When you are preoccupied, say, with verbalizing your private thoughts while sharing the where and dealing with an onstage activity that you share with another player, BOTH focuses will act on each other and lead you towards transformation. You are asked to be active on two different fronts. As I said before, Pre-occupation is an “Active” focus. I’m still grappling with this, but it helps to get ideas in writing, and to appreciate the work that you’ve put in to distilling the essence of this provocative concept. Using the image of a flip-book or film frames is useful for getting there, but then that opens up a whole new world of possibilities to the actor in the scene, by virtue of the organic follow-the-follower rather than the structured world of “offers” and “yes and.” Knowing that there is action happening (the frames of the film) but occupying a space between the frames in that readiness to follow-the-follower (“no motion”) is a powerful idea. I think my “hangup” has been, in part, being too literal with the words, “no motion,” rather than fully appreciating the context which, admittedly, is still complex. In looking at how Viola described it, I’ve found the most useful descriptors – for me, or how my mind works – to be, “Keeping out of their own way,” “move effortlessly without conscious volition,” “a resting or non-thinking area between people precisely when they are busy with on-stage dialogue and activity,” “does not mean holding back of inhibiting an emotion or a verbalization,”, “a waiting (not waiting for, but in waiting)”, consistent with “take a ride on your own body,” and “in action without attitude”.

washing the dishes) and holding a wish, emotion, or some other dramatic thing in No-Motion, never bringing it into action and it will color all you do. The second is your observation that, “As a split focus, you can be in action (i.e. While a freeze may allow “yes, and” thought processes, that is very much “in the head” and not “in the space.” No motion allows the connection for follow the follower to develop and craft a more meaningful and nuanced scene.Ģ. The first is when you’re equating it to following the follower (and your blog post on the distinction between “yes, and” and “follow the follower” put everything in a new light for me – I ran across that maybe six months ago, or so, before taking your class, and found it incredibly insightful, and all the more so for distinguishing Viola’s work from the approaches that Second City and others use). I’ve read your descriptions here (and also for the “No Motion Warmup” post), and there were a couple of points you’ve noted that are really starting to get it to sink in for me.ġ.

In my mind, it’s one of the more complex, but powerful, concepts in Viola’s work. I’ve been thinking about “no motion” and trying to further process it.