IMPROV
WHY YOU SHOULD EMBRACE THE BIZARRE AND TRY IMPROVISATION
Improv Club – where collaborative games and absurd scenarios make Friday afternoons fun and increase your confidence
Improv Club is easily one of the best parts of our week . The group can range from three to 20 people from Years 10-13 , so the club is always diverse and informal , but no matter what , the session ends with the entire group laughing over increasingly brilliant and absurd acting in response to Mr Dickinson ’ s prompts . Working together and bouncing off each other ’ s ideas makes the club an intensely enjoyable and creative experience . The club has let us get to know people in other year groups with a similar love of drama , and we have all gained confidence through these sessions , as no one is embarrassed any more by the incredibly odd scenarios we find ourselves acting out .
A typical session starts with some warm-up games . We all love these games as they allow us to forget about the seriousness of school and the IB . One of our favourite games is the ‘ no S game ’, where you are out if you say a word containing the letter ‘ S ’. In a recent session , we played the ‘ no S game ’ in a scene between a scientist , a reporter and a protester – where the scientist had discovered a dinosaur egg that they could bring back to life !
After a warm-up game , Mr Dickinson will introduce us to the topic of the session ; for the last term this has been ‘ status ’. We normally explore the topic through an activity , such as ‘ the status party ’, in which each character enters the space with a strange character trait which gives them different statuses – this impacts how they interact and relate with each other . Once we had an amnesiac cowboy and a French snake attending their neighbour ’ s baby shower ! While the scenes are bizarrely hilarious , I think that comedy aside , the stories we create have greatly improved over the year . We now have clear story arcs where the turning point feels natural within the flow of the scene , and as actors we work together to create the best and funniest scenes we can .
Going into a new school year is always a challenge , and now going into our last year we know more than ever that having a creative outlet will be so important to reduce stress . Our Upper Sixth workload will be tedious to manage , but you can definitely count on lots of us going along on Friday afternoons to Improv Club !
PJ Birt , Ellie Phillips and Fenella Hodges , Lower Sixth
116 TRIPS , CLUBS AND ACTIVITIES