Last month Impro Melbourne hosted its annual Schools Theatresports™ challenge post-COVID. The entire Impro Melbourne Company volunteered their time to host the event in Elwood, and mentor students from 8 schools, and across Years 7-12. The below is written by some participating students and teachers.
“Theatresports™ is a ‘competitive’ version of Improvised drama, designed to give audiences the same feeling that one might have at a sporting match. You may have seen it be displayed in various school events such as a house Theatresports™ competition, or on TV in shows like ‘Whose Line is it Anyway’. A Theatresports™ team involves 3-5 people, but scenes can involve any amount of people from that team. Each scene will be scored out of 5 by each of three judges, and essentially the highest-scoring team at the end of the show wins. Once it’s your turn to go up on stage, your creativity and expression runs the show. The golden rule of improv in general is to always make your partners look good, so making sure you interact with them and accept any offers they might want to introduce to the scene. Some light-hearted jokes may also make the judges’ laugh a bit, which is always good.” – Gabriel Di Falco, Year 9
“The Impro Melbourne Theatresports™ Challenge was held at the Phoenix Theatre at Elwood College, and it was against teams from different schools. When we got there, we did an hour-long workshop that was run by some of the Impro Melbourne staff. We met with our mentors who work with IM and helped us a lot throughout the day. We chose the games that we wanted to play, and then it was showtime! All the teams performed in front of an audience, and everyone did so well. After each game that a team played, the judges gave scores, and the team at the end of the day with the best scores won the whole competition. There was the award ceremony, where the judges gave awards for the best line of dialogue, best physical offer and most supportive player. After the Intermediate ceremony, the seniors did their performance, and at the end of the day, we were lucky enough that both of our teams came home with trophies!” – Liv Talko, Year 8
“Each year, we hold a Theatresports™ competition at our school which runs pretty similarly to what we did. We played in our houses, with a Senior and Intermediate division. From then, our two school teams were picked, one for the senior comp and one for intermediate. We practiced every Friday before school – it took a while to get used to waking up so early! In the end it was worth it though, because we all ended up being pretty great friends. We got pretty good at the games too! Then we had an awesome workshop with an Impro Melbourne company member, who helped us to make our scenes better and taught us some new games. We all had a great time and by the end we were much more confident than before!” – Emily Lynch, Year 8
“I enjoy improvising because there is a constant element of surprise to it. Particularly in groups, you can’t control where the scene goes, you just need to embrace what’s happened and find a way to build on it. This act of building on a scene has given me the opportunity to be creative in a different way from what would usually be expected in a performance space. Improvisation has taught me valuable skills like quick thinking, responding to unexpected situations and working in a team. These skills have helped me in everyday life situations, as well as on the stage. Additionally, participating in improvisation has built my confidence when facing these situations.” – Lisette Wilkinson, Year 11
“Participating in the Impro Melbourne Theatresports™ challenge has been a fantastic experience for my students. Seeing them grow as performers and develop friendships across year levels has been wonderful, as has to see them develop a love of improvising. Improvising is such a powerful tool for young people, that teaches them to think in different ways and work together to problem-solve and be creative – they’ve even started making up their own Theatresports™ games! And now they want to start getting ready for next year!” – Tim Roach, Drama teacher
Our acclaimed impro workshops are now available to all students via our teen workshop courses starting next week in Frankston and Melbourne.