Where do I go?

This last week we've been working on blocking. Before I explain what it is, I'll explain how it feels. Like chaos in a chicken pen. Normally competent human beings are face down running into each other speaking lines that may or may not exist. You sort of watch yourself in slow motion be in the wrong place at the wrong time and you're trying to scribble notes as fast as you can but you know you won't be able to read your hand writing later and did the director say come in before Hector says the f-word or AFTER Hector says the f-word. Chaos.

Blocking. Blocking is the completely unintuitive act of figuring out where people are when. Or as wikipedia so aptly defines:

"Blocking is a theatre term which refers to the precise movement and positioning of actors on a stage in order to facilitate the performance of a play, ballet, film or opera. The term derives from the practice of 19th Century theatre directors such as Sir W. S. Gilbert who worked out the staging of a scene on a miniature stage using blocks to represent each of the actors."

That makes it sound so clean..and eventually it should be. But until then, awkward at best. The next time you're at the theater notice how the actors use the stage. Notice how action generally happens in a horizontal line in front of you so that you can see everything. The really odd one though is notice that when two characters are talking to each other very often both characters look out at you and hardly make eye contact with each other. This doesn't seem strange to the audience, but it is a weird habit to get into on stage.