Scenic Engagement: How do you feel about who your scene partner is, where your scene partner is and/or what your scene partner is doing? Finding something active about your scene partner to feel about will help facilitate a scene you can both react through instead of think through. Suggested Exercises: SCENIC ENDOWMENT CIRCLE – […]
2 Person Scenes Heightening Emotion: Establish an emotional perspective, heighten the emotional perspective through reaction to active details, and edit – That’s scene. We want to avoid negotiation, conflict and the tepid, talked-out “discovery” that stagnates scenes’ growth. Suggested Exercises: ENDOW AND HEIGHTEN LAY-UPS – Player One initiates from stage left. Player Two initiates from […]
Situational Stakes: Our “What” is emotional reactions to active elements. Commitment and repetition are the only “why” we need. But “Because” can elevate the emotional stakes of a scene with context. “Stakes” come in many forms – and we want to apply emotion to all of them. These exercises focus on endowing premises and […]
Behavioral Stakes: Our “What” is emotional reactions to active elements. Commitment and repetition are the only “why” we need. But “Because” can elevate the emotional stakes of a scene with context. “Stakes” come in many forms – and we want to apply emotion to all of them. These exercises focus on elevating characters by allowing […]
IMPRESSIONS - Impressions are a fun way to get into a fully formed character Variations: • Go around in a circle, have everyone say a person they do an impression of • Move everyone to the right one spot, they do the impression of the person next to them • Get two people up, they […]
Remember what you like; Repeat: We have to listen and retain so we can return to and heighten established information. Memory is a muscle to exercise. But the exercise can be fun – focus on what makes you laugh, what engages you. Suggested Exercises: STORY STEALING – Everyone in a circle. One at a time, […]
Heightening Through Tag-Outs: A “tag out” allows the audience to see how a character from a previous scene will react to another character/scenario/etc. We want to execute tag-outs in service of heightening the emotional stakes. TAG OUTS –To perform a tag out, a player enters a scene in progress and literally tags the player that […]
Subsequent Beats: The stakes of one scene can be used as inspiration for initiating new scenes. SUBSEQUENT BEATS – Two players do a scene (edited early by the teacher). These two original players go to the wings. A Player Three initiates a new scene, explicitly soliciting the participation of Player One, Player Two, Both Players […]
Group Mind: Having Group Mind is about immediate, enthusiastic acceptance. You need to show your fellow players that you respect and love their ideas, and trust that you can make a bold move and have your group respect and love it. “I trust you – I’m going to follow your ideas whatever they are, wherever […]
Simplifying and Clarifying: The sooner everyone is on the same page, the sooner we can heighten and evolve collaboratively. Our main tool of simplification is Agreement - the more players that mirror/agree, the less different stuff there is on stage to negotiate. The more people you’re playing with the clearer you have to be. Our […]