Exercise: Tell your life story in two minutes

• The main idea of the exercise is to develop improvisational skills. Ideally, the student would be told the topic and then right away be on the timer and on the spot.
• Of course, this will only be surprising two the first student chosen. If we wanted to expand it into a class activity we could choose several different topics to give people and let them tell stories concerning each of those.
• Also, the “tell the story of your life in two minutes” could be made into a homework assignment which would be more along the lines of “tell your life story in 100 words or less,” which would morph the activity into something more about summarization and compaction which are also interesting. This homework assignment is not mutually exclusive with the in-class activity.
• The in-class activity could be followed up with a discussion on improvisational techniques and general guidelines on how to weave a story as you go.