Two people up. No suggestion. They do a scene where they only say numbers, in order, to each other.
So the first person says, “One.”
And the other person responds, “Two, three, four?”
And the first person says, “Five! Six! Seven.”
No repeating numbers. If someone goes “Eight?” you don’t respond with “Eight.” You respond with “Nine.”At first people will try to communicate very specific, very literal things. Someone will be trying to say, “I’m mad at my husband. He was supposed to meet me here!” but they can only say, “One! Two, three, four! Five!” They are gesticulating a ton and trying to make “two” equal “husband.”
But that doesn’t work. You can’t re-use numbers, so there’s no way to make any number mean anything. And we can’t see your “husband,” so there’s no way to know that you’re talking about him.
The other person can only tell that you’re upset, so they adopt a soothing tone. “Six. Seven.”
They are trying to calm you down.
Then, you stop trying to make specific points. You just start responding to each other’s tone.
If “six” and “seven” are said in a soothing way, then you calm down and say, “Eight, nine, ten,” in a sort of “you’re right, you’re right” tone.
Dialogue has a music to it, and that music communicates a lot. Being present means being in touch with that music.
Variation: Each person can only say one number. This forces you to use silence and tone to get feeling out of just one word