Incubator practice, Week 2, Jon Karpinos coaching

Don't bother scrolling up to look for week 1. It's not there. It's in my head and in my heart, though.

I had so much fun at Incubator practice that I meant to come right home and document it. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, they say. Let’s see how much of it I can get down on virtual paper now.

We started out throwing balls around, and I actually didn’t hit anybody in the face or destroy any light fixtures. I usually do throw like a girl, for real. It’s been a family joke for years.

We threw balls to a person in the center who threw them to someone else as we walked around, then we threw them to each other in a pattern, kind of like “Where the F**k’s the Celery?” (I’ve no idea why I’m suddenly being polite here – just in the mood, I guess). This was a great focus exercise and I hope we do it again, because it was a lot of fun.

We worked on environment, which was cool after last week’s Level 1 class. Good reinforcement for me to remember to take advantage of environment and object work to help me with my confidence issues.

We created environments and did scenes in them. We created a shoe store and Kit and Bryan did a funny scene about old people stealing the shoes while the owner was away, and they played with all the stuff we had put into the environment.

When Todd and I took our turn, I assumed we’d just be doing another scene, but he initiated what was essentially a second beat, making us the owners returning to our ransacked store. That turned into something really fun, as we managed to touch on and heighten each of the elements Bryan and Kit had introduced.

I can’t stress to myself enough how much more comfortable I feel while miming something. I did some cooking, which is something I don’t have to think too hard about (I may not cook much now, but I used to be a fiend in the kitchen). I had fun in that scene with Kit. We found a pretty neat relationship and game there, with both of us continuing our chosen activities without comment, and I was never at a loss for words.

Later in the practice, Kit and I had what may be my favorite scene ever. It wasn’t really funny at all, but was real and sweet and I felt very grounded in it. It was just a short scene about a widow and widower talking on the front stoop of their apartment building. I felt like I knew these people, and I would love to have continued the conversation so I could find out what happened to them. Nice. Very nice