A Play in Three Acts

The genesis of A Play in Three Acts grew out of my experiments in 2022 and 2023 with generative play. In Generationz I had developed a system for solo improvisation and I was curious about how this system might shared with other movers. In particular, I was invested in the challenge of transmitting the method to a group of dancers without actually feeding them any scores. At the same time, I saw so many issues in contemporary society which, at a fundamental level, were failures to cooperate on building - building consensus, building infrastructure, and building resilience. There existed in my mind a relationship between the two - group improvisation as a metaphor for human cooperation, strongly evoked in works like Lucy Guerin’s Structure and Sadness.

This translation without explicit scores proved to be impossible but the attempt was fruitful. I worked with five dancers, each with a different movement background and perspective on improvised performance. As we rehearsed, the work shifted in the direction of childhood play and schoolyard memories. I was often blown away by a run of the work, and my common exclamations included “That’s it!” and “It’s all part of it”.

A Play in Three Acts was, somewhat covertly, two different dance works.

The first piece played out in the rehearsal room and on stage, and its primary material was the experience of the dancers. Many of the conventions of dance performance were present.

The second piece played out in the minds of the audience. Each audience member was given a pencil and a card with a different ‘watching score’ (an idea adapted from Shaun McLeod’s PhD project) to frame their interaction with the performance. These scores took the form of scorecards, open questions, polls, and puzzles.