A day of further work on very simple improvisation. Three chairs placed upon the stage. Three actors. One hour.
The following rules: to allow reaction to occur rather than pro-action. Yet of course someone has to make a move yet no one quite knws who – the reaction emerges quickly.
Three rules to the improvisation (apart from no proactivity)
– actors may look at each other
– actors may move across the stage
– actors may stand or sit
No other action or reaction is allowed.
Some incredible contact tensions emerge, politics of movement and gaze, rising and falling drama of a simple but powerful kind.
Actors admitting afterwards that the “planner” or “manager” was hard to still in their minds, yet the drama has most power when people are not pro-ating but simple wait and react.
The active lsitening of the audience becomes an influential factor and they are involved through their concentration and interest in the emerging drama.
Sometimes it is simplicty that has more power, more possibility, more spontaneous variety than scripted, over-designed drama.
“You writers pollute the stage with your words.”
Without words, with few rules or strucutres, much rich drama emerged from the exercise.
