Super Fun Acting Games

Acting games are a fantastic tool. They help students get comfortable, warmed up and focused. Acting games also develop important skills required for acting and performing.

Stuck in the Mud is a quite a well known game that isn’t necessarily related to acting; however, it is a lot of fun and gets students moving and in a good mood. Choose one person to be “tagger”. If you have a large group 20+ get two or three people to be the taggers. If you are tagged you must stay still and outstretch your legs and arms, like in a star jump. The goal is for the taggers to have the whole group stationary (stuck in the mud). Those who are not taggers can free the others who are stuck by going under their legs. End the game when either the taggers have got everyone or you can see your students starting to tire. Let a few different students be taggers.

Build the Robot is a really easy game that can be fun for all ages. It encourages team work and creativity. One person from the group must stand on stage and make a repetitive gesture. You can also have students add a sound to their movement. Another student jumps up and does a different repetitive gesture. Continue this until all the students have added to the “robot”. The students must maintain their original gesture and the goal is to create an interesting and diverse looking robot.

More Games to Improve Acting Skills and Imagination

The Machine of Emotions is a mechanism in your imagination, composed of elements associated with the desired emotion. Take one emotion “anger”, then take a sheet of paper and write down situations that make you angry. For example, noisy neighbours, strict parents, a lot of homework, wrong haircut, etc. With every situation you need to come up with some image.

Then, you connect together these images and at the end you will have the “machine of anger.” Do the same thing with many other emotions and when you need to act them, you can always take this “machine” and recall all of those images that make you angry, happy, irritated etc. These images will help you quickly get the desired emotion.

The Non-Stop Monologue. In this exercise you will have to present a monologue on some topic for 3 to 5 minutes without any stops or time for preparation. You should try to avoid any pauses and your speech should sound like you’ve been preparing it for a long time.
At first choose the topics you are familiar with, then move on to the once that you hardly know anything about. This exercise will help you to develop you skills of improvisation.

Stroking an Animal. This exercise should be done in a group, so take your friends and give everyone a sheet of paper with the list of animals in it (cat, elephant, hamster, dog and so on). Each of the participants chooses an animal he/she likes and imagines holding and stoking it. The task of other participants is to guess which animal it is. This exercise is often used in drama classes for beginners.

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