Wow…I’m late writing this entry. Monday was a light class…we actually got out an hour early. We saw 3 exercises. I do have a couple of observations from that class that I want to record, mainly so that I can be aware of them in my own work going forward.
First, it is important to have an objective to pursue that is super hot – something that will keep you pursuing it and not letting go of it. In a couple of exercises I felt that the person entering the room, the one who had to get their partner to do something, didn’t set the stakes high enough for their objective, causing the exercise to lose momentum and the scene to fizzle out.
The other observation is kind of tied to the first. If the tactics you are using to get what you want aren’t working, then try something else. In the exercises I mentioned above, the person coming in the room tried one or two tactics, but when they didn’t work they gave up. What happened was that the partner with the IA had no reason to deal with them. In both cases I thought that if the partner with the IA wasn’t going to pay attention to them, they needed to do something to MAKE them pay attention. Grab their activity, get in their face…anything. I wonder if part of that has to deal with not wanting to be physical with the partner. While I respect people’s boundaries, and would not advocate doing something that would harm the partner, there are a thousand ways to physically get attention that don’t involve crossing boundaries.
One exception was Lukas in his exercise with Christine. I thought he did a good job of picking up and dealing with her behavior, and using it to eventually get what he wanted. He saw that she wanted to complete her IA, and by actually helping her, he was able to draw her attention to what he needed. Of course, that might not have worked with different circumstances, but for his objective it worked beautifully.