ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a new set of exercises for coaching actors when working on productions that are non-traditionally staged in arenas, thrusts, allies, or site-specific productions. A gift that can reveal truth, can offer connection, can make meaning out of the world around us. NTS staging takes this ideology and not only embraces it, but also manifests it—in rich physical detail of each character's connection to themselves and to each other. Micheal Chekhov's iconic exercises, known as Psychological Gestures (PG), are one of the technique's most useful tools. In terms of NTS work, where the physical metaphor of the actor's objective must play out over and over in different ways throughout the scene and play, using the idea of a song 'refrain' can be useful. 'Refrain' takes the idea of the PG and offers an easy way to incorporate the tool into character-building work as well as performance preparation for an audience on all sides.
