At the professor's request, four volunteers marched to the front of the class where Jamal was standing.

"It's got to come up through your toes and out through your gut," the instructor said, after asking Jamal to lie on his back on the floor. The volunteers then squatted on his limbs.

"What is he doing?" Jamal thought, nearly laughing at his professor's request. "This is so stupid."

But as Jamal Barksdale (senior-real estate) began the monologue he'd memorized for Theater 102, Introduction to Acting, he found the exercise made him feel the part. In the monologue, his character explains to his mother why he won't go to his father's funeral.

"As I kept saying my lines, the whole thing about an overbearing father came out, and I found myself trying to make her believe me," he said.

As Jamal yelled the lines to an imaginary mother staring at him from above, the four volunteers struggled to keep his arms and legs down.

Jamal's experience is just one example of the bizarre yet instructive exercises practiced in all 15 sections of Theatre 102. The classes are taught by graduate acting students and are intended for non-theater majors, said Peg French, assistant professor of theater and supervisor for the Theater 102 classes. Enrollment is limited, with as many as 500 students turned away each semester.

Students began Tuesday's class --taught by Robert Neal on a practice stage in the Arts Building -- with several warm-up exercises. But the muscles they stretched were slightly different from those flexed in any gym class.

"Everybody make some big faces," yelled one student who started off the class. "Now make some little faces."

Other exercises included swinging their arms in circles with increasing speed while chanting "go," massaging each other's bodies simultaneously in a chain, and yelling tongue-twisters like: "I'm not a fig plucker nor a fig plucker's son, but I'll pluck your figs 'till the fig plucker comes."

Theater 102 classes often require students to prance about in absurd form. But there is little chance for embarrassment in this class, where outrageousness is encouraged.

"There are two different worlds in class -- the one on stage and the one in your seats," said Steve Wagner (senior-history), a student in Neal's class. "In the world on stage you let out your inhibitions."

Wagner let his out Tuesday when Neal made him play "Superman."

"I am Superman and I can touch the ceiling," Wagner yelled as he began the game by jumping up to touch the ceiling. "I am Superman, I can pick up this chair. No, I can pick up all three of these chairs," he continued, extending three fold-up seats above his head.

"At first, I thought, 'I am going to look like a complete idiot,' " Wagner said later about the Superman game. "But I realized that everybody's going to have to go through something like this."

After running around the stage in a frenzy for about a minute, Wagner was told to start his monologue. The result was a much more impassioned delivery.

"I could definitely tell that there was more emotional power behind the monologue," he said of the results.

While improvisational techniques are taught in all of the classes, the teaching assistant decides which techniques the class uses.

"Teaching acting depends on what has worked for you as an actor," French said. "Most of them do improvisational things because those challenge their creativity and inhibitions. Plus, it's a good way to highlight acting basics."

Neal said many of the exercises he gives to students he learned from his own acting classes. But a few of the exercises -- like having four people hold Jamal down -- are Neal's own ideas.

"I guess that one I just kind of came up with on my own," Neal said of Jamal's exercise. "I wanted him to feel what it was like to be physically held back so he could feel it emotionally. You try to get students to live the part instead of just saying the lines."