7月26日2026 - 調布

More rain, but we were very happy to welcome some new challengers to the Act in 英語 family!

We focused on scenes that could focus on the story, the characters, or both. If an object is central to a story, that object will either be revealed to the audience so they understand exactly what is motivating the action or the object is never revealed so the audience must focus on how the characters react to it. Consider the Arc of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Arc vs. the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.

Our central blank scene for this workshop featured such an object:

A: (knocks on the door)

B: Come in.

A: (enters and waits)

B: You know why I called you?

A: No.

B: (gives a piece of paper to A)

A: (looks at the paper) I thought you didn’t care.

B: You’re fied.

A: Fine. I hate this job. (exits)

What’s on the paper? Does it matter? Perhaps later the audience will discover that it is evidence that A is a terrible worker or is sleeping with B’s spouse or wanted for murder or has been repeatedly reported for smelling terrible. If our story is about that, we need to focus on acting as if that is important.

How are they behaving? Perhaps A really does hate this job and is glad to be fired. Perhaps not. Perhaps B hates A and is happy to fire them. Perhaps not. If we focus on how they are interacting and how those reactions change with the firing, we learn a great deal about the characters.

In a perfect world, we’ll do both.

Pairs formed and switched about so that everyone had an opportunity to try something different. Presentations were made with the audience trying to work out exactly what was going on.

We wrapped up with scene study of Hotel Splendido. This is a comedic sketch that features a terrible hotel receptionist. We must work out why the hotel receptionist is so terrible, and exactly how far we can push your scene partner before they would logically leave. On the other hand, we must work out why the guest stays and why they are willing to accept so much abuse.

Our August workshop date is up now. Hope to see you there!