Stage: 3m x 3m square, corners marked as starting spaces for four actors.
Actors: four people who can walk and read English, and possibly the director (named as “jet”) on some cards.
Practice: Print out the cards labeled “Practice” and go over the instructions with the actors and the camera operator. Each actor will have a stack of cards, the camera operator will work from a fixed position (based on stage limitations). Each actor flips over the top card and follows the instructions until they cross paths with another actor and have to stop to avoid a collision. When they stop, each actor flips to the next card in their stack.
Performance: each actor has a set of random cards and starts from a corner on the square. A timer set for 5 minutes is started and the actors perform the actions in their set of random cards. Used cards are rotated to the bottom of the set, an actor will never run out of cards and will repeat previous sets of card instructions.
Evolution: make more cards with new instructions based on previous performances. Add actions like shuffling the cards after they have all been used, or trading an entire stack of cards with another actor.
These are the cards I used for my first show’s practice and performance: