6E. Performance Score: Back to Front, Silent

• Four people stand, side by side, in front of the audience with their backs to the audience. All you can do is turn, either to face the audience or to turn away from the audience. That's all. However, you can vary the speed of the turn and the amount of time you spend facing the audience. Most impor­tantly, you and your partners play off each other's actions. Respond to each other's timing, energy, and intentions of actions. Don't look directly at each other. Feel each other. Your actions together create rhythmic patterns, music. Use peripheral vision and awareness. Trust your intuition about the others.

Pretending to Pretend

Jack, Jill, Jane and Jim stand with their backs to the rest of the audience. They stand still for a few moments, then Jack turns abruptly around and faces the audience. After a moment, Jill begins to turn, extremely slowly, toward the audience. There is tension on Jack's face. The audience is in suspense. Even though he's facing front, his expression tells us that he's listening to the movements of his partners. Jill continues to slowly turn. Jim abruptly turns to the front. Audience: giggles. His expression is also alert. Jack and Jim let the audience know that they are aware of being connected by this experience of facing front. Jill is still slowly turning. Jane abruptly turns to face the audience. She's listening, too. Jack, Jim and Jane know Jill is still turning and that she is taking a very long time. They indicate that to the audience through body tension and eyes. They watt. And so does the audi­ence. Suddenly, Jill snaps the end of her turn and abruptly joins the others facing the audience. Silence. Immediately, Jack, Jim and Jane relax and still facing front, shift their eyes toward Jill. So does the audience. Jill looks enthusiastic. She's joined the gang. Now, she, alone, holds the tension. The audience laughs.

Back to Front/Silent is similar to Three on a Bench, relief from the complexities of the previous exercises. The brain can cool out. The par­ticipants only have a few choices, yet within those choices lie vast pos­sibilities of experience. The situation of turning back and to front, metaphorically, captures much of being human and being human in rela­tionship to other humans.

Within these constraints, humor often erupts. The relationships turn out to be about waiting, competing, challenging, tricking, being tricked, making friends, becoming adversaries, and being included or excluded. And on top of all of this is the absurdity of turning back and forth.

The exercises on Day Six ask the students to disengage from the clut­ter they place between themselves and their experience. When the constricting material of their personalities disappears, what's left is a feel­ing, sensing energy, a transparent vehicle for experiencing. The audi­ence engages with the experience, not the experiencer. Both performer and audience meet in transparency.

Day Seven

The Body of Language

7A. Body Parts Move on Out-Breath

7B. Narrative on Beat

7C. Narrative with Varied Timing

7D. Language and Movement/Interruption

7E. Performance Score: Seated Dialogues

"Text" is a body of words.

"Narrative" is the vocal expression of a text.

To narrate is to speak text. A single text may be narrated in many different ways.

In Action Theater, we arrive at text through improvisation. Nothing is written down or memorized. Language is discovered in the walk backwards. We prepare for language by centering on the body and its breath.

Today, we focus on language and its relationship to the body. Students are reminded that the body talks. Talk talks. Not metaphori­cally, romantically or poetically, but, really and truly. If the student were to relax and become internally quiet, the body's voice would arise. The direct experience of language would happen without the mediation of the talker.

Before we jump into language, we settle into our bodies and listen to it speak.