Columbian Hypnosis (w/ Variations) One actor holds her hand palm forward, fingers upright, anything between 6 and 10 inches away from the face of another, who is then “hypnotized” and must keep his face constantly the same distance from the hand of the hypnotizer, hairline level with her fingertips, chin more or less level with the base of her palm. The hypnotizer starts a series of movements with her hand, up and down, right and left, backwards and forwards – the partner must contort his body in every way possible to maintain the same distance between face and hand, so that face and hand remain parallel. The hand must never do movements too rapid to be followed, nor must it ever come to a complete halt. The hypnotizer must force her partner into all sorts of ridiculous, grotesque, uncomfortable positions.
Variation #1: Hypnotism with two hands. Same exercise, but this time the actor is guiding two fellow actors, one with each hand, and can do any movement she likes.
Variation #2: Hypnotism with the hands and feet. Like the preceding versions, but with four actors, one for each of the leader’s hands and feet.
The Greek exercise One actor stands in the middle and at least seven or eight others stand around her. She starts a movement and everyone else must use their bodies to help her complete this movement. For example, if she lifts a foot, someone immediately places his body under this foot so that the actor’s foot is supported. The overall effect should be almost as if the protagonist was weightless, in space. She must always move slowly enough to allow the other participants (who must move quickly) time to discover her intentions, which should not be spelt out.
The Image of the Hour The Joker calls out a time of day, and the actors must do whatever movements their bodies usually make at that particular time. The Joker runs through different times, different occasions, and significant dates – for example: Election Day, birthday celebration, funeral, etc.
Second Series: Walks
Slow Motion The winner is the last person home. Once the race has begun, the actors never stop moving and every movement should be executed as slowly as possible. Each ‘runner’ should take the largest step forward she is capable of, on every stride. When one foot is being moved in front of the other, it must pass above knee-level. Another rule – both feet must never be on the ground at the same time. This exercise, which requires considerable equilibrium, stimulates all the muscles of the body.
Third Series: Massages
In a Circle The actors sit in a circle, one behind the other, each person placing their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them, in order to keep roughly an arm’s length apart. Then, with their eyes closed, everybody tries to find and massage the hardened points of the partner’s body, in the neck, around the ears, the head, the shoulders, the backbone. Switch directions. Then ask everyone to lie back on the person behind them, who must carry on massaging them, this time on the face.
Fourth Series: Integration Games
The Bear of Poitiers One participant is designated the bear of Poitiers (a French town where this game is played). She turns her back on the others, who are the foresters. The latter busy themselves with their forestry tasks – woodcutting, planting, tree-felling, etc. After an interval, the bear must give vent to an enormous growl, whereupon all the woodcutters must freeze in their positions, not making the slightest movement, absolutely motionless as if their life depended on it. The bear goes up to each one of them, growling at will, using any trick she can think of to make them laugh, to make them move, to reveal that they are alive. When the bear succeeds, the forester who has given himself away becomes a second bear, and the two bears set off to do the same thing to the other foresters, who still try not to move. Eventually there are three bears, then four, and so on.
Fifth Series: Gravity
Horizonality Sequence Without moving the rest of the body, which should stay still, the actor stretches his neck and head forwards and backwards. The movement should be executed on a single horizontal line. The actor bends his neck to the left and right, keeping his head upright and moving it over his left and right shoulders, still staying on a single horizontal plane. Same exercises for the thorax and the pelvis.
Verticality Sequence The actor is seated on the ground, arms and legs spread wide, forming a right angle, dividing her body vertically into two parts, each half having one arm, one leg, one shoulder, half the head, half the pelvis, half the chest. She advances in this fashion on her hindquarters, leading first the right side of her body forward then the left. The two parts of the body should be as dissociated as possible, the movements isolated as much as possible. Having ‘stepped’ forward, she goes back to where she started from, in reverse.
Circular Movements The actor moves forward by means of rounded movements only – circular, oval, spiral, elliptical, etc. The arms revolve at the same time from front to back, up and down. The head should describe curves in relation to the ground, going up and down, never staying at the same level. The legs and the whole body go up and down. The movement should be continuous, gentle, rhythmic, and slow.
