Study Guide - Stratford Festival

Imaginative Ways to Approach the Text
Conversations for Two
Grade Level 4 - 12
Ontario
Curriculum
Expectations
Drama: Creating and Presenting (4 - 8)
Drama: Theory, Creation, Analysis (9 - 12)
Time Needed one class period
Space open space, no desks
Materials none
Setting up the exercise:
Students are going to improvise short scenes. The number one rule of
improvising is you can’t say no: you must work with everything your
partner does – even if you have to change what you had planned – and
incorporate it into the scene.
Agree on the signal to start the improv and the signal to end.
The exercise:
Pair up students; provide enough room for each pair to work without
disturbance from others.
Provide one or more of the scene starters listed below.
Give the signal to start the improv.
After no more than three minutes, give the signal to end.
Have students find another partner and repeat with another topic.
Scene starters:
Two friends discuss a romantic interest they have in a third party. Neither
knows initially that they are both interested in the same person.
One friend tries to convince a less adventurous friend to go skydiving.
A mother tried to convince her reticent child to go on an exchange to
another country.
Two friends discuss a forbidden relationship between two people they
both know.
One young person reveals to another a plan to steal something valuable.
One person reveals to another that he/she witnessed the other’s love
interest in a compromising position with someone else.
A student is caught cheating on a test by a teacher.
A father informs his child that he/she is no longer welcome in the family
home.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona Study Guide 6
Stratford Shakespeare Festival 2010