🏥Macroscene

Flow

The Macroscene is a show made up entirely of seamless transformational edits in one macro-location. No sweeps, no tag-outs, no swinging doors. Instead the actors move from scene to scene using natural edits inherent in a scene, creating a unique show that moves in real time and is free from improvisational editing.

The form depends on the performers being aware of where the focus is. The focus is the place on stage the audience is looking at.

In a lot of ways the Macroscene is a Monoscene where you follow the characters to new locations. The Monoscene is one scene in a single location and a single span of time, with no external edits. The Macroscene is still one scene that never ends: by continuing to leave locations, new possibilities and new scenes can be discovered.

The natural edit

A natural edit is new characters entering a location and taking the focus. Or old characters leaving the location and bringing the focus to a new one.

The next scene might be started by a man shoving past the previous scene's characters, or the focus might simply pass to another table in the restaurant. Cars drive by, people pass in the elevator, someone enters a crowded bathroom.

Passing the focus

Drop back off the stage and you can pass the focus to the new characters who are walking away. There is another move: a performer leaves a room but stays on stage. That can signal everyone else to leave the stage.

Example

Below is an example of one show and the transitions it involved. The Macroscene class performed it on January 19, 2010. The games and scenes are not gone into in great detail: the example is here to show some in-show transitions.

1. The show opens in a hospital room. Two patients are visited by the Make-A-Wish foundation and celebrity super-model Cindy Crawford.
2. The patients asked for Derek Jeter and are disappointed. The Make-A-Wish spokesman and Cindy step outside, where a doctor pushes by them in a rush.
3. The doctor and his intern enter an operation room, but they are running so late that the patient dies.
4. An employee enters to tell the doctor he was in such a rush that he left his car lights on. The employee then heads down the hall, where a female doctor is on break. He hits on her, and she brushes him off with talk of her movie-loving boyfriend.
5. The doctor from earlier shows up and tells the employee to get back in the parking lot to check on more headlights. The doctor himself is ushered into an elevator to visit the morgue and take a look at patient zero.
6. The patient has had a dick drawn on his cheek. The doctor assumes it is a side-effect of a disease and decides to call the government from the only working phone in the hospital.
7. He arrives there to be stuck in line behind a guy making personal calls.
8. Elle MacPherson walks by and runs into the Make-A-Wish spokesman, who takes her to meet a patient who wants to meet Mark McGwire.
9. Elle applies makeup to the patient, but first draws a dick on the patient's cheek.
10. The doctor arrives, sees the disease is spreading and rushes out of the room.
11. The doctor goes to the only working phone, where he calls the CDC, the American disease control agency.
12. In the surgery room by the phone an operation is getting set up, and a man is in the operating room hitting on the surgeons, hoping to get a place to crash.
13. After failing to pick up either woman, the surgeon leaves and coldly delivers the news to a man outside that his sister died in the operating room.
14. An announcement is made over the PA that the CDC is closing off the hospital. CDC men rush in, hauling another patient with a dick on their face into an elevator.
15. The elevator gets stuck until someone drops into it to brag about seeing Derek Jeter.
16. The elevator moves again, taking everyone to a tent where the infected are housed. The infected are all super models, and the CDC kill them to stop the infection. Derek Jeter arrives, explaining he drew all the dicks as part of his new campaign promoting Sharpie brand markers, which he uses to sign one of the infected children from the first scene.