Customer Reviews

Theatre Games for Young Performers: Improvisations and Exercises for Developing Acting Skills (Contemporary Drama)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book contains many challenging exercises which are right on track for the middle-level student of drama. The students enjoy the cooperative nature of most activities contained in the book. Teachers will find it easy to use and assess students' work thanks to the clear, concise directions and the included worksheets students use to plan the activities.

The index in the back also is extremely helpful in locating just the right type of exercise; entries are listed in categories such as "no preparation," "noisy rehearsal," "beginner level," and many other cross-references.

When I started teaching drama five years ago, this book was my lifesaver in planning classroom activities!

Viola Spolin's works tend to be the benchmark for theater students, and after reading this one, I am a convert to Novelly. Her ideas are useful, concrete, creative, and apply DIRECTLY to working onstage, not to hocus-pocus theater jargon. As a professional actress and drama instructor, I recommend this highly.

After nearly fifteen years of being away from the classroom, I was a bit nervous about teaching drama again. In searching for a resource that would get me back in the swing of things, I debated between this book and the classic Viola Spolin books. I finally decided on this one, and I couldn't be happier! The lessons in this book are easy to follow, easy to prepare (there's not much to preparation at all!), and, best of all, fun for the kids in class! The lessons are also easily adaptable to different circumstances, such as short class periods, environmental concerns (like needing a quieter activity), or needing a quick activity to warm the kids up. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in integrating drama into a classroom, or as a stand-alone resource in a full-fledged drama curriculum.

I found this book very easy to follow and the ideas are great for both regular classroom teaching and one off drama workshops. The excersises are even split into catagories depending on their topic and energy/noise level.

I love this book. I use something from it at least once a week in my classroom. It's wonderful for teaching the basics. Pantomime, expression, scene building, creative thinking... As other reviews state, it doesn't get into playing objectives, but you can cover that in other lessons and activities. That's simply not the scope of this book and that's fine by me. The activities are especially good for sixth graders. Seventh and Eighth, you'll have to play it by ear depending on your group. Most of mine are "too cool" for some of the activities, but a lot of the games are pretty adaptable for that age group if you get creative.

Maria Novelly's book was one of the first I purchased as a new drama teacher, and I'm very grateful to have had such an excellent resource so early on. Most of the the theater game compendiums I've read before or since have been hit-or-miss; I'd get use out of some suggested activities, but the others lacked depth or educational merit. Not so with Novelly's book--I've used every activity outlined in her book, and I continue to use them with great results. Children love these exercises--especially "Walking Through," "Imaginative Journeys," and pretty much everything in the Improv chapter--and importantly, they learn a lot about what it means to be a performer through their engagement with them. Highly recommended!

This is an excellent book for anyone who teaches drama, new or experienced teacher. It includes meaningful activities for development of pantomime, improvisation,and vocal performance. Each activity is clearly explained and includes a suggested worksheet guide for students with a sample provided for the teacher to share. This book works well as either a teacher resource or as a student text. I used this for many years and found it to be one of the best resources I had. It is almost a complete curriculum for beginning drama and is suitable for middle school through secondary students.

i bought this for my other neice. for christmas, as she is into drama, and acting, im sure she will love it and take it with her to drama club.

This book has a nice variety of games and lessons suitable for young actors. It offers variations to games and lessons to dovetail with your own program. It has some fantastic insights for the teacher too and is an effective book to pull out when your program needs a little twinkle or to a beginning teacher who needs a basis on which to build his or her program.

This book contains many of the activities Viola Spolin uses in her Improvisation book with more simple terms. I really enjoyed the activities as did my kids. (I'm a MS choir teacher who is now teaching drama, too.) Each one is set-up to be a lesson. The times on the activities are not always accurate. One short script-writing interview presentation should have taken 30 min. but took me three days to do. Maybe I didn't teach it well and I am at a school where more than half of the students' first language is Spanish but still, a difference of 2 hours, hmmm. Others were quite accurate but I needed a timer to stay on target. Highly recommended for any drama teacher as it was given to me by my HS drama teacher.