Gibberish (drama)

Giving its own meaning to an invented language.
Creating the sound of a language.
Activating the body, developing body language and other non-verbal skills
Developing debate culture.
Let emotions appear through the invented language.

Improvisational exercise based on communication skills without meaningful language. Expressing oneself with body language, non-verbal communication and meaningless sounds.

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30 – 60 min

Procedure/steps

1. The facilitator introduces the gibberish “language”: it sounds like a language, but it only has an inner meaning. Activating body language and non-verbal communication becomes more important. The facilitator can invite one of the participants to show how they can communicate together with gibberish (see the video below). (approx. 3 minutes).
2. The facilitator asks everybody to try to create as many sounds as they can. (1,5 minutes).
3. The group split into pairs, everyone chooses somebody. The task is to argue in gibberish, using only meaningless sounds, body language and non-verbal communication. (approx. 5 minutes).
4. Subsequently, the couples change. At this stage within the couple, one of the two has to explain an action to the other and has to make himself understood using only gibberish and body language. (5 minutes for each pair)
5. For the last task the group is divided into two groups, approx. the same amount of people in each group. One person stands in front of his or her group and starts a discussion with the person chosen by the other group. The groups support and incite their member. Then, in a natural way, another group member replaces the leading person and so on.

Evaluation/Final debriefing

At the end of the activity, the participants sit in a circle and share their reflections:
How did it feel to communicate in gibberish? What was challenging, what was easier?

Literature/Video

Viola Spolin – Improvisation for the Theatre
https://spolingamesonline.org/introduction-to-gibberish/
https://spolingamesonline.org/eyewitness-gibberish/