Day Fourteen - "You Definately Had Pleasure"

Went to the Musee du Louvre this morning! It was fantastic - very large and full of beauty. I felt a bit naive as I don't really know anything about Art History so I was walking along seeing all these beautiful paintings, and just kind of thinking "that's awesome" but not knowing who painted it and when it was painted and in what political situation was it painted etc. But I couldn't do anything about that! Here's some photos of what I liked - for their face value - taken during the two hours I spent there.

Me outside the Louvre.

I loved these huge epic paintings that span across the whole wall.

'La Gioconda'. Bigger than I'd been led to believe it was. I stood and looked at this painting for a while amongst a mass of tourists snapping away at it with their cameras. It seems to me to be very whole. Very peaceful. Complete. And yet there is still mystery in her. 

I saw a few artists painting copies of paintings in the museum.

Look up!

For Tom McCrory.

The ceiling in one of the rooms. The ceilings were my favourite!

A great headless angel.

Wonderful sculptures.

This image gives a sense of the scale of the building. Very grand.

The Da Vinci Code is juuust under that bottom pyramid...yeah right.

I had previously decided that next time in class I would get up on stage early, not wait until I'd seen others have a go, and just take a risk and discover on stage. So today I took the first chance available to me and it worked out well! Philippe asked two 'families' of characters to go up on stage and then gave them a scene to improvise. The first scene involved Adriano (the 'strong black woman') and his partner coming to the house of Bijan and Lib's in order to discuss the arranged marriage of their children. Adriano stole the show, playing high status with flair. After that there were no more families with opposite sex children (all the rest have girls) so I got up with Mark - my character's gay lover - and we did a scene with Trygvi the annoying dad, Jamie his Nike-onesie wearing wife, and Fauv the goth daughter called 'Unique', in which Mark and I were to come over and meet the family in the hopes of taking Unique away with us on holiday. 

The improvisation went well in places and nearly flopped in others. But this was exciting and kept us on our feet! It was great working with Trygvi and co. because they are a very strong family - well formed and have a great complicite with eachother - so I felt very supported on stage. I stuck with my characters smile, and was concentrating on when I'm in Major and when I'm in Minor. I found that in my 'family' I tend to be in Major much more. I think this is mostly because right now Mark is having trouble with his character and is very inactive and untalkative. I think I'm lucky I didn't get told "you talk too much" like many people do, but I was aware of it, so I must have walked a fine line. I also noticed that when working with another family, one family is in Major whilst another is in Minor. I got a good grasp of this and the scene shifted responsibility (?) well. It also felt good just sitting in a place of unknowing and finding things together, in the moment. I definitely want to transfer this to my text-based acting when I get back home. At the end of the improvisation Philippe focussed mostly on Mark but said that the rest of us definitely had pleasure. I know I did. I was on the verge of cracking up for most of the scene! We are starting to prepare to write scenes for families soon. And these scenes will be performed at the end of the workshop. Exciting!

Notes:

• Playing on a psychologic level is boring. Need to be bigger! "Too much woo woo woo woo and not enough Theatre."

• An actor needs to be in sync with an audience's imagination. Timing is important.

• "Don't try to be funny. If you think you are funny it will be a catastrophe."

• Sometimes Philippe gets actors to shout curses at him. I think he does this to ignite energy, fire and pleasure in the actor. Being naughty and powerful gives light in the eyes!

After class I went to Montparnasse Bienvenue (the place I went on my first night in Paris) to pay the rest of my rent for my apartment. Got into a discussion about Oliver my mischievous roommate and Elouise tried to get me to take the keys away and put them inside the apartment so that Oliver would be forced to go and pay the rest of his overdue rent tonight. I said I was uncomfortable with this, but somehow when I left I think I had agreed to do it. In the end I decided against it and left the keys where they were as I didn't want to get unneccessarily involved in their quarrels. 

Afterwards I watched LOST Season 5 Episode 5 with Marieke. The season has been very complicated and all over the place so far, but tonight's episode shows signs of big things starting to be linked together, which is very satisfying.