W is a research collective that studies action in a performance setting. What does it mean to act as others watch? What characterizes the relation we call theater?
To answer these questions, W simultaneously develops three complementary approaches: a practice, which builds tools and techniques for the actor; a critical method, which suggests reception guidelines for the spectator; and a theory, which works towards defining notions useful to the first two approaches.
In particular, W produces games, a score writing software, a lexicon of operational notions, workshops and practical sessions, critical seminars, as well as articles and conferences.
The W-games are devices that formalize some aspects of the activities of the performer, the playwright, or the audience member. They take on the form of ready-to-play performances.
They are sometimes played in front of an audience. Though some require prior training, everyone is welcome to join in most of them : one needs only to know the rules.
Here W presents 4 games: the Bloc Game, the Tomb Game, Générique and the Rule Game.
To go further than the rules of the games, you can read the following articles : Bloc Tactics, A Game of Tomb and A Round of The Rule Game.
PRESENTATION
The Rule Game is a sort of poetic poker: players are seated around a table and bet chips on words that they propose in turn. The words chosen must compose a series that is both always coherent (at all times, a rule must be able to make sense of the series built since the beginning of the round) and always changing (rules are void as soon as they are spoken). By setting criteria for evaluating these rules, the game leads to an evolution of poetic series that is unstoppable, though as gradual as possible. In this sense, the Rule Game is a modeling of the practice of variation.
the article is coming