Drama games to play online
Drama games you can play online.
With many drama schools being forced to go online it has been a time of adapting our class rooms to a virtual reality.
So here are a few games you could play online with your group classes.
Make sure all children have enough room to stand during their online lesson.
SAMPLE OF DOWNLOAD
Games to play online.
- PULL A FUNNY OR ODD FACE
A lovely warm up to get everyone in the right mood. Ask everyone to come in close to their camera's and then ask them to pull as many faces as possible for 5 seconds, then shout freeze and ask them to justify their face by creating a bit of dialogue inspired by their face.
- JUSTIFY YOURSELF
To play this you ask the students to jump around, up down, touch the floor, and spin about. Then shout freeze.
Go to each student in turn and ask them to justify their position. I.e. If they are standing there with their arms in the air they may be playing netball. So they may say something like:
‘Hey I have the ball, quick I will pass it to you, ready…’ Think of it as a solo freeze tag.
- PROPS
Children are asked to go and find a prop from their house. First one back gets a point (if you have them in teams)
Each student must use the prop for something other than it is by incorporating it into a scene.
Variant- Everyone gets the same prop or props. I.e Everyone go and grab a bowl and a coat hanger.
- FIND AN OBJECT:
Ask the students to find an object that is special or unusual and get them to tell you where they got it from. Using that same object get the student to try and sell the object to the class.
FIND AN OBJECT PART 2:
Using one of the classes objects each do a thirty second monologue. Add in body language. So each person must incorporate a body part.
I.e: Arms, eyes, eye brows, fingers, nose. This works really well, the more the body part is accentuated.
FIND AN OBJECT PART 3:
Put the class into two's and send to breakout room to make up a short scene using both objects.
- FIREWORK DISASTER:
All together first. Make a noise that sounds like a firework going off. Then add movements to the noise. Then one by one ask each student the name, colour and cost of the firework. This is a nice and noisy icebreaker.
- ALL TOGETHER NOW- ALL AT ONCE:
One person says a stock character. Example: Chef The next says an emotion. Example: Angry.They all have to act it out all at once. This works really well on Zoom. In the class room we do this in twos.Two dentists angry -Two policeman sad - Two dancers hysterical
- BUZZY BEE
Children buzz like a Bee whilst running in a circle on the spot.
The teacher then says ‘Freeze’ and gives them a letter of the alphabet and asks the students to make the shape of an object or an animal.
The students have 5 seconds to make the shape. Three practise runs then any duplicates are out.
You can reduce the time to 2 seconds for the last few.
- NUMBERS
Give each student a number. This is great as you can use the numbers throughout the class, makes things a lot quicker than saying names.
Choose a number to start and then they must say any number as long as it is not theirs. Once students have got the hang of it then introduce a time limit of three seconds. Any hesitation means they are out. It becomes more difficult as students are out as the others must remember which students/numbers have gone out.
- POEMS
Each player is given a word as below and they must make up a poem on the spot, the player can also be given a particular mood in which the poem can be said.
Radio
Coffee
River
Swimming
Xbox
Computers
Phones
Umbrella
shoes
Then give them a mood
Love
Fear
Hope
Humourous
- ONE WORD SYLLABLE SCENES
2 player scenes. Each can only use words with one syllable. This can progress to two and three syllable words.
- MORE SPECIFIC
A game for two older players.
Give your players a situation Example: Stuck in a lift'
At any point during the scene, the teacher can call out, “More specific!” So for example...
Player 1: The lift seems to have stopped.
Player 2: Well it's not moving.
Teacher: 'More specific'
Player 2: It seems stuck, it's not going up or down...
Players continue...
“More specific” can be called out multiple times until the players are specific enough.
This is a great game to expand a scene; also it helps to develop student’s characters and keeps them thinking.
- HEADLINES
To encourage quick thinking Game
The teacher gives the students a 'BONG!' each student should come up with a News Headline (AKA: 'News at Ten'). The teacher can change the category to: Sentences you might hear in a 'Nature' programme, on a 'Game Show', a 'Weather Report', a 'Sports Programme', a 'Cookery Show', 'X Factor', 'Cartoon'… A great game to get the class thinking quickly.
