13 men are in a room. They greet each other with hugs, kisses. The workshop eases into 1st gear. A list is read out-loud; props are required. They begin to hunt them down. A bit of a heavy metal pole is a gun, tupperwear in plastic bags are bits of ceiling, a mobile phone is a CCTV camera. Chairs make up walls, the scene is set,

2 or 3 men alternate in each role. They feed each other their lines, they run the action through, with very little pause or repetition, pushing through the material as actors are ‘buzzed out’. When one man is buzzed out, another leaps into his place. Buzzing out predominantly seems 2 happen for ‘being the same’ i.e. maintaining the same emotional tack for longer than half a sentence and for paraphrasing - even if only one word is swallowed. ‘Getting on a bus’ is not tolerated. ‘Being Clever’ will be noticed. The turnaround is swift.

Initially it is Alex who has the power to buzz out. After the ball is rolling, the rules shift. Anyone can buzz you out, in order to buzz themselves in. Few of the men are swift to punish each other, but across the board, they all begin work harder in the judgement of their peers; their intensity and attention increase visibly.

They feed each other lines, and perform their own, focusing entirely on the strings of words between two punctuation marks in the play. No larger passages of the play are discussed. No character arcs, no memorizing lines, no one utters a question about motive. All are attentive only to tiny individual moments, how many ways they could play them and what impact they have on the man playing opposite them.