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Epic Theatre, most notably pioneered by Bertolt Brecht, stays one of the influential actions in fashionable efficiency. Unlike realism, which goals to attract audiences into plausible characters and conditions, Epic Theatre is meant to interrupt the phantasm and encourage reflection. It prompts audiences to not grow to be absorbed in empathy however to step again and critically look at the forces shaping society.
For the drama classroom, Epic Theatre supplies each problem and alternative. Its methods are disruptive, mental, and extremely theatrical. They are additionally greatest explored by means of improvisation: prolonged actions that enable college students to embody Brechtian conventions in apply reasonably than simply studying about them in idea. Improvisation fosters experimentation, risk-taking, and collective problem-solving, all of which replicate Brecht’s rehearsal strategies.
This article gives 45 improvisation prompts, organised into three key areas: Character and Performance, Staging and Conventions, and Critical Reflection. Each of those areas accommodates 5 sub-areas, corresponding to direct handle, placards, or tune. Each of the sub-areas accommodates three improvisation prompts. Each immediate is prepared for the classroom, together with setup, activity directions, and a Brechtian studying focus. Teachers can use these actions on their very own or create a lesson sequence.
Character and Performance
Direct Address
Prompt 1: Interrupted Dialogue
- Setup: Two actors improvise a naturalistic dialog (e.g. pals disagreeing a few faculty mission).
- Task: At random factors, one actor should cease mid-line, flip to the viewers, and clarify their “true” ideas, earlier than snapping again into the dialogue.
- Learning Focus: Highlights how direct handle disrupts phantasm and makes the viewers a part of the change.
Prompt 2: Audience Confession
- Setup: One actor performs a personality delivering a monologue to a different character.
- Task: Midway by means of, they have to pivot to admit an alternate fact to the viewers.
- Learning Focus: Demonstrates Brecht’s goal of showing hidden motives by means of commentary.
Prompt 3: Double Version Scene
- Setup: Students create a brief situation (e.g. neighbours arguing over noise).
- Task: Perform the scene twice: first solely addressing one another, second with all traces directed out to the viewers.
- Learning Focus: Shows how direct handle reframes the connection between performers and spectators.
Gestus
Prompt 1: Social Snapshot
- Setup: Each pupil chooses a social sort (e.g. police officer, shopkeeper, beggar, politician).
- Task: They strike a nonetheless gesture that encapsulates this function (counting cash, demanding silence, begging). One by one, they step ahead and improvise a brief line that amplifies the that means of the pose. After sharing individually, college students mix into improvised brief scenes the place the gestus turns into central.
- Learning Focus: Students discover how bodily expression communicates social relations, not internal psychology, reinforcing Brecht’s concept that the actor’s physique can expose techniques of energy.
Prompt 2: Gesture Refrain
- Setup: In pairs, college students create a easy improvisation (e.g. physician–affected person, buyer–waiter).
- Task: Each actor chooses a single gestus to repeat each time their character asserts a key thought. For instance, a waiter would possibly bow and rub palms each time they demand fee. The gestus turns into a chorus that punctuates the improvisation.
- Learning Focus: Demonstrates how recurring bodily motifs remind the viewers of social roles and relationships.
Prompt 3: Contradictory Gestus
- Setup: Students are given impartial traces of dialogue corresponding to “I’m so glad you’re here” or “You can trust me.”
- Task: They improvise brief interactions the place the spoken line is undercut by an reverse gestus (arms folded, turning away, shaking head). Pairs develop the contradiction into full improvisations the place gesture and voice conflict.
- Learning Focus: Exposes the hole between what characters say and what their our bodies reveal, encouraging audiences to see contradictions in social behaviour.
Multi-role Casting
Prompt 1: Hat Swap
- Setup: One actor is given a single prop (a hat, scarf, or jacket) that alerts a change of character.
- Task: The actor improvises a two-character dialog (e.g. between a landlord and a tenant). They should swap the prop every time they swap roles, carrying the dialogue ahead with out breaking the movement.
- Learning Focus: Makes the artifice of efficiency express, reminding the viewers that characters are constructed and will be represented with the only of indicators.
Prompt 2: Three Roles, One Actor
- Setup: An actor is tasked with portraying three roles in the identical improvised story (e.g. a employee, their boss, and a union organiser).