A variation of this game is for the teacher to chose one of the headlines and then for two students to act out one of the headlines
- SCENE STYLES
A scene is played out but the style of scene keeps changing with suggestions from audience IE: Pantomime, Shakespeare, Soap, silent Movie etc...
- LIMERICK
A game for all the class to participate in. Choose one person to give the first line of limerick then anyone can take the next line and so and so forth. Ask students to raise their hand when they have a line.
- NURSERY NEWS
Team game a nursery rhyme is reported on the news with ‘Studio guests’ and an outside broadcast interviewing ‘witness’s’
2 students for the outside broadcast and two for the inside.
Start with the broadcast from the inside where you have an interviewer and an expert. So for example if the rhyme was Humpty, the expert could be on Eggs.
Then after the interviewer has asked 3 questions they move to the outside broadcast where the interviewer is with a witness, for example one of the Kings Men. Each witness or expert must take on the character of the expert/witness they are given by the interviewer.
After three questions they revert back to the inside broadcaster who wraps up the programme.
Add in a theme tune from the main interviewer.
- SCENE GENERATOR
You will need to prep for this one. The scenes can be prepped in the breakout rooms on Zoom.
Firstly you write out various lines then call them Green -1st line- Yellow -2nd line - Red 3rd line. Prep 50 of each pop on a clip so you can choose them a random so you always can have different combinations. (The kids love this exercise.) THese ones below are taken from The story Generator you can buy HERE
Example:
1st line -With only a week to live
2nd line- A computer hacker.
3rd line - Is trapped underground.
Example 2:
1st line -Suffering from amnesia.
2nd line- the drummer from a punk rock band.
3rd line - gets married on a whim.
More games to come soon.
- TWO HANDER SCENE:
Where one person is responsible for the content and driving the scene the other there simply to assist. This is called working someone. Player 2 must accept everything.
EG:
P.1: Have you got it?
P.2: Yes here it is?
P1: Do you like it?
P2: Yes it's beautiful?
P1: Put it on.
P2: Yes of course.
P1: It's not the right length.
P2: Oh…
P1: I thought having a fancy dress party would be fun didn't you?
P2: Yes I'm sorry
SEE HOW THE FIRST PERSON LEADS THE SCENE.
- EXCUSES:
Chose one person to be the late employee. They turn their back to camera. Everyone else reads his excuse. E.g: "A dragon ate my shoes" then they have to mime it out to the late employee until they guess it.
EXCUSES:
I ate a peanut not realising I was allergic.
There was an earthquake at Rickmansworth station.
- WHAT'S ON YOUR CARD?
In a circle one player asks another what's on your card? The other player must describe what is on their greeting card, then the third player must come up with a greeting or pun to caption the card it with.
- SOLVE THE PROBLEM
Three player scene.
Player 1: Creates the enviorment. I.e: Kitchen. They maybe cooking using a recipe.
Player 2: Creates the problem. For example, player 1 goes to get the eggs and player 2 explains that she/he has eaten them all at breakfast.
Player 3: Enters and has been to the shops and has 12 eggs.
End scene.
Homework Tasks
Each week a task is given to the class to prepare for the following week.
Examples: Weeks 1-6
A Potted Fairy story or Movie to be performed in 90 seconds.
A monologue: Give each child a word to use to inspire their writing. Each monologue should be 60 seconds. Encourage costume and characters.
Puppets: Make a puppet from a sock, give it a name and a back story and then develop a duologue to be performed to the group. Give the group a word like ‘Trouble’ or ‘Leaving’ to stimulate their imagination.
Mime: Give the class a subject i.e. A day at the fair. Each child must prepare a minute mime to a piece of music.
Alien: An alien has landed. Come dressed as an alien. Each alien must have made up a way of communicating; the class has to guess what it is they have done this week.
Scene style:
Take your monologue from week 2 and do it in the style of Shakespeare.
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