Drama Game: Hot spotting

Age: 7 years plus

Players: Small Groups

Time: 5 minutes

Skills: Improvisation, Role Play, Speaking and Listening

Still images (or freeze frames) are a wonderful way of outlining a story and can be explored more deeply using thought tracking or improvisation. Students develop confidence working alongside other members of the group. The audience may have listened to characters’ thoughts or watched the image come alive for a few moments. Chances are they are curious about the characters and the story; they would like to know more. So why not ask the characters?

Traditional Hot Seating is a challenge for many students, requiring confidence to be questioned alone by the rest of the class. It's great for actors who are getting their teeth into a script, or for secondary drama students, but not always so easy with younger children. Hot Spotting builds on still images and thought tracking, enabling the class to ask questions of a whole group.

Begin with a group which has created a nice dramatic moment in a freeze frame and ask them to make it again. You can do some thought tracking if you haven't already or ask them to bring the scene to life for a few seconds. Now, invite the audience to ask questions of the characters. Is there anything they want to know more about? Encourage them to think about motivation by asking characters ‘Why did you do that?’ The students in the still image stay ‘in the picture’ but can move and speak.

Participants feel they have the support of the group around them, while they are anchored in a scene, inside a story. They already identify with the character and are thus more able to answer as that person. Make sure you go round the whole group so that other characters are asked questions – and that way you get lots of different points of view!