PAPER BAG
SCENES
CURTAINS UP ACTING STUDIO
PAPER BAG SCENES: A DRAMA ACTIVITY for KIDS
Encouraging Creativity
Small groups of students create and perform an original scene, using three random objects given to them in a paper bag as props in their story.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Prepare a collection of paper bags, each containing three random objects, e.g. a brush, a roll of duct tape, and a glove.
Divide the students into teams of two or three. Tell them each team will need to improvise a three minute scene using the items in the bags for props. They must use all three items, but they don’t need to use the items as the objects they are if they don’t want to, e.g., A hairbrush could become a microphone or the duct tape a bracelet.
Stress that their scenes should present a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Give the teams five to ten minutes to work out their scenes. Then regather and perform for each other.
MORE DRAMA GAMES AND THEATER ACTIVITIES YOU MIGHT ENJOY:
FAIRY TALE TABLEAUX - Actors create three frozen scenes that communicate a fairy tale.
FREEZE TAG - Two actors improvise a scene until a third actor calls freeze, takes one of their places, and starts a new scene.
STORY CIRCLE - Students improvise an imaginative story as a group, with each student in the circle adding one line at a time.
© 2023, Friends of the Groom Theater Company
Curtains Up Curriculum by Friends of the Groom Theater Co. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Curtains Up is a training program designed for young actors sponsored by Friends of the Groom Theater Company.
It is available to the general public for free under the terms of the Creative Commons License above.