Drama Games for Devising E-Book

Jessica Swale

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

As part of the ever-growing, increasingly popular Drama Games series, Jessica Swale returns with another dip-in, flick-through, quick-fire resource book, packed with dozens of drama games that can be used in the process of devising theatre. The games will be invaluable to directors and theatre companies at all levels who are creating new pieces of theatre from scratch and need lively, dynamic games to fire the imagination. They will particularly appeal to school, youth theatre and community groups where devising is a growing trend – and a core element of the drama curriculum. Written with clear instructions on How to Play, notes on the Aim of the Game, and illuminating examples from professional productions, the games cover every aspect of the devising process and develop all the skills required: generating ideas, creating characters and scenarios, using stimuli, structuring the piece, and creating an ensemble. Mike Leigh, the most dedicated and celebrated creator of devised work, hails the book in his foreword as 'highly original and massively useful'. 'A remarkable compendium of games and exercises… a lively starting point for rich invention' Mike Leigh, from his Foreword

Leseprobe

Jessica Swale

Foreword by Mike Leigh

NICK HERN BOOKSLondonwww.nickhernbooks.co.uk

CONTENTS

Dedication

Foreword by Mike Leigh

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Stage One – PREPARATION

1.

Hammertime!

2.

Big Booty

3.

Four Square

4.

Flying Sheep

5.

Synchronicity

6.

Robin’s Wood

7.

Free Association

8.

Doctor Damage

9.

Master and Slave

10.

Coward’s Adverbs

11.

Scary Mary

Stage Two – GENERATION

12.

Impro Bingo

13.

Bricolage

14.

Whose Shoes?

15.

Marbles

16.

The Detective Game

17.

Use Your Loaf

18.

Ladies of Letters

19.

Sequences

20.

Sound of the Underground

21.

Snowball

22.

Site Specifics

23.

Red Riding Hood and the Loaded Gun

24.

Painting by Numbers

25.

Merry-Go-Round

Stage Three – EXPLORATION

26.

Archetypes

27.

Hydra

28.

Style Wars

29.

Match Point

30.

Convention Conundrum

31.

Stan’s Game

32.

Sir Anthony!

33.

Animal Instincts

34.

Humour Quad

35.

Rewind

36.

Role Reversal

Stage Four – DISTILLATION

37.

Noises Off

38.

Finding Alice

39.

Gas Ring

40.

Statue of Liberty

41.

Seanchaí

42.

Deconstruction

43.

Where Am I?

44.

The Gallery Game

45.

The Dramagraph

46.

Act Without Words

Stage Five – PRESENTATION

47.

Breath Control

48.

Rain Tree

49.

Ask the Audience

50.

Grandmother’s Gone

51.

Narrative Ring

52.

Vocal Warm-Up 1: Neither Up Nor Down

53.

Vocal Warm-Up 2: Vowel Jazz

54.

Vocal Warm-Up 3: Tongue-Twisters

55.

Vocal Warm-Up 4: Trinidada

56.

Ensemble

Index of Games

Skills

Alphabetical List

About the Author

Other Titles in the Series

Copyright Information

For Jill and Robin Swaleand Muriel Norman,

who taught me that playing gamescan be the best form of education

‘No man is an island, entire of itself;every man is a piece of the continent,a part of the main.’

John Donne

‘I personally would like to bring a tortoise ontothe stage, turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat,a song, a dragon and a fountain of water. One candare anything in the theatre and it’s the placewhere one dares the least.’

Eugène Ionesco

FOREWORD

Far from being an anomaly invented in the Swinging Sixties, so-called ‘devised theatre’ is as old as society itself. Millennia before the birth of the formal literary ‘script’, we can be sure that folk got on their feet and made things up. Long nights round ancient campfires would be filled by endlessly inventive home-made entertainments. Singers of songs, tellers of stories and jokes, and groups of performers acting out yarns they had cooked up collaboratively, sometimes led by prehistoric versions of directors, often not, would light up the darkness.

It is inconceivable that the theatrical companies of Ancient Greece and Rome put together their productions of Sophocles and Plautus without group experiment and improvisation, and we know from the Folios that much extemporisation and collaborative creativity took place in Shakespeare’s theatre.

From Commedia dell’Arte to Victorian burlesque, from music hall and pantomime to the silent cinema of Keaton, Chaplin, Griffiths, Feuillade, von Stroheim et al., from the agit-prop theatre of the 1930s to the Goons and Pythons, making it up is as natural as laughing and crying.

A play in performance is an organic, visceral, three-dimensional thing. It isn’t, by definition, the reading out of a text. So it is entirely logical to create live theatre directly. The currency, the medium, is people: physical action in time and space – not merely words on a page.

And the world is out there, waiting for us to depict it, in all its joy and pain.

Just make up a play. It’s easy. Or is it? Well, it is, once you get the ball rolling. But kicking off can often be difficult. For some, it’s just the question of having an idea, and getting on with it. But for others, especially when we remember that we are talking about group creativity, ways are needed to stimulate ideas – to release the collective imagination.

And that is the unique value of this highly original and massively useful book. With impressive thoroughness, Jessica Swale has assembled a remarkable compendium of games and exercises.

Everything here qualifies as a lively starting point for rich invention. But, as an experienced and talented director, Jessica knows that the building of a solid ensemble is as important as the play itself, so much of what you will find in these pages will be equally useful for that purpose alone.

This book is a great achievement, and you will have much fun with it. Happy play-making!

Mike Leigh

INTRODUCTION

If you take the time to stop by a park or a playground anywhere in the world, you will observe the same phenomenon. Groups of youngsters making believe. Darting about as aliens, swaggering around on a pirate ship or leaping over logs as if they are horses, children love to make things up. There is a creative spirit deep-rooted in the human psyche, which yearns for just this kind of spontaneous fun. Yet somehow, as we ‘grow up’, the increasing demands on us to plan and prepare not only limit our opportunities for spontaneity, but reinforce a belief that to ad-lib or behave impulsively is less worthwhile.