Be confident without words

Length: 2 x 3 hours
Punctuality: Due to the nature of the topic, every participant must do the accepting and facial mirroring exercises, I recommend to close the door after 20 minutes.

“Why do you spend so much time talking?”, will ask the audience after your third minute of talk. They are there to see action, emotions, imaginative objects and distance places and landscapes. And you, as an improviser, have the power to take them there. And you only need confidence to stop putting words into your gestures, emotions and objects. Let them speak by themselves!

The key skills to learn are:

• Feel and grasp objects,
• Incorporate objects, rooms and spatial limitations like two storeys into your scenes
• Value sound effects as part of yours mimics
• Building environment with familiar and unfamiliar objects
• Listen and accept emotional gifts
• Importance of actions and emotions vs. talking

At the end you will learn about the power of your movements and imagined objects and you will speed down on stage knowing that your actions and mimics are filling the space and telling a story. You will be confident in your silences!

• Ask the students to explain their expectations before starting the workshop. This helps you understand what they are looking for
• Ask for feedback after each games to see if the students grasp the goals of them
• A short break of 5 minutes after 90 minutes gives smokers the opportunity to go outside and reloads the energy of the group

• Circle Up
• Hi-Ha-Ho
• Bunny: With an car

• Buttocks tagging: All the players try to tag other players using they buttocks. After some minutes the game ends and each player says how many people he/she tagged
• Double knee tagging: All players try to tag the two knees of other players at the same time with their hands. After some minutes the game ends and each player says how many people he/she tagged
• Killing scenes in a circle: All players are in circle and in turns, they choose a weapon or killing method and they slowly go to another player and play a killing scene. It is important to slow down the killing, to give the partner hints about how he is going to be killed and then he will slowly die enjoying his moment of fame. Afterwards the “killed” player chooses a third player and plays with him a killing scene.
• Walk around with a fix point: Players just walk around the room straight to a fixed point in front of them. When they reach it, they choose a new point/corner of the room and the walk straight to it. They have to focus on their tasks and don't interact with other players.

• Grasp objects:. Players start grasping pipes in front of them. When they grasp them, they apply tension in their hands and when they release the pipe, the tension disappear. The pipes are at different heights and have different diameters. After a while, they grasp one pipe and they move their bodies. It is important here, that the hand stays fixed in one point.
  • Afterwards the players image walls in front of them or on the sides. The palms must have pressure when touching the walls and real walls could be used at the begginning
  • Opening doors is a many step process
  • Now the edges of walls are “feel”
  • Then everyone tries to move a refrigerator which is too heavy for one person
  • At the end everyone carries furniture from one corner of the room to another one
• When going down- or upstairs, stairs are like ramps at the half of the body
• If you need to show that you are far away from the other player, just use a vanishing voice
• If you have a scene with two storeys and you are in the first floor, just look to the ground to talk with the players in the ground floor. They will look up to talk with you
• Mimicking actions with sound effects: Every player mimics everyday actions like cooking, brushing their tooth, cleaning the floor, changing bulbs, putting a picture on the wall with sound effects. Sound effects are important because they add realism to our actions and they facilitate the repetition of actions

• Describe familiar and unfamiliar rooms with objects/Building the environment one object at a time: A place for the scene is chosen. One after the other people go to the scene and add objects. The old objects are taken into account by the new players. Afterwards no place is chosen and by putting objects together, the nature of the environment must be created. After enough objects are there, two players play a scene taking all the objects into account
  • Always put furniture like tables and cupboards on corners of the stage to make easier to move around the scene
  • Keep the environment simple, with a few objects, if some of the players on stage don't have much experience doing improv
• Playing a scene adding objects by the audience: Two players play a scene in a familiar place like a farm. Every time a member of the audience clash, they freeze and the member of audience comes to the stage and adds an object to the scene. Then the scene continues. The audience helps to create a realistic scene and the objects may influence the story
  • When objects are grasped, they are accepted by the players
• Das Ding (in German) one player represents all objects in the scene

