Yesterday I did an online interview with Sarah Rosenblum from Centerstage Chicago. One of her questions regarding entities prompted a different take on the subject. I thought I post my response as a compliment to my previous descriptions of what an entity is and how it works.
Rosenblum: Your rehearsal process for 200 Funny Things involved the creation of entities as opposed to characters. Can you discuss the distinction? What relevance does it have?
Ivcich: When you talk about a character in a play, you're really talking about a literary device. The literary character derives it's existence from the words of the author and the situations implied by the plot. It is knowable as a type of person who inhabits a known world. Unlike a literary character, an entity is not derived from words. It is derived from what the actor is experiencing on a moment-to-moment basis. Essentially, the entity is a continuously evolving chain of experiencing. Each time the actor evokes an entity it will be different because what they are experiencing at that moment is different. The entity can experience itself as human or subhuman or superhuman or not human it all. It's really an experiential universe that continuously unfolds in the consciousness of the actor. To one degree or other literary characters "make sense". Entities do not. They are completely abstract, and yet, the audience comes to know them through the shared experience of that abstract behavior.
Our next performance of 200 Funny Things is Saturday, February 5th at 10:30 pm. Visit collaboraction.org for all the details.