move from one part of scene to next (example – kid goes from classroom with teacher, to hallway with friend, to home with parent, etc.) • Fun exercises
o “Pick a number 1-50” – students called out a number, and were put into corresponding physical positions, from which they had to start a coherent scene (numbers 1-50 are on a list from an improv book called Improvisation Starters)
Week Seven:
• Warm-up exercises
• Fish-out-of-water exercises
o Famous people/ordinary places – one student is a well-known person or character (President Bush, Spider Man, Harry Potter, etc.), and are placed in ordinary places (at Chuck E Cheese’s, in the hot-lunch line at school, in gym class, etc.) o Ordinary people/famous places – exact opposite of last exercise
Week Eight:
• Warm-up exercises
• Open-time – kids get to pick their favorite exercises from the past 7 weeks, and we have an improv free-for-all
