How infinite in faculties, really?

You have to wonder what exactly is the mechanism in the brain that allows improvisation. Story-telling, lying, making it up. In this phase, where it feels like I just have way too many facts and details to take into account at the same time, the whole nature of the performance--from a performer's point of view--is interesting. What exactly are we rehearsing, if we have yet to repeat a single plot twist or scenario? What are we getting "good" at?

I remember in today's rehearsal Juha got some feedback about a choice he'd made after Akseli offered him a deal. It was the right choice at the time to exercise Juha's hierarchical superiority, but it would have been better had he done the opposite and created a plot device to be exploited later. Or I'll get offstage and realize that I've just taken the easy way out of a situation instead of doing something that could help/hurt (same thing in Koneisto) another character. Ninety-nine percent of the time we'll agree on what would have made a better story. The challenge for us is to find the better story as directly as possible and collectively, which is no small task, but we don't have too many problems agreeing on what makes a story good. Sometimes I think of it as finding trouble for myself and others; it's the actor's equivalent of finding the biggest pile of dogshit and stepping directly into it. At the same time, things need to move forward. Someone has to take control. If it gets too complicated, it falls apart.

Funny, though, how this sort of mirrors how we (or at least I) enjoy watching Shakespeare. I already know the plot (and sometimes half of the text), so it's really not about what happens, but rather how it happens. And yet on one hand you have a text that's not only written, but deified; on the other hand you have an empty stage, no text at all, and just the invention of the moment. When we rehearse our Shakespeare monologues, it's when you can "see the character thinking" that the text really comes to life; it's also the invention of the moment. Text or no text, it's the invention of the moment that I love to watch. So is that what theatre is?