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Actor Coaching Compendium Kimberly D!

Agnese

Title: Machine Purpose: To get students thinking cohesively as one unit working together to create an interesting sound pattern. It should also help with quick thinking, improvisation, and teamwork. Instructions: Have all of the students sit together facing the acting area. Decide on one student to start the machine by taking the stage and producing a sound with a steady rhythm and a body movement to add. Then, one by one, students may take the stage as well, adding their own individual sounds and movements, maintaining the same constant rhythm set by the original student. Finally, once all the students have joined the machine, have them sustain their movements and vocalizations for a few more seconds before having them reverse the direction, with the nal student to add themselves to the group being the rst to leave, as well as Title: Ph-eye-sical Contact Purpose: This exercise helps with eye contact, condence, attention, and understanding subtlety. Instructions: Everybody stands in a circle, free of body tension. One person starts with the "ball" (eye contact) that they will pass on. To do this, they must make solid eye contact with another student in the group, enough so both feel the connection (eye agreement). Now here, the game can split into two ways: 1. Easy - after "eye agreement" the initiator exchanges places with the receiver in the circle, and proceeds to pass it on to another. 2. Hard - after "eye agreement" the two use a SUBTLE gesture (wink, or even an elongated blink), and the receiver then passes it to another person. This keeps going until you feel sufcient. Some leaders like to hasten the exercise by allowing to move on with shorter amount of eye contact, but I like to keep the pace mellow to allow for MAXIMUM eye contact, connection, and ability to COMMUNICATE. Title: The Ridiculous Game Purpose: To loosen students up, make them a little more carefree about performing. Instructions: The students all stand in a circle, and one student begins by entering the center of the circle, performing the most ridiculous sound and motion that they can think of, and the circle repeats that ridiculous sound and motion back to them. Then another student enters and creates their own ridiculous sound and motion, and the game continues until all students have gone. Title: Zip Zap Zop Purpose: This exercise helps students with paying attention, focus, and cooperation. Instructions: Students must stand in an evenly spaced circle, where everyone should be able to see everyone else. Someone will start (either the instructor or a chosen

student) by clapping their hands together in front of them towards another student. At the same time, they must be making solid eye contact with that student, as well as saying the word Zip!. The receiving student must immediately clap their hands in front of them towards ANOTHER student, while making eye contact, and saying the word Zap!. Finally, the next recipient will repeat the same motions towards another student saying Zop!. This pattern of zip, zap, zop should repeat over and over and each student should be a recipient at least twice. The important part of this game is to make sure you make solid eye contact with the person you!re trying to give the motion to, otherwise the game could stall when two students aren!t sure which one of them was supposed to get the motion. Title: Party Guests Purpose: Party guests helps students with improvisation, development of character, listening, and playing off of each other. Instructions: The game starts with the group/class picking a party host, who will be hosting an imaginary party to which multiple other guests are invited. The host must leave the room while the other guests are chosen. Once the host is out of hearing range, the group must pick at least four other students/volunteers to be the party guests. These guests must now develop a character that they will try to convey to the party host through dialogue, physicalization and anything else they can come up with. These characters can be anything from cartoon characters, pop culture references, literary characters and many more. Once each guest has chosen their character and thought about how they!ll convey that character, they leave the room and the host reenters to begin the game. The host has a few moments to prepare for the party, and the rst guest will knock on the door. Upon the host answering the door, the guest has about 15-20 seconds to send the rst couple hints about their character. Then, the second guest will enter and the rst guest will quietly continue to convey their character while the host talks with the new guest. This pattern continues until all of the guests have entered and the host has had a chance to speak to each of them. The instructor/ director will call pause and all of the guests will freeze, and the host will have a chance to try to guess each of their characters. If the host guesses correctly, that guest must go sit down with the rest of the students to watch the rest of the game. If the guest doesn!t know some of the characters, the game will resume and they will have another minute to talk with each of the guests, to ask questions, whatever they need to do to try to gure out the character. If the host cannot guess a character by the end of the minute, the instructor will call pause and ask for someone from the audience to guess by raising their hand. Once all characters/guests have been guessed, the game is over. Title: Tree Ninja Purpose: To promote paying attention, teamwork, a carefree attitude, and focus. Instructions: The students stand in a circle, focused and quiet. One student will start by making a hiya! or other ninja sound while they put their hands, palms together, pointing towards another student. The receiving student must but their hands up above their head with their palms together (to look like a tree). The two students on either side of the receiver must karate chop the tree while making an appropriate sound. As the tree falls, they drop their hands (still palms together) to point to another student and

