One Word at a Time Improvisational Language Structure with Roddy McDowall and Carol Burnett

As many readers here know, I teach Communication as well as Acting at the university.

One of the innovations I use in my English as a Foreign Language courses is a set of interactive games known as Improvisational Language Structures (ILS) which are a series of activities I have adapted from theatre games and improvisational comedy games to the language classroom with the goal of fostering creative spontaneous language use. Students focus on the game at hand rather than on the language alone and tend to become much more communicative.

One of the many games I use from the ILS hat of tricks is called Number of Words and it is is played by giving a number to the players along with a situation, characters, and context and they must then improvise a conversation in which they may speak only the assigned number of words. Typically, for classroom purposes, I encourage students to choose five to eight words for the scene as more than that tends to bog them down in finger counting of words spoken and less gives them less leeway for conversational development . . . BUT . . . when I first demonstrate the game, I will do so with as many as fifteen words and then with three and even one . . . just to show it can be done and it can be entertaining and a fun exercise.

For her sketch comedy show, Carol Burnett was comfortable with improvisation as a means to develop material and in this sketch, we see her and the amazingly wonderful Roddy McDowall performing a comedy sketch that quite obviously is related to the number of words ILS pattern with a set number of one word spoken in each line.

Obviously, they’ve taken liberties with the end but it could very well have been based upon an improv game in which someone drops the rules in the moment. Either way, it’s a fun scene and shows a great deal of creativity.

Speaking of creativity enhancement, this is one of the activities I include in the IMAGINATIVE CREATIVITY ENHANCEMENT workshops that I conduct for corporations, acting seminars, schools, teacher training programs, and other organizations. I’ve a number of powerful techniques – trance-based and improvisational creativity based – that do wonders for folks who wish to release their creative energy. We have found the workshops work great as team building exercises as well as to enhance productivity or creative flow.

If you’re interested in booking a workshop for your organization, check our webpages at http://www.briandavidphillips.com and contact Lorraine for a booking (English and bilingual Chinese-English formats available).

All the best,
Brian
www.BrianDavidPhillips.net

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