Day One Exercises
Afternoon Session
II. LISTENING TO WHAT WE HEAR
First Series: Rhythm
Changing Rhythms Using voices, hands and feet, all the actors set up a rhythm together. After a few minutes, they change it slowly, till a new rhythm emerges, and so on, for several minutes.
The Machine of Rhythms An actor goes into the middle and imagines that he is a moving part in a complex machine. He starts doing a movement with his body, a mechanical, rhythmic movement, and vocalizing a sound to go with it. Everyone else watches and listens, in a circle around the machine. Another person goes up and adds another part (her own body) to this mechanical apparatus, with another movement and another sound. A third, watching the first two, goes in and does the same, so that eventually all participants are integrated into this one machine, which is a synchronized machine. The first person to start the machine is also the person who can accelerate the rhythm and who will eventually stop the machine. The aim of this exercise is to reveal inner rhythms, rather than external cliché behaviors. The machine can be an emotion, a city, a government office, a culture, etc.
Chain Rhythm Dialogue In a circle, one person thinks of something he wishes to express and tries to translate what he has thought into a rhythm of movement and sound (not simply mimicking the sound of the words!) The person to his right, watches him and answers him, but addresses the answer to a third person (to their right), who listens to him, and addresses a fourth person, etc. At the end, the participants tell each other what they were thinking, reproducing their rhythm while giving the translation.
Second Series: Melody
Orchestra Two groups of actors improvise two orchestras, preferably with improvised instruments, while one actor invents a corresponding dance. He dances towards one of the orchestras, replacing someone in it, while the instrumentalist becomes a dancer and dances in the direction of the other orchestra, replacing another instrumentalist who becomes a dancer and so on. Every time a replacement is made the rhythm must of necessity change.
Third Series: Sounds and Noises
Sound and Movement A group of actors vocalize a particular sound (the sound of an animal, of leaves, a road, a factory) while another group does movements which correspond to the noises, in some way ‘visualizing’ the sounds. If the noise is ‘meow’, the representation need not necessarily be a cat, but whatever visualization the actor associates with that particular sound.
Ritual Sound Same thing (as the Sound and Movement exercise), except that the group which makes the sound must restrict itself to the sounds of a particular ritual – waking up in the morning, going home, getting to work, a classroom, the factory, etc.
Fourth Series: The Rhythm of Respiration
Inflatable Doll The actor “pulls the stopper out of another’s body” as if the actor was an inflatable doll full or air. The part of the body ‘un-stoppered’ can be the finger, the knee, the ear, etc. The un-stoppered actor acts as if he was in the process of emptying; at the same rate as he breathes out, he deflates, until he falls to the floor like an empty rubber doll. Then the first actor approaches the doll-actor’s empty body and does the movements and sounds of someone filling up a balloon with an air pump. The ‘balloon’ must fill up with the same amount of air as the actor is pumping, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. After the relevant time, without any motor movement (as if he was a real doll, a real balloon) he re-inflates and his colleague helps him into an upright position. Once the body has been blown up again, everyone plays like a child with their ‘balloon-doll’, which should bounce on the ground or off the wall (but never walk).
Two Groups, Facing Each Other Each group gives vent to a different sound, and tries to force the other group into submission.
Fifth Series: Internal Rhythms
Rhythmic Images (w/ Variation) In the exercise-cum-game, an actor goes into the middle (of the circle) and the rest try to express with their bodies, each in turn, a rhythmic image of that actor, of how they perceive him. After every actor has had a turn individually, they all repeat their rhythms together. Then the actor can try to integrate himself into this orchestra.
Day Two Exercises
Morning Session
III. DYNAMISING SEVERAL SENSES
The Blind Series
The Imaginary Journey In pairs. The blind partner must be led across a series of real or imaginary obstacles found or invented by the guide, as if the two of them were in the middle of a forest (or any real or fantastic environment the guide has in mind: downtown in a big city, in a crater on the moon, a supermarket, etc.) As in all the exercises of this kind, speaking is forbidden because it distracts attention from images and sounds, from imagination. All information must be given by physical contact. Whenever possible, the guide should make the same movements as the blind person, imagining his own story. The guides should sow obstacles throughout the room – chairs, tables, whatever is available – so that the obstacles are sometimes real, sometimes imaginary.
