9C. Shape/Freeze/Language

• I'll call out words that describe ways of moving. You improvise movement that responds to these words. Connect with your movement. You're moving spirit as well as body. At some point I'll say "Freeze." Stop moving and connect your shape and spirit with your imagination. Who are you? What are you up to? What's your context or condition? In sequence, one at a time, and in full voice, call out who you are, what you are and what you know about yourself.

Straight lines ... Freeze and speak Jagged edges ... Freeze and speak Jumps ... Freeze and speak Twists and knots . . . freeze and speak Heavy spaces, ... freeze and speak Erratic curves ... freeze and speak Etc.

Much of this training asks students not to identify their experience, not to call it anything, or put any kind of name or label on it. They're encouraged to stay with sensations from moment to moment, becoming comfortable with, and finally attracted to the unknown.

But, here, students are asked to make identifications. They're learning about language, about how they talk, and what they talk about.

Language is comprised of images. We want the images to come from the present condition of the body, not from dissociative thinking. Therefore, the student freezes, not just in a shape, but in a moment of being. Their inner condition is not yet a verbal experience. The next step is naming, verbalizing. They must do so quickly. They must not leave the body to search for a character, or situation. Instead, they let feelings and sensa­tion reveal to them the image. The body tells them what its condition is.

A naked woman hauling a heavy sack up a hill.

An eagle carrying a tiny baby.

Tom banging on Josephine's door with a heavy bowl.

A body floating in a black river.

Lightning, cracking a medieval castle.

A woman possessed by fire.

A nonchalant hipster kicking the library wall.

An old man looking across the corn-field into the future.

Where do these images come from?

As students relax into their imagination, more and more sources of experience become available to them. At first, they may choose the most obvious image, the first thing that comes to mind. On that level, twenty students looking at the same "freeze" might image the same thing. As their imagination expands, students are no longer content with pre­dictable, or generic interpretation. They begin to delve into freer asso­ciations and combinations of events without time and space boundaries, without demarcations between ordinary and extraordinary, real and sur­real, mythic and mundane.

9D. Two Shape /One Reads

• Arrange yourselves into trios. Person A steps out and takes the role of Reader. The other two will make scenes for the Reader to identify. First, B makes a shape with intention and expression and freezes. C adds on to B's scene with another intention-filled shape and freezes. Contact is not nec­essary, nor is adding a shape that directly relates. Hold your scene while the Reader names and describes their situation. When A completes a short synopsis, B and C break the scene. Then you build another, this time with C starting and B adding on. Again, A reads the scene.

• Continue this arrangement until I say stop. We'll do three sets of this exer­cise so that each of you has a turn as Reader.

The Power of the Non-Linear

Students are encouraged to construct non-linear scenes, to search out the unexpected. They're not to write plays or scenes as they shape, or anticipate the Reader. Without worrying about meaning, they impulsively build onto each other's scenes.

Here are some examples of the difference between linear and non­linear actions. Causality, action-reaction is missing in non-linear actions, as well as expected (cliched and stereotyped) sequences.

Linear:

A stands with hands up ► B points gun

A cries ► B comforts

A stands at attention ► B corrects A's posture

Non-linear:

A stands with clenched fist ». B lolls at A's feet smiling

languidly with eyes rolled back

A cries ► B bangs nails into the floor

A stands tensely,with arms outstretched ► B fixes hair

The two Shapers must find ways to visibly connect these non-linear sequences. Otherwise they will appear as if they have nothing to do with each other. They do this by indicating, primarily with their eye focus and with the detailed shape and space composition, that they are in direct response to each other. Just oddly.

The Reader must describe a scene that includes both images. The latter combinations above challenge the Reader's imagination. Nonlinear shapes that don't complete each other's narrative require both the Reader's and Shaper's immediate, spontaneous attention. Everyone stretches their capacity to live with uncertainty.