Acting Exercise: Impromptu Delivery

Purpose

This entertaining exercise helps delegates practice their acting in front of an audience. Each person will be required to deliver a speech about a given topic. You can vary the exercise by expecting a specific style of speech or just leave it completely uncontrolled. It is ideal for training on acting, storytelling and public speaking.

Objective

Give an impromptu speech for a given topic selected by a delegate.

What You Need

• Blank cards

Setup

• Provide the blank cards to all delegates.
• Ask delegates to think of a topic for others to deliver an impromptu speech on. There is only one rule for the selection of the topic; that the person suggesting it can give a speech on the subject if required. This is just to make sure that delegates come up with useful and practical subjects as opposed to expressing the first thing that comes to their minds.
• Ask delegates to write this on their cards, fold it and place it at the centre of the table between them.
• Allocate 3 minutes for this part.
• Now ask a volunteer to start by picking up a card at random.
• He should then read out the subject requested and then proceed to give an impromptu speech on the spot about the topic.
• The speech maker has about 3 minutes to give the speech.
• Others should listen and then ask questions at the end for about one minute.
• Ask for the next volunteer to pick another card and deliver a speech.
• Continue until all delegates have given an impromptu speech.
• Follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 2 minutes

Activity: 3 min choosing topic + (3 min * N speeches) + (1 min * N feedback) = 35 minutes for 8 delegates

Group Feedback: 10 minutes

Discussion

Whose speech was the best and why? What did you think of your own speech? What topic was the most difficult and why? Now that you have seen how others delivered their speech, what would you do differently if you had a chance to go through the exercise again?

Variations

Depending on what you want to train the delegates on, you can bias the exercise in a certain direction by expecting certain topics or certain styles of speech.

Examples of restricting topics:

• Choose a subject from news events of last week
• Choose a subject about a celebrity
• Choose a subject about current affairs
• Choose a subject about the latest gadgets
• Choose a subject about the latest movies
• Choose a subject about the latest video games

Examples of restricting speech styles:

• Deliver an impromptu sales pitch
• Deliver an impromptu comic sketch
• Deliver an impromptu motivational speech