The blind person must try to imagine where she is. On a river, for instance? After a few minutes, the exercise stops and the blind person must very quietly tell her guide where she is in the room, who is next to her, etc. – all the real information she has been able to gather. Then she tells her guide where she imagined she was journeying and the guide tells his story, and they compare notes.
The Siren’s Song Each actor must think of an oppression she has actually experienced or is still experiencing. Then everyone closes their eyes and assembles in the middle of the room. Whoever wants to start utters a sound (a cry, groan, shout, lamentation, etc.) which must be the translation into sound of the oppression she has in mind. The Joker takes this first person by the hand and leads her on a journey around the room, eventually stopping in a corner. Same with the second person, who has started a different sound. Three or four others follow, each in their own way, with their own call. It is important for the Joker to choose quite different sounds to inhabit the four corners of the room. Then the four let loose their cries together. Those remaining in the middle listen to the four and each choose the sound which best suits their own oppression. Four groups form. After this everybody opens their eyes, and they make four circles, and, in their separate circles, each person recounts to the others the oppression she was thinking of, the episode which was in her mind.
The Space Series
Without Leaving a Single Space Empty All the actors must walk around very quickly (not running) trying to ensure that their own bodies are always more or less equidistant from everyone else’s, and that they are all spread out over the whole floor-space of the room. From time to time the Joker says ‘Stop’. At that moment everyone must immediately come to a halt – it should not be possible to see a significantly empty space in the room. Then the Joker says, for example ‘Three noses, seven feet’, and everyone must get into groups where seven feet and threes noses are touching, as quickly as possible. Again the floor-space must always be occupied by equidistant groups. The game continues with the Joker using other random combinations.
IV. SEEING WHAT WE LOOK AT
The Mirrors Sequence
The Plain Mirror Form two lines of participants, each person looking directly into the eyes of the person facing them. Those in Line A are the mirrors, and those in Line B are the subjects facing/using the mirrors. Each subject undertakes a series of movements and changes of expression, which his mirror must copy, right down to the smallest detail. The exercise is not a competition, nor is the idea to make sharp movements which are impossible to follow. On the contrary, the idea is to seek a perfect synchronization of movement, so that the mirror’s movements may reproduce the subject’s gestures as exactly as possible. The degree of accuracy and synchronization should be such that an outside observer would not be able to tell who was leading and who was following.
The Distorting Mirror With the same partners (from the Plain Mirror exercise), each subject is allowed to do what feels right, and at each new stimulus, the mirror answers, comments, enlarges, reduces, caricatures, ridicules, destroys – in sum, produces an image responding to the received image, but in a contrapuntal relationship to it.
The Rhythmic Mirror Both participants (subject and mirror) seek movements which have rhythmic affinities. Both must find rhythms and movements of the body which both find pleasing, movements which can be slow or fast, gentle or vigorous, simple or complex. The most important things are 1) that these movements are rhythmical and identical, 2) that both partners feel good, at ease and happy in the execution of the movements, and 3) that the whole body is involved in them.
The Modeling Sequence
Sculptor Touches Model In partners, one participant as sculptor, one as statue, each sculptor starts using her hands to model the statue he/she has in mind. To this end, she touches the ‘statue’s’ body, taking care to achieve the effects she is striving for, down to the smallest detail. (If touch is culturally inappropriate, sculptors can use their own bodies to show the image or expression they want to see reproduced – i.e. the mirror model.) The Joker lets this first exercise last as long as is necessary.
Sculpture with Four of Five People The participants divide into four or five groups, each group having one sculptor and a number of statues. Each sculptor fashions the bodies of her colleagues into one significant image – as if she were saying, ‘This is what I am thinking’. When she has finished visualizing her thought, reifying it, she takes the place of one of her companions in the sculpture, who in turn becomes a sculptor. This new sculptor starts to work, as if she was thinking: ‘This is what you were thinking, but take a little look at my response’, and she alters the work of the previous sculptor. All this is done without the sculptor touching her statues.
