Paul Levy is a consistently interesting blogger over at Applied Improv. He describes an improv activity he set up for his actors.
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.
I really love minimalist structures like this. I think they surface an enormous amount of the rich interactions that go on between us that usually go quite unnoticed.
