Improv activities in pairs

Aim of Task:

To enhance our improvisation skills by doing different activities, in partners, where each one of the members in the pair should play a game that implies being creative about the other partner's actions.

Description of Task:

We did three tasks:

• In the first one, we had to make pairs. My pair was Vincent. Partner A would start a conversation with a word starting in "a." For example: A beautiful day it is today, isn't it? Partner B would continue the conversation starting with a word that starts with the letter "b." For Example: Beautiful indeed, it is! Then, partner A would have to continue the conversation with a word starting in C. And that is how the conversation would continue going on, with each letter of the alphabet following. For non-native English speakers, the task became rather difficult since we would have a limited vocabulary. However, it also forced us to create simpler conversations.
  
• The second activity was in pairs too. My partner was Daniel. Partner A would start telling a story in first person, but would stop in the middle of the sentence so that partner B could fill in with a word he would choose. For example, partner A would start saying "Today I went to the....." and partner B would have to complete with "store!". Partner A would then continue the story, and stop in the middle of the next sentence for Partner B to complete it. That it is how partner A would then end up telling a story with partner B filling in the blanks. It was a pair contribution.
• The third activity, in pairs as well, was not about verbal but physical improvisation. My partner was Martin. In this activity, partner A would start miming a pose. Partner B would then come and complete the scene doing some other pose. Since it required less use of the English language, it was easier for us, non-native English speakers. We started doing different expressions, emotions. Martin would complement my miming with his poses. In the end, we made up different scenes that conveyed improvised messages.
  

Reflection:

It was interesting to see that in all exercises, although both of us were working in the improvisation, somebody eventually took the lead. For example, in the first exercise, somebody would make his sentences according to one topic, and the other person would just make his sentences on the same topic. In the second exercise, there was obviously somebody taking the lead. It was essential to the dynamics of the exercise, that somebody took the lead and the other person just followed the same topic. On the third exercise, the leading was less evident. However, one person would start the image and another person would have to continue building up on the image. There was a type of leading on the three of the exercises.

Conclusion:

Even when improvising, somebody has to be leading for the improvisation to make sense. There has to be somebody whom other people have to follow so the improvisation works. During a performance, it is difficult to tell who is the leader. The ensemble has to be very well synchronised to know what is going to happen. This is one of the things where trust and good teamwork is important in the ensemble.