FOCUS
On the sidecoaching received.
Description
Single player describes an experience or recollection. While relating the story, the player is to accept and utilize the prompts and suggestions* provided by the sidecoach.
* note to the sidecoach: listen carefully and add what you think might aid the player in seeing the story more fully.
Also, as noted in the Improvisation for the Theater 3rd Edition, page 215 do not play this too often or early in the training, for it asks for recall and can become a trap. It is to bring the player to the present re-experiencing.
EVALUATION
At what point did you know you left the word and entered into the experience? Audience, do you agree?
SIDE COACHING:
Hear the sounds! See the colors! What is the atmosphere? See yourself in action. Heighten the color, the sensation, the smells! etc.
POINTS OF OBSERVATION
As greater perception is awakened as the player relates the story, notice at what point they “leave the word” as words and become involved in the present time experience of the telling.
I greatly enjoyed being part of this exercise. As a listener, I vicariously joined Priya’s story told with color and sound and joy and bittersweet memory and learned more about a country to which I had never been and shared in Priya’s discovery of the power of the actor.
As a fellow storyteller, I traveled back 30 years to a life story and brought those memories into the present through Gary’s side coaching and relived the sights, sounds, colors, and smells of a diving trip off the coast of Oxnard, CA, when I unwittingly presented swarming seagulls with a banquet of fresh colorful swimming fish. I appreciated the “tell it in slow motion” side coaching because it allowed me time to see and explore the details I was seeing in my memory as they were brought into the “now” of the story. The story was finished and my heart was racing as if it had just happened again.
I have read books that have transported me with the excitement of the written word, and in this exercise there is the added intimacy of being present while the author relives the memories in our presence.
Maureen,
Your story was also captured. Here it is
this is really a wonder presentation with awesome side coaching
Thanks Cheng.
I enjoyed watching the story unfold and notice how the side coaching made it feel present. As Priya added color or texture or slowed down… she changed in those moments right before my eyes and I got more sucked into her story.