make a hiya! or other ninja sound. This pattern continues for a few minutes. If any student forgets to do one of the motions, they are deemed out and must step out of the circle. Title: Park Bench Purpose: To promote improvisation, thinking on your feet, tactics, and a clear objective. It will also help with playing off of each other. Instructions: The students should all sit in front of the playing space, facing the stage. The director/instructor should put a bench (or two do-alls, cubes, etc) in the center of the playing space, and should elect one student to start the game sitting on the stage left side of the bench. Then, a student from the audience will enter the space from the stage right side and proceed to do everything they can to provoke the student that was sitting there to leave, because they!d like the park bench to themselves. They can do this by taking on a character with annoying, gross, or weird habits, discussing weird topics, basically anything they can to get them to move. They MAY NOT push, shove, or hit the sitting student, and must keep all dialogue PG rated. Once the seated student has had enough, they may exit stage left, and the provoker takes their spot. Then another student from the audience takes the role of the provoker and enters the space to try to get the student to leave. This rotation continues until all students have gone. Title: Mirror Purpose: To get students to work together, to pay very close attention to their partners, and to learn not only to lead, but more importantly how to FOLOW. Instructions: Divide the students into pairs by counting them off as 1, 2, 1, 2 and so on, and have them stand facing each other about a foot and a half or two apart. All of the number ones will be the rst leaders of the mirror exercise, which means the number twos must follow all of the movements that the number ones do. As a leader, it!s your job to lead your partner in motion of your arms, legs, torso, and head, and should move at a somewhat slow pace so that your partner can keep up with your movements. The goal is to make it next to impossible to be able to tell who is the leader and who is the follower. After about a minute of this, tell the students that in a moment they will switch so that the number twos are the leaders, and number ones will be the followers. The students should still be leading and following until you signal the switch by saying the word now, and the students should seamlessly switch from follower to leader and vice versa. The entire time, they should be trying to match their motions so seamlessly that you cannot tell who is who. Title: Human Knot Purpose: To promote teamwork, communication, and focus. Instructions: Have the students stand in a circle as close together as they can get. (You can only do this with up to 10-15 students, so you may have to break up the group into smaller groups to do this exercise). Now, have them reach all of their hands into the circle and grab the hands of the people opposite them (they must be different people). Once everyone is holding hands with two different people, the group must now work together to try to untangle themselves. They CANNOT let go of the people they!re

holding hands with, so they must go under, over, around, or spin their way around their hands. Once the group has detangled themselves, they must come back in a circle and repeat the process (holding different hands, standing in a different order) and untangle themselves WITHOUT SPEAKING. They must use eye contact to communicate how to get free. Title: Squeeze Purpose: To promote group focus, concentration, and as a de-stresser before the beginning of a show. Instructions: The students should stand in a circle holding hands with their eyes closed, and there should be no talking. The instructor, director, or stage manager should start the squeeze circle by squeezing the hand of the person either to their right or left. Once a person!s hand is squeezed, they pass the squeeze to their other hand and the person holding their hand, and so on and so forth. This should go a couple of times and should always come back to the stage manager or director. They have the option of reversing the direction of the squeeze, by receiving the squeeze on either side and immediately squeezing that hand again, thus sending the squeeze back around the same direction that it just came from. Title: Flash Five Purpose: As an icebreaker at the beginning of the rehearsal process or during theatre camps, this game promotes team work, improvisation, quick thinking, and cooperation. Instructions: The students should be split up into groups of about ve or six people by the instructor/director. In the best case scenario you should assign a senior student, or a counselor in a camp situation, to each group as the leader to help orchestrate the game. Each group should leave the room and go to a private space away from the other groups, and should come up with a scenario or a little story to be told in ve freeze frames that they will create. This can be something like a baseball game, a trip to the zoo, ballet class, or a camping trip gone wrong. Once the groups have decided on a scenario together, they must come up with the ve most important points of their story to put as their ve freeze frames. Once they!ve decided this, they should practice each frame. All students in the group must be involved in the game. All of the groups will be given ten minutes to gure out their theme and practice their frames, and should then all come back together to watch each other. One by one, each group will go up and present their ve freeze frames without telling the audience what their scenario was. The audience will close their eyes as the group gets into their rst pose, and the leader (the senior or camp counselor) will tell the audience to open their eyes once the group is in place. After about 5-10 seconds, the leader will tell the audience to close their eyes while the group gets into their second freeze frame, and will tell them to open their eyes once they!re in place. This will continue until all ve of the frames have been seen by the audience. Then, by raising their hands, the audience can try to guess what the scenario was that they were watching. Title: Freeze Purpose: To promote quick thinking, playing off of one another, improvisation, and paying attention.

