Four kinds of stranger so far#

Someone you said something to. Someone you traded with. Someone who walked up to a stall your team had built. Someone who could have said no, and possibly did.

Every one of them was on the far side of the exchange. This one puts them on your side of it — not someone you talked to, someone whose hands are in the thing. Harder to arrange than any of the four, and much harder to fake.

George Curious

Crossing 3 gave you a team#

Assigned, for the Crossing, with a stall that had to keep running whether or not any one of you was standing next to it.

There is no roster this time. Nobody has been allocated to you, and nobody is expecting you — see Policies for what happens if you can’t make the session, because the solo fallback doesn’t reach this one.

George Curious

Two halves, stapled#

You agree on a thing. You each go and do a piece. You bring the pieces back and glue them together.

That is a perfectly good way to get something finished. It is not this Crossing, and a marker can see the seam from across the room.

George Curious

Where the thing actually comes from#

Sawyer and DeZutter spent five improvised performances documenting a creative process where no single participant’s contribution determines the result. Three things it needed:

An outcome nobody had scripted. Each move depending on the one just before. Anyone’s later move able to change what an earlier one meant.

Divide the work in two and you have removed all three, deliberately.

George Curious

And the telling isn’t only yours#

Every report-back so far has been your week, your account, your version.

Two people made this one, so the account has two people’s decisions in it — and What We Made is where that gets noticed.

George Curious

Look at the bench first#

Cardboard. Wire. A broken umbrella somebody abandoned in the Maker Space. The Lego on the common-room shelf. A phone that records.

What’s within reach decides what two strangers can plausibly make before the hallway empties. Pick the idea first and you’ll spend the whole afternoon negotiating it.

Moana Liza

Eighteen minutes, twenty sticks of spaghetti#

Wujec’s exercise: build the tallest thing you can, marshmallow on top. He’s run it with tens of thousands of people.

Kindergarteners beat business students, repeatedly. The kids start pushing sticks into the marshmallow in the first minute. The students plan, then execute the plan, then have no time left to fix what the plan got wrong.

Build in the first five minutes. You’ll be wrong sooner, which is the entire advantage.

Moana Liza

Take the offer#

Improv has had the words for this longer than we have. Everything your partner does is an offer. Accepting is saying yes to the reality they’ve put in front of you. Blocking is rejecting it.

Johnstone reckoned good improvisers look telepathic, because they accept all offers made.

Take the offer and you get a build. Block it and you get your own idea, with a witness.

Moana Liza

What’s actually checked#

• the partner was found that week, in person, not arranged in advance
• what you built was made together, not split up and assembled apart
• you can point to a decision in the build that wasn't yours alone
• you came away with a short clip of what got built — the last of your five

Find a Partner in the Hall

Moana Liza

The fifth clip, and the person in it#

Fifth of five, and the one that closes the set at the Finale — see Legacy.

Film the thing you built. It’s an object this time, which makes your life easier than it was in Crossing 4. Want your partner featured in it? Ask, record the yes, and shoot a version without them as well — Policies is the order of operations, and consent comes back off the table any time up to the Finale.

Moana Liza

What you owe the room next week#

The thing, if it travels. A description of it, if it doesn’t.

Then the part that isn’t yours: one decision your partner made that changed what it became, and where the two of you disagreed. An account that only covers your contribution is missing half of what happened — What We Made says so plainly.

Moana Liza