- Task: The actor should transition between roles immediately utilizing posture, gesture, or voice. The story unfolds by means of these fast transformations.
- Learning Focus: Demonstrates Brecht’s precept that efficiency ought to spotlight social relations reasonably than encourage the phantasm of deep psychological realism.
Prompt 3: Tag Team Roles
- Setup: Two actors improvise a scene (e.g. a politician and a voter). A 3rd pupil is positioned on the aspect.
- Task: At any level, the third pupil can faucet one of many actors and take over their function, taking part in it otherwise (exaggerated, cynical, or comedian). The improvisation continues uninterrupted.
- Learning Focus: Highlights how roles will be interpreted otherwise, encouraging audiences to query the “fixed” nature of characters.
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Bertolt Brecht (Routledge Performance Practitioners)
Brecht and Critical Theory (Routledge Advances in Theatre &…
Bertolt Brecht’s Dramatic Theory (Studies in German Literature…
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Bertolt Brecht (Routledge Performance Practitioners)
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Brecht and Critical Theory (Routledge Advances in Theatre &…
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Narration in Action
Prompt 1: Outside Voice
- Setup: Two college students improvise a brief battle (e.g. siblings combating over cash). A 3rd pupil stands to the aspect as narrator.
- Task: As the scene unfolds, the narrator steps in to explain the motion in plain phrases (“She hides the money in her pocket, pretending to be innocent”), typically interrupting the movement so as to add commentary.
- Learning Focus: Highlights Brecht’s use of narration to distance the viewers from the phantasm and encourage evaluation of behaviour.
Prompt 2: Role-Swapping Narrator
- Setup: A bunch of three college students begins an improvisation. At any level, the function of narrator passes from one actor to a different, even whereas they’re within the scene.
- Task: Actors should juggle being character and commentator, swapping fluidly. For instance, an actor could cease mid-scene, narrate their very own gesture, then re-enter the dialogue.
- Learning Focus: Breaks continuity and underscores Brecht’s perception that performers ought to each play and analyse their roles.
Prompt 3: Director on Stage
- Setup: One pupil is assigned as “director” throughout a bunch improvisation.
- Task: The director walks into the scene mid-action, narrating what the characters ought to be pondering or what their behaviour represents (“Notice how the boss ignores the worker’s suffering — this is how exploitation works”). The improvisation continues whereas commentary is layered on.
- Learning Focus: Emphasises Brecht’s concept that theatre should clarify occasions reasonably than merely current them.
Status Swap
Prompt 1: Boss and Worker
- Setup: Two actors improvise a office battle (e.g. a boss reprimanding a employee for being late).
- Task: At a sign (clap or bell), the actors should immediately reverse roles, with the employee changing into the boss and the boss changing into the employee. The scene continues with out pause.
- Learning Focus: Makes seen how energy is constructed reasonably than pure, aligning with Brecht’s critique of social hierarchies.
Prompt 2: Parent and Child
- Setup: Actors improvise a home situation (e.g. a mum or dad telling their little one to tidy their room).
- Task: At random moments, the roles are swapped — the kid turns into the authority determine, the mum or dad turns into subservient. They should proceed the scene logically regardless of the reversal.
- Learning Focus: Reveals the arbitrariness of authority and encourages audiences to see energy as a efficiency.
Prompt 3: Teacher and Student
- Setup: One actor performs a instructor giving directions; one other performs a pupil who resists.
- Task: At the instructor’s sign, they swap standing roles immediately. The “student” now dictates the classroom guidelines, whereas the “teacher” should obey.
- Learning Focus: Exposes how institutional authority is sustained by means of efficiency and compliance.
Staging and Conventions
Visible Stagecraft
Prompt 1: Costume in View
- Setup: Two college students improvise a scene (e.g. a shopkeeper and buyer).
- Task: Midway by means of, every should turn into one other function by altering costume onstage in full view (including a hat, scarf, or jacket). They should narrate or remark whereas altering (“Now I become the manager…”).
- Learning Focus: Makes efficiency selections express, exhibiting audiences that character is a building.
Prompt 2: Onstage Scene Change
- Setup: A bunch improvises a brief story requiring two or three places (e.g. office, avenue, and residential).
