The TheatreSports™ and comedy improv company ImproNOW!

How workshops develop concentration, self esteem, team work & creativity

Concentration
To concentrate effectively on any activity, you need to be in the present, free from focusing on past events and concerns about future ones. Improvisers learn to find this space so they can focus their concentration wholly on their role in the scene, and what their team mates are doing. Consequently, we have adopted and adapted many fun games to facilitate this. What class wouldn’t benefit from students with a few more concentration skills?

Self esteem
TheatreSports is very effective in developing the individual’s self esteem. Being “in the here and now” provides the space where students are free to express and develop their own ideas without fear of censorship or ridicule (as long as they are G rated). When the audience claps, they are applauding who the players are and how they can express their own creativity rather than how well they can express somebody else’s.

Teamwork
TheatreSports also trains the individual to support the development of the self esteem in others. Once the scene topic has been provided, the first player with an idea, enters the stage and sets the scene. Team mates that follow need to accept anything created previously and find ways to support and build onto these ideas. What could be better for self esteem than to be watched and listened to by your peers and the audience, and have any suggestion you make treated with respect, and made the focus of future activity? They also learn to give each other space to develop their own ideas, but to also rescue each other when in need. All of this requires the development of trust between players and provides a wonderful foundation for any type of teamwork on and off the stage.

Creativity
The development of flexibility and lateral thinking skills are other benefits of playing TheatreSports. Each scene played needs to be developed utilizing the novelty rules of different games, eg mime, rhyme, song, dance or speaking in gibberish, just to name a few. Players build confidence in coping and adapting to novelty situations they find themselves in.

Endorsement

“Improvisation skills are probably the most valuable tools an actor of today can posses. TheatreSports encourages these skills to flourish”

- Nicole Kidman

Primary

PRIMARY 3-6 ‘Improvisation games’

A sensational and fun opportunity to develop performance and improvisation skills in a positive, rewarding and confidence-building environment. TheatreSports™ and improvisation teaches self-expression, socialization, public speaking, lateral thinking and cooperation. With Impro NOW!, students will be taken through a number of fun activities that teach the underlying principles of improvisation. The workshop culminates in students using their new skills to perform one of the classic TheatreSports™ games.

PRIMARY 3-6 ‘Mayhem and Morals’

Years R – 7 (50 minutes)
This collage of comedy and thought provoking scenes is a fun introduction to live theatre as well as a useful teaching tool. Students are laughing one moment, pondering right and wrong the next. In your school setting, three improvisers intersperse hilarious TheatreSports™ games with short realistic scenes about issues identified by your students. After seeing their ideas come to life on stage students are encouraged to share their perceptions.

PRIMARY 3-6 'And The Winner Is ....'

Years 3 – 6 (50 minutes)
Inspire your students to actively engage in creative writing with a contest where the winners get a different form of “A”

APPLAUSE!

You want your students to write, and we want your students to win through creativity.  There are no limits!  All teachers must do is set the deadline.  Your students write the stories and our comedians’ do the judging to decide which students’ stories get performed on stage.  Using the winning papers as our guides, we will re-create the stories as only improvers can – with energy, wit, and imagination.

The rewards for writing have never been so great!

SECONDARY

SECONDARY 'You’ve Got What It Takes’

Middle School   (Single period show)
Three improvisers will work with students from the audience to act out scenes based on audience suggestions following the rules of hilarious TheatreSports™ games. This is a unique opportunity for students to perform with professional improvisers and gain first hand experience in improvisation and its’ life relevant principles:

• Committing to a shared purpose
• Daring to fail
• Living in the moment
• Yielding for the benefit of the group
• Saving others
• Accepting and empowering others ideas
• Making others look good.

SECONDARY Creative Team Building

Middle/Senior School
 (Double period workshops – series of 2, 3 or 4 also available)
What an inspirational way to commence planning Outdoor Ed Camps, Theatre Productions, Community Service projects or simply getting students supporting each other more in class. Improvisation engages students through laughter, bonds them through novelty shared experiences and creates team work through the application of the following life principles:

• Committing to a shared purpose
• Daring to fail
• Yielding for the benefit of the group
• Making others look good
• Accepting and empowering others ideas

SECONDARY Everyone’s a Comedian

Middle/Senior School
 (Double period workshops – Series of 2,3 or 4 also available)
There is a comedian in all of us. We just need the right tools and a little encouragement to experience the joy of making others laugh. Hold on to your hat and come for a ride through some of the wackiest physical and verbal performance games you can imagine, each providing an insight into a different aspect of comedy.  

SECONDARY Physical Theatre 1 & 2

Middle School (Double period workshops)
A fantastic opportunity to explore human physicality. These practical workshops are filled with great ideas for creating alternative physical realities on stage. In each workshop, students will experience three totally different approaches to presenting themselves on stage and then will be challenged with short take away scripts on which to apply their new skills.

SECONDARY Character Capers

Middle/Senior School
 (Double period workshops – Series of 2 or 3 also available)
90 minutes jam packed with activities to help students create new and exciting characters for their next show, or just for the fun of it. During these workshops, novelty games will allow students to discover how history, occupation, emotion, status and physicality can all play vital roles in creating different characters. Students will then be challenged to go away in groups and create a short piece based around the characters they have developed.

Student Shows*

After having learned the basic principles, have the students perform their own show in a supportive and fun atmosphere. Sit back, relax and laugh as our MC conducts a pre show brief, warm up and the show.
*Generally only suitable after a series of workshops

Interschool Competitions*

This is a great way for students to practice their performance skills. The stakes are higher, but so is the learning, laughter and inter-school relations.
*To perform at this level, students will need to be participating in ongoing training.

TEACHERS

TEACHERS ‘Teaching Drama for the first time’

Years 3 – 7   (90 minutes)
A really fun and gentle introduction to teaching drama in primary schools. No previous experience, creative flair, artistic genius, stage, props, costumes or scripts necessary. Just good old fashioned fun. 

TEACHERS ‘Stimulating creative writing’

Years 4 – 7   (90 minutes)
Children are at their most creative when they are at play. Here, inspired by activity and interaction, their bodies and minds work together creating and problem solving. Using this element of play you can lead students through the story creation process in a variety of ways. Let us show you how.

An Activity to Try

To prepare the students for a workshop, try this activity:

Simple Freeze Tag: One student is molded into a frozen shape by another student. They must then start a short scene justifying their position, eg. They have their hands in the air…”Don’t shoot! I’ll give you the money” or “Balancing a piano on my fingertips was a trick I learned from my father who was a circus performer”. If working in pairs, get the current performer to now to mold their partner and repeat.

Freeze Tag: As above, but continue the scene until a new position is reached. The partner (or group) yell out “FREEZE”.  Another person must take over the frozen person’s position and start a completely different scene, justifying their position.

Advanced Freeze Tag: As above, but have 2 people in the scene. After yelling out “FREEZE”, the new person coming in tags out only one of the players, adopt their position and start a new scene, taking into account the remaining player’s position. The remaining player doesn’t move until they can justify their position in the new scene.

Tip: Always be encouraging, especially when they are first starting. Assure the student that whatever the justification for his/her position, it is right – after all, it’s their interpretation, not yours. It’s all about having a go.

Rural Tours on Application

Junior/Middle/Senior Schools
Impro NOW! state wide country tours. You can choose any combination of the above programs and we will bring them to you. The more schools in your region that get involved, the lower the costs for everyone. Why not have an interschool event or interschool teacher training workshop. Talk to us and see what can be organized.