Improvisational Drama and Pantomime

Improvisational drama can be used to extend students' range of oral language and increase their understanding of human experience. It enables students to gain problem-solving experience in unpredictable situations. Through improvised drama, students build social skills. They become more sensitive listeners and more adept conversationalists.

Improvisation is often used as a strategy to help students develop a contextual drama or role play. However, improvisation can be accomplished with more spontaneity and with less comprehensive planning. It often involves asking students to provide their own mini-story, based on materials and ideas relating to some aspect of the English language arts program. Interpretation will involve spontaneous movement and vocalization. Sounds, objects, issues, traditions, and life experiences are a few of the "springboards" that may motivate improvisation.

Different types of improvisation include the following:

• A spontaneous interview might take place in a talk-show format, with one student as the interviewer and another as a character from a novel, story, or poem. The interviewer needs to establish a time and place being referred to in the selection, and then ask questions of the character. The character should be encouraged to elaborate when replying, rather than giving one-word answers.

• A variation would be to have one student, who has not taken on any identity, approach and wait for a second student (who has decided to "be" a particular character). The second student would establish an identity, and establish what the circumstances are through actions and conversation. The first would "become" the character needed to respond to the second, after recognizing the second person's identity. Then the second student could become the one without an identity, waiting for a third student to approach, and so on.

• In a more complicated four-person exercise, two students become certain characters from a selection, with the other two becoming their consciences. The consciences talk to their characters, saying the things that are supposedly "driving" the characters' thoughts and actions. The two characters interact as any two people might, taking cues from their consciences. Each character can react only to what the other says (and does) and his/her own conscience. He/she cannot hear the other person's conscience. The two consciences cannot react to each other. This exercise results in effective comprehension and powerful improvisational drama.

Teachers will find that they can develop their own activities for improvisation as their classes progress. It is important for students to know that they must always demonstrate what is going on rather than simply telling or narrating. It is also critical that teachers accept each student's appropriate improvisational interpretation. Ask students to explain why they chose to interpret things in particular ways or request elaboration regarding their interpretations. Outcomes of all scenes should be discussed with the participants and the listeners. Both the improvisations and the discussions that result may be used to spark writing or other reflective activities.

Pantomime is often used as a method of introducing improvisation. Many students are more willing to speak spontaneously if they have become comfortable with movement first. Pantomime (conveying ideas without words) encourages students to use their entire bodies in dramatic expression. Although pantomime is a silent activity, it is included with the oracy section of the curriculum because it serves as a preparation for dialogue, and because much oral language is used in discussing pantomime before and after it is performed. As well, nonverbal communication used in pantomime can later be used to support and enhance verbal communication.

Pantomime is particularly useful for exploring the five senses, for portraying mood, for creating a character or plot, and for telling a story. Pantomime stimulates the imagination and clarifies perception as students try to remember sequencing of actions and what objects are like in terms of size, weight, and shape. Concentration and close attention to detail are necessary for recalling and expressing emotion silently. Close observation of people is a way of developing believable characters whose movements belong to them and whose behaviours seem appropriate. A full-length mirror is useful for rehearsing pantomime, from total body movement to producing the facial expressions for one who is happy, frightened, angry, or surprised. Video recordings help to show the development of a sequence and to view the final outcome.

It is important that players are not told how they feel, but rather provided with the circumstances and the mood which enables them to portray the appropriate emotions.

Sidecoaching pantomime, where a reader who is "off to the side" provides the reading of a narration that other students pantomime, may be a starting point for Middle Level students. The reader might read from a piece of edited literature or from a student-written script.