- Task: All set or furnishings strikes should occur visibly whereas the story continues, with actors acknowledging the method (“Ignore the mess as we drag the chairs — the factory is ready now”).
- Learning Focus: Breaks phantasm, foregrounding the mechanics of theatre.
Prompt 3: Sound Effects as Spectacle
- Setup: Students improvise a narrative with dramatic sound moments (thunder, doorways slamming, site visitors).
- Task: All sound results are created by different college students onstage with seen props (e.g. sheet steel, drums, voices). The viewers sees the artifice.
- Learning Focus: Reveals the development of stage phantasm, conserving audiences critically conscious.
Placards and Signs
Prompt 1: Slogan Inserts
- Setup: Two actors improvise a office battle.
- Task: At intervals, classmates stroll on holding placards with slogans that remark (“The worker always loses”). The actors should acknowledge or reply earlier than persevering with.
- Learning Focus: Inserts commentary immediately into the motion.
Prompt 2: Statistic Placards
- Setup: A home improvisation (household dinner, buying journey).
- Task: Placards with statistics related to the theme are revealed (“1 in 5 children go hungry”). The dialogue should now replicate or resist the brand new context.
- Learning Focus: Connects private storylines to broader social realities.
Prompt 3: Placard Chorus
- Setup: While two actors improvise, the remainder of the category types a “chorus” holding up placards at chosen moments.
- Task: The refrain strikes as a bunch, chanting the phrases on their indicators aloud as they interrupt.
- Learning Focus: Adds collective commentary to personal scenes.
Song as Commentary
Prompt 1: Chanted Commentary
- Setup: A bunch improvises a battle (e.g. protestors vs police).
- Task: At the climax, the actors all of a sudden break right into a chant that feedback on the battle (“They fight for bread while others feast”). The chant ends, and the scene resumes.
- Learning Focus: Demonstrates Brecht’s use of tune to interrupt and analyse.
Prompt 2: Contrasting Song
- Setup: Actors improvise a tragic second (e.g. eviction).
- Task: Immediately afterwards, they have to carry out a cheerful, upbeat tune in regards to the occasion earlier than persevering with the grim motion.
- Learning Focus: Creates contradiction between temper and message, jolting the viewers into reflection.
Prompt 3: Solo Interruption
- Setup: A personality is mid-scene.
- Task: The actor steps ahead and improvises a solo tune or verse in regards to the occasion (“I pretend to care, but I only want money”). The scene then resumes.
- Learning Focus: Highlights particular person commentary alongside collective narrative.
Episodic Structure
Prompt 1: Three-Scene Story
- Setup: Groups select a storyline (e.g. pupil expelled from faculty).
- Task: They should improvise it in three distinct episodes, every launched with a title.
- Learning Focus: Emphasises fragmentation and evaluation over suspense.
Prompt 2: Title as Moral
- Setup: Before every episode begins, one pupil steps out to announce an ethical (“Episode One: Laziness Leads to Punishment”).
- Task: The improvisation follows, exhibiting the declared “lesson.”
- Learning Focus: Focuses consideration on concepts reasonably than plot twists.
Prompt 3: Audience Titles
- Setup: The viewers suggests titles for every episode.
- Task: Actors improvise scenes to suit these titles in sequence.
- Learning Focus: Makes audiences energetic co-creators, disrupting narrative management.
Freeze and Explain
Prompt 1: Frozen Thought
- Setup: Actors improvise a situation (e.g. college students dishonest on an examination).
- Task: At freeze factors, every actor should step ahead and reveal their character’s ideas aloud.
- Learning Focus: Makes inside motivations express reasonably than hidden.
Prompt 2: Social Commentary
- Setup: A household scene (e.g. mother and father arguing about payments).
- Task: At freezes, actors clarify the broader social forces at play (“This shows the pressure of poverty on working families”).
- Learning Focus: Connects private to political, a core Brechtian goal.
Prompt 3: Future Prediction
- Setup: Actors improvise on a regular basis eventualities.
- Task: When frozen, one actor predicts their very own character’s future (“If I keep lying, I will lose everything”).
- Learning Focus: Breaks suspense by revealing outcomes upfront.
Critical Reflection
Social Context
Prompt 1: Contemporary Rewrite
- Setup: Students choose a well known fairy story or fable (e.g. Cinderella).
