I am currently directing a play at a local high school and decided to use leap frog as a warm up exercise for my cast. To add a fun twist into it, they had to leap over one another while remaining in character. The breakdown of the characters are as follows: Mom is in her early 60's and is in the early stages of Alzheimer's, Dad is a ghost, the oldest son is a doctor in his mid 30's and married to a very emotional wife, the middle child is in his early 30's, and the youngest daughter is in her late 20's and is pregnant. Seeing the students participate in this activity, that was clearly not a day to day event was very amusing indeed. I was impressed by how well they stayed in character even though they were leaping over one another. What was very interesting to see was that I did not give them any more specific instructions other than to play leapfrog in character, they could have chosen to be silent as they played, however they engaged in conversation the entire time teasing each other just as a family would do. They all made decisions based on their characters: being a ghost dad "walked through" them (as explained to me when I asked what he was doing), the pregnant daughter walked around everyone deciding it was best not to jump around while pregnant, the emotional wife began crying when she could not make it over one of her taller cast mates and the doctor tried to organize and discuss the "best strategy" in completing this task.

Overall, I would say that our leapfrog warm-up was a success. The cast really seemed to enjoy it when we held a discussion about the activity afterwards. We talked about the idea that strange situations really bring people together and since we are working on building "family connections" among the cast, this activity was perfect. Everyone had to let their guard down and agree to be silly for the activity to work...I am sorry, I just do not think there is a way to look "cool" playing leapfrog. The cast ranges from freshman through seniors and the pure fact that they do not all know each other very well outside of rehearsal has been one of the struggles in connecting as a cast, however leapfrog really helped to break down those barriers. Playing leapfrog really helped us remember what it was like when we were children playing with our friends in the yard carefree.
The aspect that I liked most of all about leapfrog though is the imagination that the students had to use. I was asking high school students, to act like adults 10-40 years older than them, while participating in an activity that they themselves had not participated in for about 10 years. This dynamic was very interesting to watch and see how they pulled it off. All in all leapfrog was a success.