STORY CIRCLE: A DRAMA GAME FOR KIDS
Creating a Group Story

Students are given a title and must improvise an imaginative story as a group,
with each student in the circle adding one line at a time.

Step-by-Step Instructions

• Students sit in a circle. Give them a title for a story, e.g., “The Best Birthday Ever.” (Other possible titles: “One Day at the Zoo,” “A Spaceship in My BackYard,” “The Talking Dog,” and “The Great Big Race.”)
  

• One student starts the story by saying a single sentence. The person to their right adds a second sentence, and the next person in the circle adds a third. The story continues around the circle with each student adding one sentence at a time to add more information and further the story.
  

• Remind students that the story has to make sense. Each thing that happens in the story should build on what happened before it–so students should avoid adding a funny idea just to make people laugh, or adding a big change that doesn’t make sense. Each person must listen carefully and remember what has already been said, and the whole group has to work together to create a single unified story. 
  

•  Remind the students that a good story has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. 

MORE DRAMA GAMES AND THEATER ACTIVITIES YOU MIGHT ENJOY:
FAIRY TALE TABLEAUX - Actors create three frozen scenes that communicate a fairy tale.
PAPER BAG SCENES - Groups of students use random items from a bag as imaginary props to inspire scenes.
PROPS - Students take turns using objects as props—imagining them to be different from the objects they actually are.

© 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.