- Task: Improvise the story, however rewrite the situation so it foregrounds a up to date social situation (e.g. Cinderella as a low-paid gig employee combating office exploitation).
- Learning Focus: Connects timeless narratives with fashionable points, underscoring Brecht’s goal of situating private tales inside broader social forces.
Prompt 2: News to Stage
- Setup: Students are given a headline from at present’s newspaper.
- Task: In small teams, they improvise a brief scene dramatising the problem however exaggerating energy relationships and systemic issues.
- Learning Focus: Turns present occasions into vital theatre, highlighting how theatre can replicate the politics of the current.
Prompt 3: Role of the Media
- Setup: A bunch improvises a home or office scene.
- Task: A “reporter” enters at intervals, delivering commentary or “news reports” that body the improvisation for the viewers.
- Learning Focus: Demonstrates how context alters interpretation, echoing Brecht’s emphasis on a number of views.
Breaking Illusion
Prompt 1: Actor Commentary
- Setup: Students improvise a naturalistic scene (household dinner, office dispute).
- Task: At intervals, actors should step ahead, break character, and touch upon their very own actions earlier than resuming.
- Learning Focus: Undermines immersion and promotes vital distance.
Prompt 2: Critic in Role
- Setup: A bunch improvises a battle.
- Task: A pupil taking part in “the critic” interrupts the motion to analyse and consider character behaviour, whereas the actors proceed.
- Learning Focus: Inserts meta-commentary immediately into the scene, conserving evaluation within the foreground.
Prompt 3: Step Out, Step In
- Setup: Actors improvise freely.
- Task: At the instructor’s cue, an actor should step out, clarify their motives, then instantly step again in and proceed.
- Learning Focus: Makes thought processes express, stopping audiences from dropping themselves in phantasm.
Active Spectatorship
Prompt 1: Audience Votes
- Setup: A scene builds to an ethical dilemma.
- Task: The actors freeze and the viewers votes on the subsequent motion. The actors should improvise in accordance with the vote.
- Learning Focus: Emphasises the viewers’s function as energetic members.
Prompt 2: Spectator Substitution
- Setup: A scene is underway.
- Task: At any second, an viewers member replaces a performer and improvises the function, altering the story.
- Learning Focus: Breaks boundaries between actor and spectator, empowering the viewers.
Prompt 3: Choose Your Ending
- Setup: A situation is improvised to a call level.
- Task: The viewers chooses from three doable endings (tragic, comedian, ironic), which the actors then carry out.
- Learning Focus: Demonstrates how outcomes are constructed reasonably than inevitable.
Historical Distance
Prompt 1: Time Travel Scene
- Setup: A up to date situation (manufacturing facility strike, political corruption) is chosen.
- Task: Students improvise the identical situation however set in one other historic interval (e.g. Ancient Rome, Victorian London).
- Learning Focus: Makes acquainted issues unusual, permitting vital comparability.
Prompt 2: Role of the Historian
- Setup: A scene is improvised previously (e.g. medieval peasants taxed by nobles).
- Task: A “historian” steps in to analyse and clarify how these occasions mirror present-day points.
- Learning Focus: Creates commentary by means of historic framing.
Prompt 3: Futurist Reframe
- Setup: A present situation (e.g. information surveillance) is chosen.
- Task: The group improvises it as if set 200 years sooner or later.
- Learning Focus: Encourages speculative evaluation of present-day behaviour.
Debate in Performance
Prompt 1: Split Audience Debate
- Setup: A scene builds to a call level.
- Task: Actors freeze. The viewers splits into two teams to argue for various outcomes. The actors then play out the successful alternative.
- Learning Focus: Turns spectators into political members.
Prompt 2: Character Tribunal
- Setup: A personality makes a controversial determination.
- Task: The actor steps out of function and stands trial earlier than the viewers, who query them earlier than the story resumes.
- Learning Focus: Puts judgement within the viewers’s palms.
Prompt 3: Argument Chorus
- Setup: Two actors improvise a battle.
- Task: The remainder of the category types a refrain shouting arguments or slogans for both sides, influencing the characters’ behaviour.
- Learning Focus: Embeds collective, social commentary into private tales.
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