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improv_games:improv-games_1_with_focus_on_status_games [2020/08/12 21:28] – [List of Games #1 with focus on Status] luchorobiimprov_games:improv-games_1_with_focus_on_status_games [2020/08/12 21:29] (current) – [Status games in groups] luchorobi
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     * Emotions: Exagerate the feelings of the people or characters     * Emotions: Exagerate the feelings of the people or characters
  
-===== Status games in groups ===== 
- 
-I minimise ‘status resistance’ from my students by getting them to experience 
-various status sensations before I discuss the implications, or even introduce the term. 
-I might ask them to say something nice to the person beside them, and then to say 
-something nasty. This releases a lot of laughter, and they are surprised to find that 
-they often achieve the wrong effect. (Some people never really say anything nice, and 
-others never say anything really nasty, but they won’t realise this.) 
- 
-I ask a group to mill about and say ‘hallo’ to each other. They feel very 
-awkward, because the situation isn’t real. They don’t know what status they should be 
-playing. I then get some of the group to hold all eye contacts for a couple of seconds, 
-while the others try to make and then break eye contacts and then immediately glance 
-back for a moment. The group suddenly looks more like a ‘real’ group, in that somepeople become dominant, and others submissive. Those who hold eye contacts report 
-that they feel powerful—and actually look powerful. Those who break eye contact and 
-glance back ‘feel’ feeble, and look it. The students like doing this, and are interested, 
-and puzzled by the strength of the sensations. 
- 
- 
-I might then begin to insert a tentative ‘er’ at the beginning of each of my 
-sentences, and ask the group if they detect any change in me. They say that I look 
-‘helpless’ and ‘weak’ but they can’t, interestingly enough, say what I’m doing that’s 
-different. I don’t normally begin every sentence with ‘Cr’, so it should be very 
-obvious. Then I move the ‘er’ into the middle of sentences, and they say that they 
-perceive me as becoming a little stronger. If I make the ‘a’ longer, and move it back to 
-the beginning of sentences, then they say I look more important, more confident. 
-When I explain what I am doing, and let them experiment, they’re amazed at the 
-different feelings the length and displacement of the ‘ers’ give them. They are also 
-surprised that it’s difficult to get some people to use a short ‘er’. There wouldn’t seem 
-to be any problem in putting an ‘er’ lasting a fraction of a second at the beginning of 
-each sentence, but many people unconsciously resist. They say ‘urn’, or they elongate 
-the sound. These are people who cling to their self importance. The short ‘er’ is an 
-invitation for people to interrupt you; the long ‘er’ says ‘Don’t interrupt me, even 
-though I haven’t thought what to say yet.’ 
- 
-Again I change my behaviour and become authoritative. I ask them what I’ve 
-done to create this change in my relation with them, and whatever they guess to be the 
-reason—‘You’re holding eye contact’, ‘You’re sitting straighter’—I stop doing, yet 
-the effect continues. Finally I explain that I’m keeping my head still whenever I speak, 
-and that this produces great changes in the way I perceive myself and am perceived by 
-others. I suggest you try it now with anyone you’re with. Some people find it 
-impossible to speak with a still head, and more curiously, some students maintain that 
-it’s still while they’re actually jerking it about. I let such students practise in front of a 
-mirror, or I use videotape. Actors needing authority—tragic heroes and so on—have 
-to learn this still head trick. You can talk and waggle your head about if you play the 
-gravedigger, but not if you play Hamlet. Officers are trained not to move the head 
-while issuing commands. 
- 
-When actors are reversing status during a scene it’s good to make them grade 
-the transitions as smoothly as possible. I tell them that if I took a photograph every 
-five seconds, I’d like to be able to arrange the prints in order just by the status shown. 
-It’s easy to reverse status in one jump. Learning to grade it delicately from moment to 
-moment increases the control of the actor. The audience will always be held when a 
-status is being modified. 
- 
-One way to teach transitions of status is to get students to leave the class, and 
-then come in through the real door and act ‘entering the wrong room’. It’s then quitenormal to see students entering with head down, or walking backwards, or in some 
-other way that will prevent them from seeing that it is the wrong room. They want 
-time to really enter before they start ‘acting’. They will advance a couple of paces, act 
-seeing the audience, and leave in a completely phoney way. 
-I remind the students that entering the wrong room is an experience we all have, 
-and that we always know what to do, since we do ‘something’. I explain that I’m not 
-asking the students to ‘act’, but just to do what they do in life. We have a radar which 
-scans every new space for dangers, an early-warning system programmed-in millions 
-of years ago as a protection against sabre-tooth tigers, or bigger amoebas or whatever. 
-It’s therefore very unusual to refuse to look into the space you are entering. 
-As soon as the ‘wrong room’ exercise becomes ‘real’ they understand that a 
-change of status is involved. You prepare a status for one situation, and have to alter it 
-when suddenly confronted by the unexpected one. I then set the students to 
-predetermine the direction of the status change, and of course errors are often made. 
-Someone trying to play low status may have to be told to smile, and if he smiles with 
-both sets of teeth (an aggressive smile) he may have to be asked to show the top teeth 
-only. People who want to rise in status may have to be told to turn their backs to us 
-when they leave. Neither smiling nor turning your back is essential but it may help the 
-student get the feeling. In difficult cases it helps to use videotape. 
-A more complex version of this exercise is really a little play. I invented it at 
-RADA when I was asked if I could push the students into more emotional 
-experiences. It’s for one character—let’s say he’s a teacher, although he could be any 
-profession. He arrives late carrying the register and a pair of glasses. He says 
-something like ‘All right, quiet there, now then’, treating us as the class. As he is 
-about to read the register he puts the glasses on, and sees not his class, but a meeting 
-of the school Governors. He apologises, dropping in status frantically, and struggles to 
-the door, which sticks. He wrestles with it and after about ten seconds it comes free. 
-The actor feels a very great drop in status when the door jams. It takes him back to 
-feelings he may not have experienced since childhood: feelings of impotence, and of 
-the hostility of objects. 
-Once outside, the actor either stops the exercise, or if he feels brave, re-enters, 
-and plays the scene again and again. This exercise can turn people into crumbling 
-wrecks in a very short time, and for actors who like to ‘pretend’ without actually 
-feeling anything, it can be a revelation. One Scandinavian actor who apparently had 
-never really achieved anything because of his self-consciousness, suddenly 
-‘understood’ and became marvellous. It was for him a moment of satori. The 
-terrifying thing is that there’s no limit. 
  
 ===== Playing Scenes - Status ===== ===== Playing Scenes - Status =====