1C. Move Same Time/Freeze Same Time

• Everybody, take a partner. Stand face-to-face. One Rule: Move at the same time and stop moving at the same time. You are always moving in sync. You can be moving in different ways. You can be moving at different speeds. You can be moving with different qualities. But your intention is to start at the same time and stop at the same time. Hold the stillness for vary­ing lengths of time. Sometimes be still for a moment, sometimes be still for many moments. Be erratic.

Id. Move at Different Times

• Stand face-to-face with your partner. One of you is A, the other is B. A moves and continues moving until B interrupts with movement. A stops and B moves until A interrupts, and so on. Fill your movements so that they're not empty forms, but your forms have intention to them. In other words, your movements reflect your current state of mind. If nothing is going on, pretend there is.

Basic timing exercises give students something very specific to watch: when they do something, when they don't, when they start, and when they stop. Their every move must be conscious. Students realize they have choice. They start and they stop. They change. They deter­mine their experience.

Self-consciousness may come and go throughout the training. Because of new and unusual perspectives on one's behavior, students often worry and inhibit expression. They start to think about "right" or "wrong" actions; they begin to think before they act. This analytical and planning frame of mind eventually loses its prominence. As learning progresses, old pat­terns no longer fit. Observing behavior stops being an assignment and becomes second nature, a matter of awareness.

"If nothing is going on, pretend there is." "Be in the nothing." Both of these directions are useful. The former awakens the ability to fanta­size; the latter sanctifies the mundane, the dishonored. Everything is mind, whether theater or life. Differentiating between interesting and dull, mundane and profound, worthy and unworthy, drains the heart, kills the spirit, and paralyzes the body. Just go for the details.

In the last exercise of the day, we bring our attention to speech. We start to talk. We talk in front of an audience.

Ie. Performance Score: Autobiographies

• Four people, sit facing the rest of the group. Take turns speaking autobi-ographically about your "real" life. Be factual. Tell us where you grew up, what your family was like, your schooling, etc. Only one of you speaks at a time and continues until interrupted. Just as we did earlier today, have the interruptions be erratic, so that the monologues vary in length. In other words, you might interrupt each other very quickly, or you might allow, from time to time, someone to speak a bit longer. As you describe the events or conditions of your life, play with the form of your monologues, change the sounds of your words. Speak from an attitude or feeling that is different from the way you would normally speak. Not necessarily opposite, just different.

Language

Most of us go through our daily lives unaware of how we do what we do. For example, our speech is probably locked into a pattern that we don't even recognize; it has a particular rhythm, inflection, tone. We've never really listened to our voices. As a result, when we hear ourselves on a tape recorder we're surprised.

Autobiographies introduces students to a new way of listening to themselves, others, and themselves in connection with others. They lis-ten from inside and outside of the sound. There's no trick to it. All that's required is to turn attention toward the flow of sound: the mouth and ear experience.

Students collaborate, listening and relating through what they hear in timing, tone and attitude. What they hear affects what they do and what they do affects what they hear. Pieces of their stories intersperse with pieces of others'. Affected by what they hear from others in the group, students recast the emotional value of their own autobiographies. Their investment in who they are and what they're talking about changes. They might speak with sensuality about the death of a baby brother, with military cadence about the breaking of bones, or with a particular glee about the pressing urgency of a job.

Students are learning to hear form (how they speak) separate from, yet linked, to content (what they say). They start to see that any emo­tional reaction to phenomena is self-created and can be changed. This realization leads to flexibility in how they interpret occurrences in their lives, much less on stage. It also points to the infinite possibilities of meaning.

Each session ends with a score. A score is a performance structure, and is different from an exercise. An exercise focuses inward and is specif­ically designed to develop a skill. In an exercise, the participants are not consciously sharing their event with an audience. They're not directing their expression to anyone other than to a partner. A score, on the other hand, encompasses the skills practiced in exercises and plays them out for an audience.

Day One has introduced students to four fundamentals of Action Theater: 1) form; 2) ensemble; 3) timing; and 4) language. In exer­cises that work with the first three components, students take simple steps. Attention returns to everyday activities, awareness of others in the same environment and the details of behavior. As the month proceeds, the exercises build upon these primary concepts and point toward a sophisticated practice. The last exercise, Autobiographies, is a complex exercise requiring a practiced skill. It's introduced on the first day as a glimpse of the multi-dimensional material yet to come.

Day Two

The Body's Voice

2A. Breath Circle

2B. Sounder/Mover

2C. All at Once: Sound and Movement

2D. Sound and Movement Diagonal

2E. Performance Score: Sound and Movement Solo

How do we express ourselves?

What possibilities do we have?

We can move, speak, and make sounds.

We can do these one at a time,

or we can combine them.

Most of the time we don't choose.

Whatever happens, happens.

In the present moment, we have the capacity to simultaneously notice vast amounts of information from the body's senses and the mind's activities of memory, thought and imagination. But our ability to be aware of and integrate this information needs to be developed. It's a muscle to be exercised. One way we do this is by examining the way we express ourselves, through action—movement, vocal sounds and speech.

Expression is both the interpretation of experience and experience itself. Suppose we have an idea that we want to communicate and we choose language as our vehicle. Think of all the ways language can be formed to express that idea. Each form is a living experience and through its moments, throws a different light on the original idea.

In the same way, movement or vocalization may draw from the same idea, but each moment of action determines the next, thereby creating its own experience.

Voice, body and language are different vocabularies. When we oper­ate through one of these modes, we perceive through its vocabulary. This accesses different information. Each mode transmits through its capa­bilities and is framed by its limitations. What can be said with language, can't necessarily be said with movement, and vice versa. Depending on what realm of the psyche we're inhabiting, movement, sound or lan­guage may be the most appropriate choice.

What we call sound and movement is when a physical and vocal action arise simultaneously. Most of the time they don't. There are rare occasions when movement and voice are tied to each other: we simul­taneously jump and scream at being surprised, we sneeze and our body contracts, we stretch and moan when we wake up in the morning.

Breath

To prepare for consciously joining the voice and movement, we begin with the breath.

Sometimes, I watch my chattering mind (the judgmental mind, the mind that berates, criticizes, or labels). Sometimes, I give my mind something to focus on that isn't chattering. I watch breath. Breath always goes on. I don't have to make it happen, or pick it up from anywhere, or borrow it from anybody. Breath is right here.