Ok, below’s a quick list of some great stage direction games. If you are looking for other games, you can find those here: warm-up games, and fun drama games.
For a few simple drama stage direction games, here’s a short list and description:
Modify Ships & Sailors to include: “upstage, downstage, center stage, stage left, stage right” and then get CrAzY and mess with them by adding: “down-left, up-right” Wow! go wild! (what’s Ships & Sailors – nothing but a SUPER fun game found here)
Trapdoor – simply a simplified Ships & Sailors. You call out stage directions, like above, and randomly yell, “trapdoor” and all the kids fall to the ground. Melodramatically, of course, cause, well… that’s my style!
Go in Character – the nice part about this is that they focus on 2 things at once, which actually allows them to learn the directions more intrinsically. You would direct something like, “downstage you pirates!” and they would go downstage acting like pirates. Or, “stage left you exhausted olympians!” and so on and so forth.
Half and Half – (same as above, except…) the ol’ saying, if you can’t do, teach. Well, have half the class give the directions while the other half play. Gives them the perspective of the director – and that’s part of what we do with drama and empathy, right? Have kids learn other perspectives?
Simon Says – do a variation of the classic using stage directions.
The Think and Move Game – my personal choice – you use all the directions, but add a qualifier: “downstage left if you are wearing a hat.”; “center stage if you have long hair”; “upstage right if you are wearing stripes.” so on and so forth… the nice part is you can separate kids in this process and add some extra steps for those kids that might be taking a bit long to catch on.
If you have any games you think are awesome, please, send them my way! In the meanwhile, break some legs out there!
