Word Blast: Man

I sense some antagonism.

(pause)

Pardon me if I'm overstepping...but if we're going to be travel mates I suppose it will all come out in the end anyway. (laughs uncomfortably)

(pause)

Are you the girl?

How It Started

To: "Elizabeth Spreen"
Date: Saturday, January 7, 2006, 12:20 AM

Hey,

It was good talking to you about playwriting and such -- sometimes I think I just need a good discussion about art and process to get inspired again. So thanks.

I meant to ask you if you wanted to try a little experiment. At a PICA workshop this year I did an exercise where you hook up with another performer (physically) and tell a story together, alternating with the other actor word by word. It was very challenging. I'd done something like that before in grade school, where you tell part of a story and then say "and then..." and pass it on to the next person, but this was different. It was hard to stick to one word at a time, it was hard to re-adjust over and over to the new direction of the story just when you thought it was going somewhere else, and it was equally hard to do the simple thing and let the story tell itself instead of trying hard to be "creative" and "original." It was a truly collaborative process which was most exciting when you relinquished ownership of the piece and allowed the other person to lead you somewhere you wouldn't have dreamed of going alone.

I started thinking about the possibilities this exercise could create when it comes to playwriting. What would happen if two writers e-mailed each other maybe a line (instead of a word!) at at time? What if you had to write a line a day and only gave yourself five minutes to do it? Or maybe assume one character in a two person play, and write their response to the previous line of dialogue (or action, as the case may be)?

Interested?

Susan

Word Blast

Monday, February 01, 2010

Man

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