Instructions: All of the students sit facing the playing space, and the instructor/director should choose two students to start a scene. They can either come up with it themselves or the group can suggest a scene for them to being improvising. The group should let the scene continue for about 30 seconds, enough time for the scene and characters to develop, and then any student that wishes to volunteer will yell FREEZE! Then, the students on stage will freeze in whatever position they end in, and the new student will approach them and tap one of them on the shoulder and take their place (the tapped student will sit in the audience with the rest of the students). The new student will then begin to improvise a new scene, and the partner that is still up there will (once they understand the new scene and circumstances) will play along with them. Then, after some time has passed, another student may yell FREEZE! and go take the place of the student who hasn!t been tapped out yet. This rotation should continue until all students have gone. Additionally, the two players on the stage should never be on for more then two rotations. For example, if A and B are onstage and C taps out A, C and B will be in a scene. When D yells freeze, D MUST swap places with B, because B has been on for two rotations already. Title: Counting Purpose: To promote focus, concentration, team work, and as a way to get a cast to focus before a performance. Instructions: The students should stand in a circle (or sit) with their eyes closed. One student (or the stage manager, instructor or director) will be designated as the constant number one. One by one, with their eyes closed, the students will attempt to count as high as they can. Number one will always be constant, but the students shouldn!t develop any patterns. If a number is repeated or if two students attempt to say the same number at the same time, the group must start over at one. Title: Fill the Space Purpose: To make students spatially aware, to promote teamwork, and to center a group!s focus. Instructions: Students should spread out throughout the playing area (this should be laid out by the instructor or director beforehand). On the leader!s instruction, the students should begin to mill and seed throughout the space, trying to evenly distribute themselves. Let them do this for about a minute while they try to maintain that even distribution, and then tell them to slowly (as a group) try to sense the other bodies in the group and try to come to a stall all together, and resume movement together as well. Have them do this a few times and then tell them to make their way (while still moving) into a circle, all heading in the same direction. Tell them to pay attention and slowly bring themselves to a stop like before, and to resume motion. After they have mastered this, try to have them all come to a stop and then MAKE A CHOICE, as a group, to either resume motion OR to reverse direction and resume motion. Have them attempt this a few times. Title: Forward Reverse Purpose: To encourage improvisation, paying attention, focus, listening, and recall.

Instructions: All of the students should sit facing the playing area, and the director/ instructor should pick 8 volunteers from the audience. They should line up stage right ready to enter, and should be thinking of a scene or scenario to act out when it!s there turn. The rst person will enter and set up their scene for 10-15 seconds, and then the second person will enter and completely change the scene to whatever kind of scenario they choose. The rst student is now to adopt these new circumstances and relationships and play along for a short amount of time until the third person comes in. With each student that comes in, the pre-existing players must pay attention to whatever story the new player brings to the table to play along, and once the last person enters the players will play out that last scenario for a little while, and then that last person will leave the space, which should cue the actors to resume the second to last scene. Then the second to last player will leave, and so on and so forth until all of the scenarios are played back out (and potentially resolved) until the rst original player is once again alone on stage. This can be done multiple times using different students, but should always be done in front of an audience of some kind which is why the students don!t break off into groups to do it amongst themselves.

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