Day Two Exercises
Afternoon Session
IV. SEEING WHAT WE LOOK AT (continued)
Image Game
Complete the Image (w/ 2 people, 3 people) A pair of actors shakes hands. Freeze the image. Ask the watching group what possible means the image might carry: is it a business meeting, lovers parting forever, a drug deal, do they love each other, do they hate each other, etc.? Various possibilities are explored to show all the ‘meanings’ a single image can have.
Everyone gets into pairs and starts with a frozen image of a handshake. One partner removes himself from the image, leaving the other with his hand extended. Now what is the story? Instead of saying what he thinks this new image means, the partner who has removed himself returns to the image and completes the image, thus showing what he sees as a possible meaning for it. He puts himself in a different position, with a different relationship to the partner with the outstretched hand, changing the meaning of the image, but conveying an idea, emotion, feeling – this is a dialogue of images. The partners take turns pulling out of the frozen image and then adding to it with a new complementary idea. This exercise can also be facilitated for groups of three as well.
Complementary Activities An actor starts any movement, and the others try to discover what she is doing so that they can then engage in complementary activities. For example, the movements of a referee during a match are completed by the defending and attacking players; a priest saying mass is completed with the addition of an altar-boy and the priest’s congregation, etc.
Game of Mask and Ritual
Collective Creation of a Mask A group of actors talk and move around. In the course of the conversation, an actor introduces some characteristic or other of her way of walking, or talking, or thinking or one of her personal obsessions. All the others try to discover this characteristic and reproduce it. Once unification has been achieved on this first characteristic, a second actor adds a second characteristic which must also be assumed by the rest and added to the first. Then a third…and so on until in the end all the actors are performing the same collectively created mask.
Exchange of Masks The actors invent a character in the following manner. The actors start going around in a circle, in their own persona. They concentrate on the changing positions of each part of their bodies. The hand – its swinging movement. The head – does it accompany the movements of the feet or not? The vertebral column – is it curved or upright? The knees – locked straight or bent double? And so on.
After close self-observation, they start to change. What if I was different? What if I had a different gait? What if my head moved differently? Each person experiments as much as they want and then constructs a ‘mask’, a ‘physical character’ different from themselves. Next, sound is added in the guise of language; no words are spoken, only the melody and the rhythm which suit this type of character. The Joker warns, ‘Get Ready’. Each person chooses a partner; they ‘talk’ (nonverbally) to each other, they shake hands when they are ready to exchange masks, and then they do the exchange. They choose new partners three times. The point of the game is then to find your original mask again.
The Image of the Object
Homage to Magritte The game consists of giving the group an object, which each actor in succession must discover a use for, by the addition of his body to the image. What could this object have been? A piece of wood can be a gun, a baton, a stake, a horse, an umbrella, a crutch, a cane, a ladle, a flagpole, a fishing rod, an oar, a whistle, an arrow, a spear, a violin, a needle, etc.
The Invention of Space and the Spatial Structures of Power
Inventing the Space in a Room Using their bodes and any of the objects from the previous sequence, the participants create an environment in the room – a boat, a church, a bank, a ballroom, a desert, the high seas, etc. One of them starts it off and the others have to discover what he/she has in mind and follow and complete.
Photographing the Image One actor makes an image with her body while everyone else is facing her, with their eyes closed. The Jokers says ‘open-close’: like a camera, all open their eyes for a brief moment then close them and reproduce what they have seen with their own bodies. Then two actors make separate images, the same brief opening and closing of the camera shutter. The participants must remember both, and show the first one and then the other. Then three images…
Games Involving the Creation of Characters
The Child’s Fear Half the group writes their names on pieces of paper along with their primary childhood fear. The other half of the group watches. The participants must play the character or thing which frightened them most as a child, by moving around the space using only their bodies (no spoken language). After a few minutes, the Joker tells them to look for a partner. Then they start dialogues with their partners, but without saying anything which will obviously reveal their characters. The objective in these dialogues is to frighten their partner, just as they themselves were frightened of the characters they are playing when they were children. After a few minutes, Joker tells them to change partners and new dialogues ensue.
