The Bit: Play
From all four corners 12 actors enter the stage and group in threes. The trios each take a position in front of a different section of audience. There are four modes of action to this sequence that reflect the images of a game show, a debate, a cafeteria scene and a sermon. The game show section brings out the contestants and the central host figure who is all smiles through appropriate hand gestures silently introduces each of the contestants on his/her right and left. The contestants are congenial but a bit pensive. The host makes the first move and with broad gestures conveys the sense that a theme is established that he wants the contestant on his left to comment on. By copying the gesture and the producing a variation on the gesture the contestant conveys a statement. The host gives the new gesture to the other contestant and the conversation or debate continues with this pattern of action for a few beats. The action changes into the next mode, which is a cafeteria scene. The host becomes the server and the contestants become the people trying to get their food. The Server is strangely robotic. And the bit becomes an attempt to time the movement of placing a plate cup or bowl under the automatic invisible ladle of the server in order to catch whatever it is that he serves. After a few attempts to catch the food being slopped out by the server the third mode of action begins which is a routine that is vaguely reminiscent of a cheerleading squad. The actors stand in a line facing the audience and create one symmetrical shape -the two actors on the outside mirror each other and the actor in the center chooses body shapes that are bilaterally symmetrical. After the trio creates two or three shapes the next mode of action is undertaken by the actors: The sermon. The sermon is conducted with hand gestures indicating a book and god. The Priest delivers a few short phrases with the other two mimicking the boldest gestures before the priest moves counterclockwise to face the audience between 1and 4 with the other two flanking as before and the whole cycle is repeated for each section of the audience.
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