We talked about how it is possible to play a character that is either

• close to you,
• completely opposite of you.

Both are completely valid options to play. And by making choices for what character to play, the character itself can become the game in the scene.

The important thing is to make strong choices and have strong beliefs, without which the character becomes both hard to believe and unplayable as a game.

We played Character Swap, in which three people sit in a cafe and start a scene and then the backline players take turns replacing them. The idea is to embody a character fully. I did not like this game AT ALL as it is very hard to follow by the audience and depends heavily on the first three players.

The next game was Four from Two. In this game two players act in a scene, but each player plays two different people. This was my favorite game. When properly done this is also very fun to watch. In this game blocking becomes very important. The audience needs to be able to follow all four players even though only two are visible at a time on the stage. Moreover, the four players should have very distinct personalities and character traits so that the audience can tell which one is which easily.

Finally, we played Le Rond in which two players start a scene and then the players swap in one by one. The point of Le Rond is to see how a character will react when placed in a different situation. This is a very easy game and is more of a warmup exercise.

The crux of this class is to find ways to create believable and interesting characters with strong beliefs. Even if the setting is something ordinary, like by an office water cooler, it is possible to spice it up and make the scene enjoyable. After a scene is made of characters and without a good foundation the entire structure would crumble.