Singing

Idea for an activity:

Take a text, in another language, that you love (poem, song, whatever).

Use Google translate to translate it to English.

If the result is sufficiently strange, copy it, reduce it, and perform it like a poem at a poetry slam.

If the result is too normal, try translating the translated version into a different language, then from that language into English, or into another language -- repeat until you have freed the words from the original text.

As a child I remember playing a game in which one person made a repetitive mechanical movement, with a sound to match. The next person added a new movement and sound, and so on, until the participants had assembled a big, clanking, wheezing machine.

In this activity, the first player says one word, again and again, establishing a beat. (1, 2, 3, 4 --> The, The, The, The...) The next player adds a word and another rhythm. (1, rest, 3, 4 --> time, --, time, time) Each successive player builds the sentence and the sound.

Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band made a music video of her song "Bad Dancer" in which Ono and other celebrities dance badly and joyfully. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3mvEfON2CI) The idea of the song is that we should free ourselves of the burden of "being good" and embrace being bad at things, so as to do them freely.

This idea can be applied to any activity in which fear of poor performance prevents us from acting with freedom. For example, "Bad Presenter," "Bad Singer," "Bad Listener," "Bad Writer," "Bad Artist," "Bad Translator," "Bad Innovator," "Bad Activist," etc.

• Me-You
• Rhythm shiritori
• Don't get left behind (ひとりにならない）
• Word Association
• Let's do it!
• Yes, and yay
• Yes, and... interview
• Master and Slaves
• One Voice
• One Word
• A,B,C,D
• Entry/Exit
• Freeze Tag
• Song
• Emotional Replay
• Genre Replay
• Words from the heart
• Superhero
• Papers
• Musical
• Typewriter
• Space Jump
• Feeling Shift (mime of day's event)
• Experience Rendering (sound, motion, statue)
• Mime -- what's my job?
• Mime -- who am I? (variation, try to join in, rebuff if wrong)