While team building exercises may primarily be thought of as an adult activity in a corporate environment, teens can also participate in these types of programs with great success. In fact, team building activities for teens will help them gain and develop crucial skills for their teenage and adult years. Teens are often faced with unique challenges due to them being at a sensitive stage of their development. Team building activities give teens opportunities to develop critical life skills in a controlled, teaching-focused environment. Importantly, these team building activities for teens are fun—they’ll get to play, laugh, and bond with each other. Live, interactive murder mystery theater is a great way to get teens involved in plays but also to apply critical thinking, analytical, communication, and public speaking skills.

Team building exercises are an excellent way to teach teens the art of teamwork and leadership skills. For organizations who work with teens, finding team building activities is important. Teens need to learn skills in order to build trust, encourage collaboration, build confidence, mitigate conflict, and improve communication. Some teenagers may struggle with getting along with their peers or operating in groups. Thankfully, team building activities for teens can help them build interpersonal skills as well as gain confidence, become team players, and become more self-aware of their actions. 

Some benefits of team building activities for teens include the following skills:

• Promoting motivation
• Improving communication
• Building trust
• Developing critical thinking
• Learning feedback
• Enhancing cooperation
• Increasing leadership skills
• Progressing productivity
• Enriching motivation
• Working towards a common goal
• Advancing problem-solving
• Involving goal-setting

Fortunately, many activities are available for teen participation that will enable them to develop these key skills.

Theater is a unique, immersive experience that grabs teens attention away from other life (often digital) distractions. For a teen’s brain to reach its full potential, both left and right hemispheres of their brains need to be activated, which includes participating in the arts like drama. When teens are exposed to the arts, they gain important benefits in addition to the skills development mentioned above. Teens who participate in the arts are more likely to participate in community service and less likely to drop out of school. Also, teens who participate in theater benefit by:

• Explore their inner creative side
• Be exposed to new cultures
• Improve their communication (such as through song and dance)
• Develop their imagination to create a character
• Build their patience
• Learn new morals from plays
• Improve empathy for others
• Enhance self-esteem

Additionally, team building activities for teens, especially those considered at-risk and vulnerable, help with representing externally what happens internally. They can be chosen as leaders when usually they are not selected for leadership roles, which assists with building confidence and self-esteem. Participating in drama activities also helps teens improve their reading, discipline, writing, and presentation skills. They learn to have an intention in life through theater.

Known as a popular party game, one of the most effective team building activities for teens is participating in live murder mystery plays. Seeing live theater removes teens from an increasingly digital world—one that is rife with often social media, video games, and streaming content. Instead, teens get to be present in the moment to act and breathe life into a character. They will interact with live people, their friends, and family. They get to explore new, hands-on experiences. Audience members get to participate in the live theater production rather than sit idly by as a passive water. Plus, teens will have to work together in order for the production to come alive, be fun, and to solve the murder mystery.

With murder mystery interactive plays, teens will have to don their best thinking caps and leave the digital devices at home. Players get to learn their characters and develop them as they think they should be. After the crime happens, teens have to hear the evidence of the crime and determine who is playing the murder. Some murder mystery plays let the murder know they are the killer, while others make it a complete guessing game. The games may involve a murder at the beginning of the live performance with the rest of the play involving an investigation, or the murder may continue to kill off guests throughout the play. Participants may even be able to dress up to get the full effect of being an actor. Teens will enjoy all the play acting!

Murder mystery plays can be silly, spooky, or chock full of drama, but they usually have a lesson contained within them. The plays may have a theme to help teach teens certain life lessons, such race relations in a small town or how immigrants fared upon arrival. Teens can learn about moments of history in a fun yet teachable setting. Teens will have to use their critical thinking, analytical, and play-acting skills to connect the dots and catch the murder. In the process, they will learn about important periods of history as well as events based off real-life stories. Team building activities for teens don’t have to be boring—get them involved in murder mystery live theater so they can put their acting skills and thinking caps to good use! 

Organizations interested in team building activities for teens should know that murder mystery plays offer fun, interactive, and life skills development opportunities. Plus, your teen clients will thank you for the amazing experience.  From 1800s New York City to Hollywood in the Movie Golden Age during the 1950s, Live In Theater performs an incredible range of murder mystery plays that are designed to be one-of-a-kind immersive, online experiences. We developed an experimental entertainment theater that draws from real-life, true-crime murder mysteries, historically-accurate and researched truth, and inspired by real events so the plays are as accurate and feel as authentic as possible. Live in Theater creates these murder mystery plays so they are friendly for teens, because the company believes everyone should be able to participate in some fun, murder mystery drama!