Story Acting Workshops — get kids excited about reading

Peter Brook said, “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space, whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.” In this case our stage: the centre of the circle in the classroom, our audience: the children sitting on the parameter comprising the circle, our actors: the children occupying the space inside the circle.

I recently presented a workshop to over 200 children in the Bay Area, California. The idea: to link children’s experience of going on a field trip to the theatre to creating theatre in their very own classrooms.

The brief was quite simple:

Using familiar stories, improvisation, and creative movement, children leap into action as story characters! Classic children’s tales are used to teach children how to use their bodies and voices to create fun and familiar characters. The workshop should not exceed 50 minutes and there should be a maximum capacity of 24 kids per workshop.

Pro-tips:

• The idea ration kids to instructor 15:1. You should have no more than 24 kids in a class for every 1 . For bigger groups, having another teacher, classroom assistant or parent volunteer is highly recommended.
• 40–50 minute long session make for an ideal period of time, when working with kids ages 7–11 for workshops and classes.
• Have a little 2 minute “move-about”/ break in your class to keep kids engaged and help them channel their energy.

Designing Workshops like Puzzles

But before a space can be transformed into a stage, and children into storytelling maestros we have to equip ourselves with some tools. We need to break things down into smaller pieces. Think puzzle pieces! Imagine this: your workshop is comprised of a set number of puzzle pieces. Once the puzzle pieces are all discovered and put in place they form a whole picture. In other words the story or play. So the first thing we need to do is establish what our puzzle pieces are. I usually ask the kids to assist me at this point.

Audience & Actor

I start the workshop by asking the group “What do we call the people who watch a play on stage?” to which the answer is “The Audience”. Younger kids sometime answer with “people” or “children” watch the play, to which I will respond but “Yes!” and then further prompt them to be more specific …“But in theatre we have a specific word for these people…can you think of it now?”

I spend no more than 1 minute on a question. If the kids get it by themselves, I re-affirm the answer by repeating the word and asking them to clap the syllables and then give the definition.

Au-di-ence, is a group of people or listeners at an event, such as a play, movie or concert.

Our next puzzle piece is the Actor. I ask, “Who or what is the most important thing that we need to tell a story on stage?”. Now most kids answer costumes, which is no surprise because all kids love dress-up, trust me. But give them clues, prompting them to get to the person who tells the story which is ultimately the actor.

Ac-tor….two syllables…clap it with me…ac-tor…A person/human being who acts in stage plays.”

Creating Characters with just your body, face and voice

I explain to the kids that we don’t need costumes, or scenery or any of the fancy things, the most important thing is the actor. And the actor can create different characters using 3 things.

Char-ac-ter: The part the actor creates using their *body, *face and *voice. Ie. the big bad wolf, Mary Poppins, Harry Potter.

It is at this point where I ask for two volunteers. Two kids enter the circle and I ask them to stand in a neutral body, an uninhibited body posture that equips players to move, breathe, and speak energetically and without strain. I then ask them to walk around the circle as themselves, and ask the group to agree that these two volunteers are in fact humans and that we can agree they are not characters. I ask the volunteers if they accept the challenge of being an actor? And then we High-5 on it and so our mission begins…

I ask the kids to stand with bent knees (feet hip distance apart), lean forward with a straight torso, putting their left hand on their backs and their right hand outstretched as if they were holding a walking stick. I then ask them to scrunch up their faces, as if to wrinkle it, and to make a grumpy expression and voice and yell “You kids get out of my yard!”. This demonstrate how we can manipulate our bodies and faces and voices to created characters. I repeat the same formulae with other examples; super-heroes, dogs, cats, body-builder, clown… whatever examples you can conjure that have clear physical attributes that can be exaggerated works well!

Creating setting and soundscapes with a human orchestra

I then ask “What tells us where, our story takes place”. Answer: Setting.

Set-ting, two syllables, is where our story takes place.

In the theatre we might have a backdrop with painted images of forest, or we might have scenery to show us the three little pigs’ houses. But in the classroom we only have the actor and the audience’s imagination, but one way we could create the setting is by creating sound effects.

Sound e-ffects, a sound that is artificially made like phones ringing tring-tring or the tick-tock of a clock or the splash of water.

We can use a collection of sound effects to create a soundscape.

Sound-scape, two syllables, the sounds that can be heard or created that are specific to a location or place.

In other words the audible things we hear and identify to help us know where we are some examples include a school playground, the ocean, the forest, a busy city, a farm, etc.

Ask the participants to create soundscape as a group, each taking turns to add a sound effect to the collective as if they were a human orchestra creating a score of the story.

Now that we have all our puzzle pieces in place we can put them all together to tell our story. This is the part where we take story like The Three Little Pigs and we dramatize the script for our storytelling exercise. You can really adapt this approach to any kind of story, depending on the ages of your kids. The Three Little Pigs would be appropriate for kids pre-K to Grade 2.

Collaborative Storytelling:

Actors can create characters and dramatize stories and poems using just their *bodies, faces voices.

1. Assign characters (direct the posture you want them to adopt (*body), what attitude you want them to have (*face) and how to say their dialogue (*voice)). Go around the circle assigning everyone a character.
2. Assign dialogue and gestures . By giving each participant a line of dialogue and a gesture to accompany it, you assist them with memorization. Kids seem to remember thing better when it is linked to a physical movement. Your gesture also serves as a non-vocal way to prompt the child if they forget. Give them time to take direction and practice by repeating each one 2–5 times.
3. Use sound effects. Kids who are not acting might be able to create sound effects and soundscapes to help the story along. This helps you keep kids engaged even when they are not “performing”.

Once everyone has their assigned parts, the instructor will narrate the story while the group collaboratively tell the story.

Goal: This activity triggers the imagination process launched from familiar material (ie. The 3 Little Pigs) and allows the players to see that a role has many different interpretations and that a story can be played many ways.

By putting all these puzzle pieces together, one creates a workshop environment that strongly promotes collaboration. The success of the story is dependent on each individual’s effort to be part of something bigger than themselves. The group is collectively trying to contribute to telling the story.

I love the idea of transforming the classroom into a performance space. This workshop format relies on kids being active learners and gets them to engage with the content in making characters come to life. Having kids sit behind desks “organised” into rows, doesn’t quite spark curiosity or muster images of fiction, fairytale and fantasy in quite the same manner. Kids love stories and what’s more they love telling stories, even more!