When this is over, the Joker reads out the names of the participants one at a time, and those in the group who were watching the game, as well as those who were playing it, must describe the characteristics they saw in that person, trying to describe how the person behaved. Then the Joker reads off the Fear the participant was enacting.
The chosen character must be concrete, a person, an animal, a ‘tangible’ ghost, etc. For instance, instead of ‘fear of darkness’, they must play the person or thing they are afraid of hidden in the darkness. Even if the fear is something like ‘fear of being struck by lightning’ they should try to play the person (perhaps even God) who wanted to strike them. By playing the subject that we were afraid of, we gain a better understanding of our childhood fears (which may still live inside us).
The Opposite of Myself Same rules as in previous exercise. The participants write their names on pieces of paper, along with a characteristic they would like to possess, which must be completely different from their actual persona. During the playing, after a while the Joker must give the instruction ‘Back to your normal behavior’ and then ‘Back to your opposite self’.
Day Three Exercises
Morning Session
V. THE MEMORY OF THE SENSES
Reconnecting Memory, Emotion and Imagination:
Memory and Emotion: Remembering a Day in the Past Each person must have by their side a co-pilot to whom they recount a day in their past (last week or twenty years ago) when something really important happened, something which made a profound impression on them, the memory of which provokes emotion, even today. The co-pilot listens while at the same time creating another image in his mind. The co-pilot should help the person to link the memory to the sensations by asking lots of questions related to sensory details. The co-pilot should try to create the same event in his own imagination, with the same details, the same emotion, the same sensations – which will be different, of course, because they will be his own.
Rehearsal on the Stage of the Imagination Everything you have done in imagination (in the previous exercise) must immediately be played on stage. The other actors help, the protagonist (i.e. the storyteller in this exercise) and the co-pilot play director, and you try to play physically everything that has been played in the imagination. In one half of the room, the protagonist recreates the image of her story using actors from the group – and in the other half of the room, the co-pilot recreates what he heard and visualized in his mind using actors from the group. Compare images.
IMAGE THEATRE
Image Techniques: Models and Dynamisations
Image of the Word: Illustrating a Subject with your Body The Joker asks five or more volunteers to express a theme (chosen by the participants) in a visual form. Each works without seeing what the others are doing, so as not to be influenced by them. One after another they come into the middle of the playing space and use only their bodies to express the theme they have been given. Without talking, they position their bodies in a still pose, to express their opinion or idea or experience of the theme, as it strikes them there and then. When all the volunteers have been into the space and shown their individual images, the Joker asks if anyone in the audience can suggest an image different to those shown. The response is almost always in the affirmative. After everyone has a chance to show their interpretation of the theme, the Joker changes the theme and repeats the exercise.
Image of the Word: Illustrating a Subject using Other Bodies The Joker asks a first volunteer to illustrate the theme proposed by the group, using the bodies of other members of the group. This sculptor chooses who to use and places them in relation to each other to form a single image composed of several bodies and, if desired, simple objects that are available (chairs, table, etc.) She uses either the modeling mode, by which she physically manipulates and moulds their bodies into the right shapes and/or the mirroring mode, whereby she shows them with her own body the positions she wants them in, and they arrange themselves accordingly. The one tool she may not use is the spoken word.
When the model is finished, the Joker initiates discussion with the group on messages projected by the image. Other volunteers offer their image of the theme, using actors from the group and discussion ensues. It is important that the person who is ‘sculpting’ the image works fast, so that she will not be tempted to think in words (verbal language) and then translate into images (visual language).
Ritual Gesture Every society has its rituals, and consequently its ritual gestures and signs. This technique tries to uncover them. The point of uncovering each society’s rituals is that they are the visual expressions of the oppressions to be found at the heart of a society. Always, without exception, an oppression will produce visible signs, always it will translate itself into forms and movements, always it will leave traces. Just as it is possible to discover and discuss social oppressions in spoken discourse, one can also achieve this end using image techniques.
