Reaching for an Object

You are in the middle of a scene. It is going well. You have a char­acter, your partner has a character, and you both are playing a scene that is about something. For an added extra challenge, reach your hand out into the air, or the environment of the scene, and pull it back with an object in your hand. Keep playing the scene. Keep holding the object. If you are brave enough to do this without pre­conceiving what the object is before you reach, you will soon discover what it is, and it is likely that it will be in the ballpark of what your character or the scene is about. This is similar to throwing a curve ball in the scene and catching up with it later. That was a verbal mechanism; this is a physical one that involves the environ­ment. This scary move will escalate the play and discovery of the scene. At best, it heightens what the scene is about; at worst you'll create it as an incidental object in the scene and provide color to it.

Let's say you are in a scene and you are playing a drunken clown. The scene goes on for a while and you are wreaking havoc on some kid's birthday party. You boldly reach your hand out to grab some­thing from the air and have no idea what it is. You bring your hand back toward you but you still don't know what you are holding. You scare another kid with a threat and an insult and then take a swig off a liquor bottle. Ah, that's what that is in your hand. A fearless move on your part has allowed you to heighten the character and the scene. It might be that you already thought of creating a bottle, then you reach out for it. That's fine, and good improvisation, but I'm also inviting you to reach out without knowing what you are grabbing to put you in this wonderful but frightening state of discovery.

For added, extra-scary fun, try this at the top of a scene. When the lights come up on stage or someone says "go" in a workshop, reach your hand out into the environment as suggested before, and simultaneously say something. As always, this could be preconceived before the scene begins, but I am challenging you to do it without knowing, or instantaneously cancel your preconceived thought. This move will most assuredly snap you into a character energy that prob­ably never occurred to you. Don't worry about figuring out the object right away; just make that verbal initiation first and foremost. With practice, you will be able to initiate verbally and determine the object at the same time. It will feel like magic; thank goodness it's not.

This is especially useful if you have gotten into the rut of going to your environment at the top of a scene and then standing there silently, wondering what to say, or doing the opposite—having no environment at all in your improvisation and just standing there talking. Either of these unfortunate patterns can be broken with reaching for an object.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-08