More Theatre Games for Young Performers: Improvisations and Exercises for Developing Acting Skills

Useful

Very helpful!

Zimmerman did it again! Her previous work, Intro to Theatre Arts was a clear, readable and comprehensive textbook for middle and high school theatre. Her present work is not only a collection of games and exercises for the classroom, but a creative, logical, and step by step approach to incorporating improv into any middle school or high school curriculum. She includes forms for the students to evaluate their own work. Many of the games are old hat to experienced teachers but there are a number of unique exercises and even non-acting theatre games that even the seasoned professional educator may find of interest. Zimmerman starts off each chapter with an inspirational story about a theatre educator.I must admit that this review may be biased since she uses one of my games in her book.

I run an improv program in Switzerland. This is a fantastic book with tons of very good and new exercices. They are easy to run, very well explained and it opened new way of teaching for me. I lost this book, and I have just ordered a new one today! Laurent

Had this book been written in the mid 80's it may have been vaguely cutting edge. As a first edition published in 2004, it is sadly behind the times. It gives me the small town "Waiting for Guffman" feel, and NOT in a good way.The commentary in this book is not helpful and should be eliminated almost in its entirety. I also did not find any of the games listed as new material. These games were either old games that had been re-named or fragmented versions of other games. One google search on the internet would have brought me closer to a new game than the entirety of this book.Many of the scene examples in the book break the iron clad laws of Improv: 1) Yes, and 2) Don't ask questions and 3) No real time I.S.C. (Improv Stage Combat). As a teaching tool, especially for young children (is the target market for this book middle school children?) this book missed the mark. If a teacher wants to teach children to be polished and clever Improvisers, (s)he needs to make sure the children have a strong basic understanding of the Improv rules, especially for short form games.The author of this book needs to read the Pearls of Wisdom from "Truth in Comedy" by Charna Halpern, Del Close, Kim Johnson, the bulleted pearls are helpful for beginners. She should then read anything by Viola Spolin, "Theater Games for the Classroom: A Teacher's Handbook" or "Improvisation for the Theater". She should also read "Group Improvisation: The Manual of Ensemble Improv Games" by Peter Gwinn.I teach high school Improv and am currently putting together an Improv book list of items that will be added to the school library. Unfortunately, this book is nowhere on that list.