The Joker asks someone to come into the middle and make a ritual gesture, that is, an action that belongs to a ritualized social structure. The rest of the group observes the gesture. When anyone thinks he has worked out which ritual it belongs to, he goes into the middle and ‘completes’ this gesture with another, equally ritualized. A second person, then a third, then all those who think they’ve understood the initial gesture, as well as the modified – completed – gesture, also go into the middle and together form a large static image of the ritual suggested by the first gesture.
Ritual This is a simple and effective technique that is extremely revealing. The Joker asks for a volunteer actor to show the ritual of a specific person in their reality (e.g. mother, priest, beggar, etc.). The actor, without words, shows what a ritualized ‘day in the life’ of a mother, a priest, or a beggar would look like. The exercise continues as long as there are new volunteers ritualizing ‘a day in the life’ of a specific character in their reality.
The important thing is always to look for the ritual that reveals the oppression: the ritual of arrival at work, the ritual of the young man and woman in a bar or back at the apartment belonging to one of them, the mother’s birthday ritual, the police inspector’s visit ritual, the ritual of the son asking his father for money, the ritual of the penitent in confession asking for forgiveness, etc.
Day Three Exercises
Afternoon Session
IMAGE THEATRE (continued)
Images of Transition: the Technique in Action
Image of Transition The group creates an image of the chose theme, arriving at a model that the whole group is willing to accept. The subject matter of this model must be an oppression, of whatever kind, which the group has suggested. Consequently this will be a real model of oppression. Then you ask the group to construct an ideal model, in which the oppression will have been eliminated and everyone in the model will have to come to a plausible equilibrium, a state of affairs that is not oppressive for any of the characters. After this, you return again to the real image, the image of the oppression.
The Joker then poses the question to the group: How do we get from the real image to the ideal image? Volunteers sculpt the transition images that represent the logical steps to get from the real image to the ideal image.
New Image Theatre Techniques: The Cop in the Head
Dissociation – Thought, Speech, Action Someone gives an image of her oppression. This image can be realistic, symbolic, surrealistic…whatever; the important thing is that for that person, the image speaks. Over five minutes, all the people in the image must voice their interior monologues, at low volume and without stopping – i.e. everything that comes to mind, as characters, not as individuals. In other words, speak everything that the body, in that position, could think. The participants should try not to listen to what others are saying. This exercise is helpful in rooting actors in the characters inner thoughts.
Somatisation A scene is played and then replayed without physical self-censorship. The feelings the script engenders in each character are shown corporeally. The idea is not to illustrate, rather to let come whatever comes. The physical presentation should correspond mainly to the interior monologue and not to the scripted dialogue.
The Three Wishes The protagonist shows an image of an oppression as it is. The protagonist has a right to three wishes. She has the right to modify the image three times (or more…). She is to carry out these wishes in her own order of importance. Each person she intends to change should offer as much resistance as will challenge the protagonist’s strength and ability just up to their limits, without overstepping these limits. Offer resistance which the protagonist will be able to overcome, but not too easily; she should have to use all her strength.
The group analyzes what she did first, second, third – alternatives are suggested. The Joker brings the scene to life with dialogue and physical actions.
The Screen Image The model: the protagonist constructs an image of her oppression, without worrying about making it comprehensible. It can be symbolic, it can be whatever the protagonist wants – but it must be true.
This dynamic image is played a number of times. Each time, each participant has the right to replace the oppressed character and, within the dynamic of the image, try to break the oppression she has seen. Each participant should project her own experiences onto the image she has seen, without trying to understand what she has seen. What matters is that she be able to project her own oppressions onto that screen.
Day Four Exercises
Morning Session
FORUM THEATRE
Theme Development The group chooses a theme, or central idea, or subject matter. For this purpose, the group may divide itself into several subgroups.
Image of Theme Each subgroup makes an image of the theme, which is a general image, an abstract image – all the participants make comments on it.
Logical Movement of that Image The actors inside the image, at a sign from the director, show the logical movement of that image – what movement would each of the characters inside the image probably make. Comments.
Improvise The small group decides upon a story they will play and improvise alone – and to do so they can use rehearsal techniques such as Rashomon, ‘Screen Image’ and all the others; then, they come back to the general group and must show the following:
Image of the Things Everything on the stage speaks. We can shut our mouth but not our body – it will always be speaking. On stage we are always saying things with our bodies even if we don’t want to say anything. So it is with the objects, the things on the stage. Not a single thing on the stage should be there ‘innocently’, everything must have meanings, connotations, ideas, emotions.
