Second Session

First we do the Installation exercise. We walk round a Gallery or a place where an artist has made an installation. Ten minutes. In that time we begin to notice things in the room we haven't noticed before. Scuffs. Fluff. Marks on the ceiling. Writing on the board that hasn't been properly erased. The composition of shoes on a chair. Tidiness of someones chair. The untidiness of another's.

We compare notes. Everybody has been amazed by something that's at the same time mundane and extraordinary...

We give the feeling of this state we were in the title: 'Neutral'. It's a slow state we decide. An open state. An observant state. And, from Tai Chi, perhaps, an empty state. Not empty in a bad sense like being dead and empty. But empty, waiting to be filled up with something.

We now build onto this central, maybe impossible, neutral state. Firstly Attraction. It's higher in intensity than neutral. It's both attraction but can also be scary. Something that we might be a bit wary of. It can be a prophet that we are attracted to follow. Or a lover we are drawn to. Or the statue of the Virgin Mary. It's about being drawn. And also sometimes about having to leave that person or thing and not wanting to. To be torn both ways.

We do next California. It's loose. It's positive. It's high status. No one is better than us. No one more beautiful. We are never mean to people in that state. Never ungenerous.Why should we be? We're tanned and blond and beautiful...
We jog along the beach. Lounge on the sand. Do our exercises. Stretch out on a towel. Jive. We're cool. We're smiling a lot. We're always positive when we meet people. We're loose and we like to hang out. We're not afraid. We're not afraid to look people in the eye as equals.

We do Out-Breath or Lowest. As our breath goes out - or we sigh - we lose out energy. It just seeps away breath by breath until we sink to the floor. This is even looser than California. We're soft. When we get up from the floor we still do it on an out-breath. So even going up we're not going up 'strong', but soft. We totter. We stumble. We sag. We fall. But we always fall soft - and there are a hundred ways to fall. We do the scene from They Shoot Horses Don't They?. The 24 hour dance competitions. We - and our partner - are trying to win the big cash prize. We're staggering around. Falling (soft). Picking ourselves and each other up. But we still want to win the prize.

We do Bomb in the Room (which we later call Hesitation as well). We start back in the Art Gallery waiting for our friend. But our friend is late and we get more and more anxious. Frantic. We try a different thing. Two kids in the playground. They both want to say hello to each other but they're both shy. Their actions are Non-Stop. Or Never-Quite-Stop. Almost stopping but then starting again - sometimes with an unexpected start. We do it as a honeymoon couple. They're shy too. Don't want to appear too forward. Looking for a good night ahead but they don't really know what to do... We do it as a group with a carrier bag in the middle of the room. What's in it? It it going to explode. Mass hysteria. Mass panic.

We do Highest or 'Tragedy'. This is the most intense. Most visceral. From the centre. Massively wary of all danger. Everything is dangerous. You can't afford to take your eyes off people for a second. You may need to resort to shows of aggression but it comes as much from a profound sense of unease and danger at any sense of superiority. It's vulnerable. It's exposed.

We break.

After the break we remind ourselves of the states and then we choose a song: Row Row Row the Boat. We sing it in the states.

Then we split into pairs and sit facing one another on chairs. We practise our mini-speeches. As much to remind ourselves of the text as anything. Later, Steve calls out: "tragedy" or "california" and we have to make the gear-change from one state to the next, no matter where we are in the text at the moment he calls out.

Later still we're divided into A or B and the same thing occurs, swopping between states and A and B in rapid fire succession so that we get used to not thinking about it but doing it instinctively.

Finally A calls the states for B and then B has the chance to call the states for A.

The last part of the class, we set a chair up at one end of the room and invite people to come out with their 'speeches' while a 'prompter' or 'conductor' calls out the state as and when she fancies. Fola, Laura, Jess, Karine are some of the people we get time to see do this work. It's good and a lot of points come up.

About volume. The voice needs to be strong, whether you're doing a high state of intensity or a low one. Karine's Californian was the loudest for some reason. But it's possible to get a similar openess to the voice in Lowest, Tragedy, Attraction or whatever.

Gear Changes: take your time to make them. They don't have to be accompanied by text. Feel them. Really let them happen.Feel them happening. Don't worry about the audience. They'll be wondering why you've stopped in mid-track or mid-sentence, but that all adds to the interest. So long as something's happening.

Hesitation may be a more useful name for one of the States. It's about the uncertainty of the speaker. Low status. Shy. Afraid to speak. Afraid to have to tell you something. Hesitant. Tripping over the words. A confession maybe. A secret shame. Who knows?

We meet finally at the end and most feel this method can be useful. Not as a rigid system but as a tool to get you out of a pickle sometimes or to help you when you're blocked. But most of all to help you to realise that there is not just one way to say text. That you can always keep it fresh as you rehearse. You don't need to get stale or stuck.