I was right to focus in on the director’s exercises as one of the most interesting things in our process. Today, in the interest of pursuing types of slow and fast motion, she brought out some things I’d never seen before.

We began by having the actors race across the room, where the last one to cross the finish line wins, which is a standard slow-motion thing. But then she brought THIS out, which she invented herself last night:

1) Take a chair and place it somewhere in the room.
2) As your character, go to the chair, sit in it, and get up and go to another chair. Repeat till you’ve sat in three chairs.
3) Use this to explore how your character moves and sits down.
4) If you feel like it, use the three different sits as three different points in the play.
5) Use the same kind of motion as the slow run.

They did it. It was the most engaged slow-motion I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of bad slow motion. This was different. Letting them use their characters’ bodies really freed the actors. Then she had them do it:

1) At naturalistic speed, using the same movement and intentions and sits.
2) Double time.
3) Double time.
4) Double time.
5) The same speed as #4, but being careful not to sacrifice any detail.

It was extraordinary.

Without making a big deal about it, she’s turned this kind of work into a welcome break in an intense rehearsal day, and a time for really exploring the physical and emotional relationships between characters – all without words.

We’re going to use slow and fast motion as a transition device, and a way to show how the character Ceci, who has brain damage, experiences the world sometimes.

The table work flew by. No one could believe six hours had passed.

After rehearsal, we looked at a rack full of 70s-era clothes, vintage, and then the director and I watched PROJECT RUNWAY with some old friends from OSF – Rene, Sarah Jane, and Rosalee. I rode home tonight on a bus with the windows so fogged up I couldn’t see the streets outside. And I’m working in St. Mark’s. One of my co-coffeehousers is actually reading BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.