Bedtime Story

Bedtime Story

Bedtime Story

One improviser improvising reading a bedtime story to the audience, based on a suggestion of a title from the audience. The other cast members bring it to life. There is constant change of focus between narrator and the actors bringing the story to life.

Example

Narrator: Once upon a time there was a small frog sitting on a lily pad.
Actors on other side of stage become a lily pad and other actor becomes a frog sitting on them.
Frog: Oh lily pad, I do feel lonely.
Lily pad (talking in one voice): I’m your friend.
Frog: I know. But you’re a lily pad and I’m a frog.

Teaching Purpose

  • Helping a group play longer scenes and stories for the first time in a fun stress-free way.
  • Also helpful for helping a group listen to each other and share ideas on stage.

Additional Tips for Playing

  • Talk to the audience as if they are kids going to sleep, they enjoy it if it’s following a noisier game as it gives a nice break in tempo.
  • Don’t just do what the narrator says, do that but also add to it and run with it yourself.
  • Listen to each other, it should feel like a shared team game.
  • Keep the story structure simple and give the central character (protagonist) an objective.

Variations

Show Introduction

“This game is called Bedtime Story. One of our actors will read you a lovely bed time story for you kids, while the other actors bring it to life. Please can we have a suggestion for a title of a bed time story.”

Origin

This was invented by Ruari and Sean McInerney during a level 2 course of Hoopla.

Hoopla courses we play this game in

Mostly in our level 2 course and also a bit in our level 1 course , super short-form and improvised narrative course.

Categories

This exercise is in the following categories:

Narrative

Listening

Teamwork and support

Short form games

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