Cinemorphic Play (Cinemorphing)

An extreme example of the exercise described below from Improv Everywhere...
 

On October 25, 2005 I posted a brief exercise suggestion, Operation 3 - Madonna - Brando, which I re-present and elaborate on below. This is one of a new group of exercises and experiments, which emphasize Cinemorphic play. 

Spend the day "as" a well known personality. i.e. pretend you are…say… Johnny Depp or Lady Gaga all day…identify with and play an array of different personas. Don't just feel it from the inside…act it out. Do impersonations. Variation: Be an animal for a day…a gorilla, say…or a cat.

This casual exercise can be developed in detail also to interesting effect e.g…

Reincarnation: Research some dead historic figure, either well known or obscure, then “reanimate” them, complete with accurate costume, props, speech patterns, etc. in actual locations.

Doppelganger: Do the same for a living person, again either well known or obscure. Create their double. Possibly confront them with themselves.

Movie/theater/literary characters: Do the same with a well described fictitious character.

Make scenes: Once a character is ready to “manifest” in public, work with one or more other players who have also developed characters along one of these lines, to put together scenarios, either scripted or improvised, to perform, with variations, in several locations, e.g. a café, a train station, in a park, etc…anywhere there will be an audience that can either just watch or become “spect-actors” (Boal).

Note: These scenes can also be played out in public with the players not yet in full historic/double/fictitious character and costume…just as actors rehearsing, to interesting effect. This would be more like Boal’s Invisible Theater.

Record these experiments with HIDDEN cameras if desired. Obviously recording them with even a small crew will change/damage the effect. It may be, in the case of period costumed players, that the spect-actors will record the scenes with their phone cameras. “Insider” friends of the players can also do this, of course. An interesting side effect of this would be a subsequent viral YouTube post.

CINEMORPHICS 2.0: Cinemorphic Play

Cinemorphics was originally conceived  and practiced as a method of reality handling that could address certain problems...e.g. substance abuse, shyness, aging, etc. and only secondarily as a technique for pure self expression...i.e...."playing with your self".

In Cinemorphics 2.0, the emphasis shifts. We are currently assembling a set of routines, exercises and games, which, while similar to many practiced in groups and individual sessions addressing problem solving in the past, put the accent on a different beat...the amplification and elaboration of the players' creativity.

One of the modified routines states partially...

"...look at yourself as a constantly evolving work of performance art. This is an advanced exercise that can involve much hard work and development…or not…if the player, once told that he/she is a fiction, “gets it”.

“One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art”

Oscar Wilde

Dates for a new Cinemorphics 2.0 Workshop will be announced here in the next few weeks.