Some of my ideas would be movie shorts, or parts of a movie.
1.
Two couples, one of them is being invited to the apartment of the other couple. The action will take place with the first couple arriving and greeted at the door, ushered in, sitting down, chatting, waiting for dinner to be served, etc. Where it gets unusual is that the first couple will be directed to actually get drunk immediately prior to action, to the point of almost being unable to function, right on the verge. The actors will have to know what their limit is and perhaps experiment during rehearsals. The other couple will be directed to remain sober. The actually drunk couple will be the ones hosting the dinner party. In addition to being directed to get drunk, they are directed to act as though they are sober. The other couple, the guests arriving for the dinner party, who are directed to remain sober, are also directed to act like they are drunk -- not only drunk on arrival but increasingly drunk as the socializing unfolds. The host couple, who are actually drunk but acting sober, will also be directed to behave in a judgmental way, critical of the inebriation of the other couple.
2,
A family set in Victorian England, or it could be 19th century America, 1890s. And perhaps it's winter time, and the scene opens with the family arriving by carriage to their home which is sort of like an apartment in the city, a large apartment accommodating a mother, father, three children, two of them being in their late teens. Everything is directed to be authentically 19th century, except for one detail, and that is that when the family goes into the apartment and they put their coats up and the father says he's going to get the fire going and maybe they have a servant bringing them tea etc. -- the eldest daughter goes over to a cylinder desk, pulls back the cover and there is a laptop computer on which she starts working, perhaps checking her email or something. The point of it would not be to try to explain it or have anybody take notice of it as strange -- it will be directed as though it's perfectly natural and normal and nobody bats an eyelash, and everyone proceeds to behave in their 19th century way otherwise all around the daughter.
3.
A group of people gather together, could be any circumstance, could be indoors at a dinner party, could be at a restaurant or a bar, could be outdoors at a cafe or in the park. There's about five or six people and they are directed to initially chit chat in a normal way, just spontaneous improvisation. Then increasingly they are to start uttering nonsense -- not just nonsense of sentences that don't make sense, but also nonsense words that don't exist, and nonsense syllables. This phenomenon will be increasing, yet intermixed with normal speech slowly being overtaken by the gibberish. The acting will be mostly directed to be normal -- the actors are supposed to behave as though nothing strange is going on while they're doing this, though perhaps one of them or two of them could also behave in a weird manner, with intermittent spasms or tics.
4.
This may be the weirdest of them all. Find a sidewalk on a street that's not busy, where the street is on a fairly steep hill and fairly long perhaps four blocks long with no intersecting streets. Perhaps one or two cars will be passing but that's all. There will be two actors, let's call them Peter and George. Peter is directed to stand at the top of the hill on the sidewalk facing backwards, and he's directed to slowly walk backwards down the hill on the sidewalk. Essentially he's going to be walking backwards on the sidewalk down a steep hill and the sidewalk is not curved it's fairly straight, it's just that it goes downhill. So that's Peter, again, walking backwards down the hill on the sidewalk. George is directed to start at the bottom of the hill, walking up the hill on the same sidewalk, in the opposite direction towards Peter. George will also be facing backward as he's walking uphill. Peter and George will be choreographed and directed to walk at such a pace as to meet halfway as they're both going backward towards each other. Once they pass each other still walking backwards of course, only then will they be able to see each other, each one receding from the other as they increasingly go either up to the top of the hill or down to the bottom of the hill. Now the camera work will have to capture them in a kind of a total way which will be difficult because we don't want the camera to be too far away but it has to capture the whole scenario from each one beginning to walk all the way to ending at the top and at the bottom. There could be more than one camera or close-ups but I don't want there to be any editing or splicing or cheating -- it has to be one take, and the cameras have to reflect and capture the one take. Now here's the punchline: after the whole thing is filmed then the cameras or projectors are to play the film backwards so that it looks like each one, Peter and George, is not walking backwards but is actually walking forwards on their respective trajectories up and down the hill. One effect of this will be that even though they seem to be walking normally forward, their gait will look strangely awkward because they will have been actually walking backward on a hill, causing their body movements to be strange. And yet, there's nothing strange about them walking forward on a sidewalk up or downhill from the audience's perspective, so the audience will experience some optical cognitive dissonance going on.
