June 11 下北沢 Workshop - Focus & Status

We had a full house at today's Act in 英語 Workshop with a good mixture of new challengers and returning champions. We started by focusing on focus - doing something (or talking to someone) with attention and intensity; doing something carelessly; and the movement from one to the other. We touched on how you can help your scene partner in this by serving them up exciting or boring content. After that, we used playing cards to assign status to people. Playing your hidden card is a challenge because people do not always read our behavior the same way we think we are displaying. Seeing other peoples' cards and trying to signal them is difficult because we don't know how to compare. And, finally, playing out the difference in our hearts with what we are showing the world . . . well, that's really hard and really exciting.

After the break we took on scenes from Moon,

15 Million Merits (an episode of Black Mirror),

Super Secret (a mock-sides scene), and A Life in the Theater. In every scene there were differences

between what one person sees and what is felt. The true challenge is playing out those different sides and signaling the audience as to what is important.

After the scenes, many people were able to hang out for a while, enjoy some food and drinks, talk through current projects, and even do a little palm reading...

Already looking forward to next month. Hope to have more things on the schedule soon.