Drama Game: Poetry in motion

Age: 7 to adult

Players: Small groups

Time: 25-30 minutes

Skills: Improvisation, Movement, Verbal Expression

Materials: A selection of poems

For this activity, you can either use a selection of short poems or break a long one into separate verses. Give a print-out to each group of four to six participants. Ask them to read through the poem and to underline any key words or images. Next, they should devise a few freeze-frames (between three and five, depending on the text and student ability) to represent any significant phrases.

By now the words should be more familiar to the students. Their next task is to find a way of performing the poem by moving between the still images and sharing out the spoken lines between them. They can try saying some of the words when they are moving and some of them while they are still. Some words or lines could be spoken singly while others could be given choral emphasis.

Director’s tips

• The groups can perform their pieces in order if you have chosen one long poem
• You can use poems, raps or texts
• This is great for storytelling (e.g. Dickens, Edgar Allen-Poe, Shakespeare)

Play online

Give each participant a line or couplet from a poem. They should practice it aloud and then work out some still images and movements. And, of course, they should try to learn it!

Useful poems (for a range of ages)

• Bat Patrol by Georgia Heard
• Brendan Gallacher by Jackie Kay
• Brothers by Andrew Forster
• Checking Out Me History by John Agard
• Cosmic Disco by Grace Nicholls
• Dear Key Workers by Laura Mucha
• The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
• Hurricane Hits England by Grace Nicholls
• Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
• The Lady of Shalott by Alfred Tennyson
• Lady Winter’s Rap by Grace Nicholls
• The Magic Box by Kit Wright
• Night Flight by Laura Mucha
• On the Ning Nang Nong by Spike Milligan
• The Right Word by Imtiaz Dharker
• The Tyger by William Blake
• Wanted: Wizard’s Assistant by Laura Mucha

Links to these can be found at http://dramaresource.com/poetry-in-motion