Exploring Dialogue: A Theater Exercise Using Prewritten Lines

Young performers build a theater scene from prewritten lines, using gesture and intention to shape its meaning.

OBJECTIVES: To place prewritten lines in context, either freely or in response to predetermined prompts.

AGE: Ages 11 and up.

In this exercise, groups work with a set of prewritten lines. Since the lines are already provided, participants do not have to worry about inventing the dialogue.

Rules

• Each participant may deliver only one line.

• During the first phase, the lines must be delivered in the order given.

• The exercise requires at least five participants. If a group has five or six members, remove lines from the end until the number of lines matches the number of participants.

First Phase

I give each group five minutes to create its own interpretation of the scene.

After the first performance, we see whether the group has created a recognizable context:

• Who are they?

• Where are they?

• What happened?

The lines alone do not give us this information. The performers’ gestures and delivery must reveal what the text leaves unsaid.

The work therefore has two dimensions: the group establishes the overall situation, while each participant shapes the meaning of their individual line in relation to that context.

The groups then reinterpret the same lines through a series of required variations, each time trying to create a new meaning.

The Text

1. Now someone needs to explain this to me. How could this have happened?

2. I had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see anything.

3. Oh, come on! Now it turns out this is all my fault. That’s not fair.

4. But who could have done it? Someone we know?

5. Please, let’s not panic. We can find a solution to anything.

6. We’re finished. We’re ruined. This will change our lives forever.

7. It sounds like something has happened, but maybe I misunderstood.

Variations

• Everyone is crying except one person, who is laughing.

• Everyone is laughing except one person, who is crying.

• No one may respond to the previous line.

• The scene is performed through gestures alone, without words.

• No one speaks to one particular person in the scene.

• The order of the lines may be changed freely.

• The lines are delivered in reverse order.

• With seven participants, arrange them into two pairs and one group of three.

Reshuffling the Line Fragments

1. Maybe I misunderstood. Now someone needs to explain this to me.

2. How could this have happened? I had nothing to do with it.

3. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see anything. Oh, come on! Now it turns out this is all my fault.

4. That’s not fair. But who could have done it?

5. Someone we know? Please, let’s not panic.

6. We can find a solution to anything. We’re finished. We’re ruined.

7. This will change our lives forever. It sounds like something has happened.