bits are beats

said with a Russian accent

Stanislavski and his disciples divided plays into ‘bits’ — said ‘beats’ because that is how bits sounds coming from a Russian tongue raised on the Russian tongue.

So, we call the bits of a scene ‘beats’.

I don’t know if that is true. But thats the word on the street in front of the theater.

Both words are useful for thinking about how to tackle big, messy, multi-layered plays…that maybe I don’t even really understand yet. …which is every play, no matter how ‘small’ or ‘simple’. I have to gnaw off one bit at a time. One moment when a character wants/needs something, is facing an obstacle, so they use a tool to get past that obstacle to get what they want/need. That’s the bit. When the goal, the obstacle or the tool changes, I consider that a different bit.