4F. Performance Score: Accumulation, All Leading

• Three people go out on the floor. The rest of us are your audience. We're going to repeat the accumulation exercise. However, we'll change the structure a bit. Rather than having one person be the provider as before, each of you will provide at least one mode of behavior, but no more than two.

• Be aware of the audience and orient yourselves to include them. Keep your composition open so the audience can share your experience.

Our relationship to the audience and our partners changes depend­ing upon where our attention is. If our attention is inward, then our partners, or audience, become voyeurs who observe our imaginings from the outside. If our attention is outward, we can either engage or not engage our partners, or audience, depending on how we focus that atten­tion. When we single out a partner or an audience member, look at them directly in the eyes, we set up intimacy that demands response; when we look in their direction but not directly at them, no response is demanded, even though we may be sharing ourselves intimately with them.

How a performer directs her attention defines the wall between her­self and the audience. The wall may have densities, from transparent to opaque. This depends upon the nature of the situation and what the per­former senses will best serve it.

Composition

An improvisation is a series of actions. Composition refers to the make­up of these action, their relationship to one another, their order and design. A composition is organized information. For that information to be clear, one act must be perceived distinctly from another. Contrast allows distinction.

Some improvisations are cohesive. Something holds all the pieces together. Some aren't, and are arbitrary strings of events.

Walking Backwards and Laying Down Stones

Improvising is like walking backwards. You can see where you've been, but you can't see where you're going. But what you see does affect where you're going.

As you improvise, you lay down stones of action. In a sense, you cre­ate a path. You hold all of the stones in your awareness and that aware­ness effects your current action. As long as you stay aware and remember the stones you've laid down, your current action can't help but be respon­sive and relevant to your previous actions. The whole thing will be cohe­sive.

In a cohesive composition, inner and outer awareness work hand-in-hand. They release new material, and simultaneously examine the path that has been travelled. The stones may make sense laying in order, one after another, or they might make sense uprooted and replanted in a new spot. As you put down new stones and reuse old ones, the piece begins to take its own shape. Patterns may appear that ask for further devel­opment. You don't have to wonder what it's about. It tells you itself. Sim­ply pay attention to what has occurred and keep responding.

Imagine that you are rowing a boat down the center of a narrow bay. Usually, when you row a boat you face away from where you re going. From this orientation, it looks like you travel backwards. You see where you've been, yet, you don't see where you're going. By watching the shoreline, gauging the distance between your craft and the right and left banks, you can steady your course, and maneuver right down the center.

On Day Four students balance inner and outer awareness. They prac­tice fiercely holding onto and easily giving up one reality after another. It didn't matter whether that reality was generated by them­selves or by their partner. They explored the merits of contrast and how it affects clear communication and composition. They played with the understanding that by completely investing in their fictional experiences, their experiences become real.

Day Five

Inner/Outer

5A. Eyes Closed

5B. Jog Patterns

5C. Only Verbs

5D. Say What You Do

5E. Performance Score: Say What You Do Together

5F. Performance Score: Bench: Head/Arm/Leg

Take a walk. Ride into the country. Go to the beach. Be with nature as much as possible this month—a -potted plant, a candle, a bowl of water. In order to remember, it's necessary to clear away the debris.

Inner

Students practice experiencing and expressing feelings, all kinds of feelings, even feelings that possibly surround painful "real-life" experiences.

They often fear that during exercises "real-life" material that is shameful or hurtful will surface. They fear they'll lose control, get lost in themselves and never recover.

Suppose, for example, the first time someone speaks in public they lose their train of thought. They sit down, embar­rassed and disoriented. They feel shame and attach this shame to the action of public speaking. Thereafter, every time they feel the urge to speak in public, they project shame onto that action, create an unpleasant experience and quell their desire. This condition remains permanent until they consciously examine it.

Years later, in a training such as this, they begin to examine shame and the physical expressions of it. Again, they feel shame spontaneously arising. But this time, shame surfaces within a different context. As they experience shame, they notice a configuration of elements (breath, temperature, tension, quality of motion, voice, etc.) that comprises shame. It's no longer stigmatic "shame." It's just a feeling and sensation that can be noticed. The relationship to public speaking alters. Previously constructed shame no longer stifles action.