Kinetic Image Each actor shows, separately, the movements that their character makes in ‘real’ life within the staged location. Comments from the group on what they have felt and seen.
Image of the Chinese Crisis The group must make the image of the Chinese crisis, that is to say, the image of the crucial moment when the protagonist has to take the irreversible action or to say the irreversible word that will determine the outcome of the scene.
Monologue of their Desire The actors inside the image, at a sign from the director, should all at the same time speak the monologue of their desire – what each one of them desires in concrete terms.
Image of the Desire in Action The actors should show in slow motion their desires in action.
Day Four Exercises
Afternoon Session
EXERCISES: Preparing for Forum Theatre
Stop! Think! In the ‘Stop! Think!’ exercise, at any given moment the director/Joker stops the rehearsal and shouts ‘Stop! Think!’ All the actors have to start speaking in an undertone at the same time, letting loose an interior monologue of everything that is in their characters’ minds at that particular moment. Thus all the actors talk in a continuous flow, making their thoughts explicit, until the director shouts ‘Go on’ – at which point the actors pick up the scene exactly where it stopped, without a break. This can be done as many times as necessary in any scene.
Rashomon Each actor in a scene, as the character he is playing, makes an image of how he sees the other characters. This image should not be naturalistic since it is designed to show the character’s own personal, subjective feelings, opinions, sentiments – but it should be true, however deformed, expressionistic, surrealistic, allegorical or metaphorical it may be. So the sculpting actor goes around to each of the other characters and places them in poses and positions them and gives them expressions according to how his character has experienced them during the scene.
Having completed the whole image, he must go, in character, and tell each one of the characters his wills and desires towards or against them, energetically, over a period of one or two minutes. The actors playing those characters remain motionless, just listening and hearing. After he has visited all of them in this fashion, he goes back to his own place in the image and the other actors (also in character), without moving, have the right to throw back at him their own wills, desires, sentiments.
Analytical Rehearsal of Emotion/Style Actors rehearse a scene with a single pure emotion (or style) as the starting point. For example, the actors play the scene first with hate, with a violent and terrible hatred contained in every line and in every action. Then they replay the same scene with love alone. With Style, the actors decide to play the piece in a different genre or style – circus, melodrama, farce, sitcom, etc. Whether it is appropriate or not, it is likely to generate new material or other possibilities.
Telegram Each actor can pronounce only the most important word in each phrase of the dialogue, even though he must think the whole phrase and beyond.
Artificial Pause Repeated delivery of the same words and movements in the course of rehearsals and performances tends to have a hypnotic effect on the actor, whereby his ability to perceive and be aware of what he is saying gradually becomes weaker. Consequently he puts it across in a correspondingly weaker fashion. Rehearsal with artificial pauses entails forbidding the actor to speak immediately, or immediately to execute whatever action he has to do. On the contrary, he has to insert an artificial pause of five to ten seconds, or longer. Thus the actor loses the mechanical support which the rhythm of the text and action gave him, he has to forgo the structural security of the piece, and his awareness and sensibility are reawakened.
The Reconstruction of the Crime The actors rehearse a scene in front of the group. Whenever an actor comes to a moment she considers important, she can turn to the audience and speak directly to them, in character, justifying her actions in the scene – i.e. ‘I am doing this because of such and such a thing’. When the actor is speaking, everyone else in the scene freezes.
Play to the Deaf This is the ultimate exercise for developing what we have earlier referred to as the actor’s undercurrent. The actor must stay absolutely faithful to the piece and its rhythm, and think all his lines, trying to bring out all that is contained in the undercurrent, without speaking a single word or making a sound. To make this happen, he must apply all his concentration. What should be avoided at all costs is that the exercise be allowed to turn into a mime exercise. Not a single gesture or movement should be added to help the other actors work out where the dialogue has arrived at or is heading. This is a workshop exercise, not a game; the actor must be genuinely transmitting at undercurrent level.