• Superheroes with your name: All players are standing in circle. Everyone says an object starting with the first letter of their names. Then they repeat the word with a superhero intonation, afterwards they add a superpower using a property of that object. At the end all heroes in slow motion fight with each other

• Walk around the room with tensions: fatigue, on holidays, contained positive and negative energy, on danger
• Emphasizing movements with three players: Three players are standing in a row on stage. Player A starts an activity. Player B exaggerates one aspect of the activity. Player C exaggerates player B's movements. The intensity of the exaggeration can also be changed. After a while the moderator clashes and player A starts a new activity
  • It can be exaggerated some property of the object (big, small, hard, soft), action (speed, frequency), the intention of the action (precision, facial expressions) or the environment where it takes place (height of the table, hardness of the water while swimming)

• Walk and catch
• Jump and Association Jump The moderator may give directions like like `horizontal`, `up`, `down`, `sideways`, `big`, `small`, `light`or `heavy`.
• Noise ball
• Ball Metamorphosis
• Count until 21 in group

• I, you and we

• Real Estate Broker
• Six players are in the same place
• Different places: Two players receive two different places from the public. They don't know the place of the other player. They have to guess the other place and play a scene together

• One player starts doing an abstract action in the middle of the circle: Other players go to the centre of the circle and imitate him. Then each player has to say an sentence related to that action. One can be supportive by saying “I will do it for ever”
• Emphasizing movements with three players: Three players are standing in a row on stage. Player A starts an activity. Player B exaggerates one aspect of the activity. Player C exaggerates player B's movements. The intensity of the exaggeration can also be changed. After a while the moderator clashes and player A starts a new activity This is an excelent exercise to explain the students the importance of actions
  • It can be exaggerated some property of the object (big, small, hard, soft), action (speed, frequency), the intention of the action (precision, facial expressions) or the environment where it takes place (height of the table, hardness of the water while swimming)
• Action Freeze: One player does a simple action with all the details. After one minute, he must say one sentence and freeze. A new player replaces him/her and start a new action from the last position. When one minute is over, he can say one sentence and the games continues. This trains using body language to describe places
• Dubbing actions: Two players with different (tensions fatigue, on holidays, contained positive and negative energy, on danger) play a scene without talking in a place with a strong action like operating a patient, exterminating rats. After a while, they replay the scene, this time they have to discuss about a topic which don't belong to that place. Players have to try to talk seldom and emotional discussions are nicer.
  • Even while discussing players have to care for each other. Verbal violence isn't allow. Each player gives information to the other one.
• Actions with tensions and discussions: The same a the above games but the discussions and the actions are played from the begginning at the same time

• Increase and Decrease in circle
• I am a tree

• Columbian fuck head (warm-up): Players are in pairs. Mirror the movements of your partner one movement behind counting 1, 2, 3 and 4 or having a rhythm. After you master this, the player A mirroring movements, says words and the player B must repeat the words, one word behind player A and invent new movements at the same rhythm. It is concentration exercise and it is very difficult to make it right.

The goal is get one small emotional gift from our partner and give back a gesture at the same rhythm

• Action-reaction to small movements increasing them: Two players with different emotions sit on two chairs on stage. One starts doing a small emotional gesture. The second player sees the gesture and responses with this gesture. Then the action-reaction continues with a rhythm and the gestures are slowly being increased and exaggerated
  • Some basic emotions: anger, fear, joy/happiness, sadness, disgust, liking, surprise
  • This exercise trains emotional listening
  • Always try to make your partner look good
  • Keep your decisions logical and simple. The audience is going to be always interested in your stories
  • At the beginning don't talk. Then say only one sentence and use it afterwards. Don't add any other sentence. For example: “everything is going to be already”. You can change the intonation of the sentence.
  • Your body must face the emotional risk. Not run away from the stage

Remove this section after the workshop

• Boom Chicago (place, relationship, problem, 3. player comes with a solution)
• Deaf replay
• Backwards interview
• Long form getting to a final scene: The audience proposes a topic. 4 short scenes are played and one is choosen by the audience. The players have to play many scenes which end in the choosen scene
• Only questions
• Reclamation
• Sex with me
• Disaster movie
• ABC Game

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