Ejercicios de comunicacion (communication excercises)

This is a game in which the group builds an idea by accepting and adding to the previous idea (yes, and...).

The Flow:
In a circle, small or large group.

• Joker asks the group to think of something good.
• When a player has an idea, they start the play by naming their good thing -- e.g. "A cup of hot coffee."
• Next player adds to it, to make it better -- "A cup of hot coffee on a cold morning."
• Third player adds -- "A cup of hot coffee on a cold morning in the mountains."
• And so on. Continue adding as long as the energy is good.
  

Take the checklist of actions and think about who does what? Then think about roles -- which actions are grouped to form roles? And positions -- how do positions and roles overlap (or not)? E.g., as a teacher, I have an institutional position that is material and ideological. Some roles are built into that position, others are assumed but can be removed or redistributed. The point is not to drop the roles or powers, but to redistribute them, to reconfigure the relationships.

How is protagonism a gathering of roles? What roles are needed to constitute protagonism?

I learned this game from students in an English class at Meiji University.

In this game participants add words to make a sentence under pressure of time.

Part One:
Everyone stands in a circle.

One person starts a sentence by saying one word. The next person has five seconds to add a word that continues the sentence, and so on until someone fails to add a word, or adds a word that doesn't work. When that happens -- the group screams, or makes an explosion sound, etc.

Example:
1. My
2. mother
3. was
4. born
5. in
6. a

A simple activity: ask each person to think of her/his favorite and least favorite [word, person, place, object, action, body part(?), letter, number...whatever] and share them with a partner, explaining her choice.

The sharing can be with just one person (quick), with several people in a round-robin format, with the whole group.

The sharing could be done in spoken or written form, could be drawn or pantomimed.

A variation on the "Mad Libs" game.

Joker (or each participant) chooses a short text: a news item, an encyclopedia entry, a passage from a text book, a political speech, a poem, etc. S/he then removes key words or phrases, leaving blanks and a hint as to what type of word or phrase is missing (verb, noun, etc.).

Unlike the original game:

• Players have the text in their hands, so they know what it is about.

I'm sure this has been done before, but it occurred to me as well. (It's like the Kani Club activity "Words from the Heart" where the players add side commentary, sharing their true feelings out loud as if only the audience could hear them.)

Four people improvisation game.

Two people are the players, the other two are their shadows.

The two people meet each other for the first time. (The audience can choose a place beforehand.) They improvise a conversation, starting with a greeting.

This is an idea for an improvisational variation on the Love, Hate, Need activity.

Once people have identified what they Love, Hate, Need, Have, Want, Fear, and Hope, the joker hands out three cards on which are written one of the categories (love, hate, etc) to random players.

The players think for a moment, then must improvise a short (2minute or so) scene in which they act out the thing they (love, hate, need...), interacting with the others on that basis.

In the old days, silent films were often shown with music and a voice-over provided by live players. In Japan, the narrators were called benshi. (Akira Kurosawa's brother was a benshi, a leader of the benshi union until talkies came in and he committed suicide.)