A group of actors greets one another, saying hello and other greetings. Then, a leader calls out different situations, such as you’re greeting an ex-lover, greeting a long-lost friend, greeting someone you’re angry with and greeting someone who smells. This requires the actors to improvise responses, as well as create characters, working toward believable actions and dialogue. Two long-lost friends may greet each other with a hearty hug, while two people who are angry with each other may have a tense greeting with short, terse words and stiff body language. This helps the actors improve their abilities to act and improvise in a variety of situations.
One actor makes a statement, such as, “I’m so tired.” From there, each actor can begin her reply only with “Yes and.” For example, “Yes and so am I.” In this activity, actors build off what previous actors said, accepting what that actor said and continually pushing the story along. If the first actor says, “I think I’ll be a professional football player when I grow up,” the following actors may respond with things like, “Yes and also an accountant”; “Yes and that means going to business school”; “Yes and then graduate school too.” A leader of this exercise works to make sure actors stay on track, as well as providing guidance for possible responses and actions that the actors may not have considered.
Actors pair up and try to copy each other’s actions. At first one actor leads and the other actor follows, but then roles switch, until eventually it’s unclear who’s leading. The goal is to perfectly mirror the other actor. For an even more challenging version, add another player or two, working in a circle to perfectly mirror one another’s actions. From this exercise, actors learn to work together without speaking. They learn to trust one another and to make their body correspond to the actions of the other actors. If it's unclear to the audience who's leading the action, then this pair or group is successfully mirroring the other.
Each actor says a sentence that starts with a different letter of the alphabet. The first actor says a sentence that starts with “A,” the second actor says a sentence that starts with “B” and the game continues until 26 sentences have been said. The game can also go through the alphabet backward, working “Z” to “A” or through other combinations. In every case, the goal is to create a scene in those 26 sentences. In this game, actors build a scene with specific confines, forcing them to get creative and use their ability with language to craft a single sentence that not only starts with a particular letter, but also creates a scene.