1.
Two couples, one of them is being invited to the apartment of the other couple. The action will take place with the first couple arriving and greeted at the door, ushered in, sitting down, chatting, waiting for dinner to be served, etc. Where it gets unusual is that the first couple will be directed to actually get drunk immediately prior to action, to the point of almost being unable to function, right on the verge. The actors will have to know what their limit is and perhaps experiment during rehearsals. The other couple will be directed to remain sober. The actually drunk couple will be the ones hosting the dinner party. In addition to being directed to get drunk, they are directed to act as though they are sober. The other couple, the guests arriving for the dinner party, who are directed to remain sober, are also directed to act like they are drunk -- not only drunk on arrival but increasingly drunk as the socializing unfolds. The host couple, who are actually drunk but acting sober, will also be directed to behave in a judgmental way, critical of the inebriation of the other couple.
2,
A family set in Victorian England, or it could be 19th century America, 1890s. And perhaps it's winter time, and the scene opens with the family arriving by carriage to their home which is sort of like an apartment in the city, a large apartment accommodating a mother, father, three children, two of them being in their late teens. Everything is directed to be authentically 19th century, except for one detail, and that is that when the family goes into the apartment and they put their coats up and the father says he's going to get the fire going and maybe they have a servant bringing them tea etc. -- the eldest daughter goes over to a cylinder desk, pulls back the cover and there is a laptop computer on which she starts working, perhaps checking her email or something. The point of it would not be to try to explain it or have anybody take notice of it as strange -- it will be directed as though it's perfectly natural and normal and nobody bats an eyelash, and everyone proceeds to behave in their 19th century way otherwise all around the daughter.
3.
A group of people gather together, could be any circumstance, could be indoors at a dinner party, could be at a restaurant or a bar, could be outdoors at a cafe or in the park. There's about five or six people and they are directed to initially chit chat in a normal way, just spontaneous improvisation. Then increasingly they are to start uttering nonsense -- not just nonsense of sentences that don't make sense, but also nonsense words that don't exist, and nonsense syllables. This phenomenon will be increasing, yet intermixed with normal speech slowly being overtaken by the gibberish. The acting will be mostly directed to be normal -- the actors are supposed to behave as though nothing strange is going on while they're doing this, though perhaps one of them or two of them could also behave in a weird manner, with intermittent spasms or tics.
4.
This may be the weirdest of them all. Find a sidewalk on a street that's not busy, where the street is on a fairly steep hill and fairly long perhaps four blocks long with no intersecting streets. Perhaps one or two cars will be passing but that's all. There will be two actors, let's call them Peter and George. Peter is directed to stand at the top of the hill on the sidewalk facing backwards, and he's directed to slowly walk backwards down the hill on the sidewalk. Essentially he's going to be walking backwards on the sidewalk down a steep hill and the sidewalk is not curved it's fairly straight, it's just that it goes downhill. So that's Peter, again, walking backwards down the hill on the sidewalk. George is directed to start at the bottom of the hill, walking up the hill on the same sidewalk, in the opposite direction towards Peter. George will also be facing backward as he's walking uphill. Peter and George will be choreographed and directed to walk at such a pace as to meet halfway as they're both going backward towards each other. Once they pass each other still walking backwards of course, only then will they be able to see each other, each one receding from the other as they increasingly go either up to the top of the hill or down to the bottom of the hill. Now the camera work will have to capture them in a kind of a total way which will be difficult because we don't want the camera to be too far away but it has to capture the whole scenario from each one beginning to walk all the way to ending at the top and at the bottom. There could be more than one camera or close-ups but I don't want there to be any editing or splicing or cheating -- it has to be one take, and the cameras have to reflect and capture the one take. Now here's the punchline: after the whole thing is filmed then the cameras or projectors are to play the film backwards so that it looks like each one, Peter and George, is not walking backwards but is actually walking forwards on their respective trajectories up and down the hill. One effect of this will be that even though they seem to be walking normally forward, their gait will look strangely awkward because they will have been actually walking backward on a hill, causing their body movements to be strange. And yet, there's nothing strange about them walking forward on a sidewalk up or downhill from the audience's perspective, so the audience will experience some optical cognitive dissonance going on.