Community in Play

Zoom is, of course, the app everyone is adding to their toolbox these past several months. I’m using it more now than ever (It’s been the go-to app for long distance meetings within the UUA for years). As useful as it is, I hate it with a fiery passion. It’s exhausting, and we all know it’s exhausting. I need a nap after every meeting. Plenty has been written already about the whys of Zoom fatigue. …

Performers – beginners and amateurs especially, but not only – seem to dread silence. After all, we’re supposed to be reciting lines, supposed to have things memorized and rehearsed and ready to run like a well-tuned engine with no sputtering. A lull in the back-and-forth of speech must mean somebody has forgotten something, and we do not want to look like we don’t know what we’re doing. Improvisors, even seasoned ones, go through a similar …

The evening’s exercise was a variation on one of Viola Spolin’s classic theatre games, the “space walk.” Our instructor grouped us into trios to begin shaping the space at the center of our circle. The task was to treat the space as a tangible “stuff” and build something together. The challenge was that we could not speak to one another, we could only agree with and amplify one another’s movements. The “lead” in our trio …