Silent Role Plays

Introduction

Role playing stimulates the active participation of all participants in a training course. When playing a role, a person can practice certain situations, without the fear of making mistakes. Role playing can also be used to present certain types of information in a visual way.

This “Silent Role Plays” exercise is an introduction to role playing. It stimulates the fantasy of the participants as they have to express themselves without speaking. It can also be used as an icebreaker between sessions in an FFS.

Objectives

1. To stimulate fantasy and creativity of the participants

Duration

• Depending on the purpose, 10 – 30 minutes

Materials

• Small pieces of paper

Methodology

1. The facilitator prepares before this exercise a number of papers with tasks.
2. Ask one of the participants to start and show him/her one of the papers.
3. Without speaking, this person will now have to play the role which was given.
4. The other participants try to guess what was written on the paper.
5. The first person who guesses the right answer will be the next one to play a role. If more persons answer at the same time, the role player will decide who’s next.
6. Start the exercise with some easy tasks, and gradually give more difficult ones. Try to give some tasks related to IPM.
7. Examples of tasks:
   – Play cricket
   – Swim
   – Frog
   – Dead
   – Ride a bicycle
   – Butterfly
   – Fish
   – Dog
   – Sleeping
   – Weeding
   – Transplanting rice
   – Farmer
   – Harvesting rice
   – Harvesting egg plant (brinjal)
   – Use a sweep net />– Spray pesticides
   – Take a soil sample
        etc.