Create a simple dialogue between two characters. Start with something along the lines of, Character 1: "Good morning." Character 2: "Good morning." Character 1: "Nice weather today." Character 2: "Have you seen my dog?" Character 1: "No, but I wasn't looking for it." Character 2: "I like your new haircut." Character 1: "Thanks, it cost $5." Character 2: "That's quite a bargain." Keep the conversations banal so they have no real emotional weight or character development on their own. It should be approximately one page long.
Memorize the scene without any emotion or context. Then, have other participants in the class choose a relationship for the characters, a location for the scene and the emotional state of the characters. The students will then perform the scene with all this new information, giving it meaning and depth. After the first performance of the scene, the relationship, location and emotional state can be changed to alter the meaning of the scene again.
For variations on these types of scenes, have the other students in the class freeze the scenes midway through and choose new emotions for the characters. Ask students to try a variety of different postures, voices and mannerisms to demonstrate the different ways characters are developed.