The twelfth session of the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA) held in Bielefeld, Germany, in August 2000, set out to explore, under the title ‘Action, Structure, Coherence’, the relationship between the actor and text – and specifically between actors trained in the Odin and other physically-rooted traditions and texts of the supposedly ‘classical’, text-based theatre of western Europe. David Korish here reports on three encounters between different pairs of actors and their texts, and their several means of developing a dynamic physical score appropriate to the text concerned. The co-founder and director of Teatro Abya Yala, an independent theatre company based in San José, Costa Rica, David Korish is also a member of the faculty of the School of Dramatic Arts of the National University of Costa Rica.