Michael Rohd’s activating approach works in the following stages:

• Warm ups (energy/focus and trust work). The purpose of warm-up activities is to build energy, focus and trust: “to get people playing together in a safe space, to energize that space, and to create a sense of comfort in the collective doing of specific and structured activities” (Rohd, p. 4). 

• Bridge Activities. Bridge activities begins to theatricalize the space. Bridge activities “use image work, improvisation, and discussion to create pretend worlds, explore group perceptions, and to start identify core issues for dialogue” (Rohd, p. 49). 

• Improvisation. Improvisation activities that are designed to lay the foundation for the more complex activating scenes to come. They involve living in a pretend world, not t entertain, but to play every moment truthfully with "an honest human response" (Rohd, p. 74). Improv activities are followed by feedback questions such as: Did you stay in it? Was it real? Did you build the action or story together?  

• Activating material and facilitation. Activating scenes poses questions and explore choices and options in situations with believable characters and relationships. They are drawn from questions and issues uncovered in bridge and improv activities. Activating material is structured, but not scripted. Scenarios such as the following might be offered in a reproductive health workshop: A girl’s friend brags about losing her virginity and teases her friend for being reluctant to try it. A teen tries to get specific information from her mother about a sexual issue, but she only gets a sermon of “don’ts” in response. A girl agrees to become sexually active with her boyfriend, but only if he will get tested – something he says isn’t necessary. 
  Note: The idea here is not to teach the girls about the right or wrong way to handle things, but for them to explore the issue from the perspective of the characters they develop. Questions and decisions are then explored during facilitation, a process in which you freeze the scene, turn to the group, and pose questions such as “What else could she do in this situation?” Individuals with suggestions then alternatively replace the protagonist and play out the scene once more. Rohd puts it like this:  “This then allows you to investigate the reality, the wisdom, and the potential of those choices within real-life circumstances, and to actively analyze strategies and possibilities with everyone in the room through the replacement process” (Rohd, p. 103).