Drama Game: Guess who I am

Age: 5+

Players: Whole group, small groups, pairs

Time: 10-20 minutes

Skills: Improvisation, role play, speaking and listening

Last issue we looked at questioning characters inside a freeze frame or still image. Another fun way to improvise characters is by using pictures, photographs or works of art as a prompt by displaying this on a smart board or poster. Choose a picture with plenty of activity in it and at least as many characters as there are students. You can use illustrations from story books and textbooks, historical photos, images from graphic novels, movie stills or works of art.

Start by demonstrating to the class. Secretly choose a character from the picture; speak as though you are that character and see if they can guess who you are. Here's an example of a character playing ‘hide and seek’ in the painting Children's Games by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

‘Okay you lot, I'll count to 20 and I want you all to hide! I promise I won't peep. And don't all hide in the same place. Off you go! One, two, three…’

When the students have guessed who you are, ask them to work in pairs. One partner chooses a person, animal or object from the picture and speaks and acts as that character for the other to guess. Then it's the other partner's turn to secretly choose another character. When everyone's tried it, you can ask pairs to show what they did to the rest of the class. They only need to speak a sentence or two, depending on their proficiency.

Options of artists who include large numbers of people in their pictures include Bosch, Brueghel, Hogarth, Judy Joel, Lowry, Madox-Brown, Archibald Motley, Renoir, Diego Rivera, Seurat and Steen. Photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Alex Prager are also great references for this task. Many children's picture books contain useful illustrations for this activity, such as The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson and Where's Wally? by Martin Handford.