Three seats, three descriptions
At an open rehearsal, our class watched a short movement performance. We were asked to describe what we had observed without immediately explaining what it meant. This sounded easy until we compared our notes. I had watched the performer place a red scarf on a chair and walk away. From my seat, I could see the whole action. My friend Kirill entered a little later. He saw the performer walking towards the curtain, but he had not seen the scarf being placed on the chair. Another student could hear the music clearly but could not see the chair behind a tall visitor. Our first descriptions were different. I wrote that the performer had left an object behind. Kirill wrote that the performer was leaving the stage. The third student described a sudden change in the music. None of these observations was necessarily wrong, but each covered a different part of the event. The workshop leader then asked us to separate observation from interpretation. 'I saw a red scarf on a chair' was an observation. 'The performer was angry with the person in the chair' was a possible interpretation, not something we had directly seen. We could discuss interpretations, but we needed to label them honestly. The exercise made the performance more interesting: different viewpoints added information instead of simply competing for one quick answer.