Creative Arts Ideas for Isolation

Acting

Essentially creating your own show reel – who knows who might see it!

1. Recreate famous film scenes/ speeches, keeping them age appropriate for you!

Ideas include:

- Liam Neeson’s speech on phone in Taken.

- Russell Crowe’s Gladiator Speech.

- Jennifer Lawrence’s Silver Lining Playbook ‘He’s harassing me’ speech.

- Lindsay Lohan from Mean Girls ‘The Limit does not exist’.

2. Mix gender roles – actresses recreate male speeches and vice versa.

3. Play both parts – recreate famous film conversations from two people, playing both roles.

For example Back to the Future:

Marty McFly: Hey, Doc, we better back up. We don't have enough road to get up to 88.

Dr. Emmett Brown: Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.

Obviously you can do much longer conversations too.

4. Many films in one take – keep the camera rolling as you go through several famous short phrases from films: For example:

Bond - James Bond……Avengers Assemble…..Just Keep Swimming…..Life is like a box of chocolates…..Why So serious…..Frankly My Dear I don’t give a damn…..

5. Shakespeare with a twist – as well as performing Shakespeare Monologues, you can do them as another character that you wouldn’t expect to see in Shakespeare. Imagine the Joker from Batman doing ‘To be or not to be’ monologue.

Or if you are good at any accents you could ham it up with a strong accent that wouldn’t normally be in Shakespeare.

6. Different characters in films – recreate a famous scene from one film, but using a famous character from another film.

7. Dramatic readings of famous poems – can put a twist on this too, for example put a female twist on the poem ‘If’ – ‘And which is more, you will be a woman, my daughter’ etc.

8. Dramatic readings of song lyrics – not easy to do without starting to sing at some point!

9. The deliberate mistake – recreate a famous scene, poem or song lyric and get a word wrong on purpose and challenge viewers to spot the mistake.

10. Dramatic readings of children’s books – posting this online could make you very popular with parents!

11. Create your own online quiz – you act out scenes from films and TV, do dramatic readings of poems, of song lyrics and famous speeches. Attach a question to each one, they have to name the film, TV programme, actor, writer of the poem, singer of the song, deliverer of the speech etc.

12. Impressions – If there are some famous people or characters that you can do an impression of, share it online and see if people can spot who you are being.

Writing

1. Prompts for stories – these include writing stories based on a song, a news story, a picture, and historical fact/ occurrence, something that happened to you or someone you know.

2. Write an episode for a TV show that you like.

3. Write the plot for the next film in a franchise.

4. Write a sequel to a film.

5. Re-write songs – try to keep the essence of the song but put your own personal slant on it.

6. Group poetry – for two or more people. Both write one line of a poem, then fold the piece of paper over and swap your pieces of paper over so the other person can only see the last word of your line. Then you have to write the next line that rhymes with that word, keep going for however many lines you want, then reveal your poems at the end.

7. Writing buddies – find someone else who likes writing and send each other pieces of your work. Helps to keep you writing, coming up with ideas and get some feedback too.

8. Write monologues about things you are passionate about. If you know any people who like acting maybe get them to perform it for you if you don’t want to do it yourself.

9. Fan fiction – write stories that contain one or some of your favourite characters. Imagine Dr Who teaming up with the Avengers. Or Sherlock being ill whilst investigating a murder and being treated by Dr House.

10. Famous opening lines – take a famous opening line then write a completely different story, script, poem, song etc from there.

11. Think of an issue that you think doesn’t get enough press coverage, then create a piece of writing about it.

Dancing

1. Recreate famous dance routines.

2. Recreate famous dances from film or TV, including the comedy ones.

3. Create your own dance routine for a particular song.

4. Create dance exercise videos for people to get a fun work out to.

Music:

1. Put your performances/ cover versions online.

2. Mix styles – sing famous songs in a completely different style. Imagine ‘Imagine’ as a rap etc.

3. Do your own ‘guess the intro’ quiz online. Sing the opening line or two of some famous songs and see if people can recognise the songs.

4. Find existing songs or write your own that get a message across about how you are feeling about someone or a group of people or a situation. For example a thank you message to key workers, a miss you message to friends an family, a message of hope to everyone.

5. Mix and mash ups – put lyrics from famous songs together one after the other in one take.

Visual Artists:

1. Draw the view out of your bedroom window – a classic, but in these times more relevant than ever.

2. Create images of your favourite fictional characters or famous people.

3. Recreate famous pieces of artwork.

4. Create pictures of your friends and family – could imagine they are wanted by the police and you are the sketch artist!

5. Create picture of famous places and scenes around the world.

6. Create pictures of famous moments in history.

7. Find out a fact you didn’t know then create a bit of artwork based on that.

8. Create your own fictional characters and pictures of them.

9. Think of an issue that you think doesn’t get enough press coverage, then create a piece of artwork about it.

10. Create new album covers for existing albums.

And a bonus one for everybody – if you want to use your creativity to help ease the boredom. Try inventing your own board game!