Day Ten - "Where Is My Beauty?"

This morning I got up and made my way to Saint Michel where I was to meet Kate and Oli at 9.30am and then we were going to go the Musee d'Orsay for the morning. Unfortunately Kate and Oli were an hour late, so that didn't happen. (Moral of the story - if your friends are more than 20 minutes late, just go to the Museum yourself and let them meet you there!) When the two bastards finally showed themselves we went and had breakfast (Kate really wanted a pain au chocolat et chocolat chaud) at a little place close to where we went for dinner last night. We then went for a short stroll along the Seine before Oli and I had to head off to school. One positive gained from waiting for an hour was that I got to speak to my parents on the phone which was cool. They were very excited! I'm apparently much more exciting when I'm in Paris! 

The Seine.

In class today we were asked to get up in groups of five and stand up against the back wall. Then Philippe put on some music and said we were to model our characters down the catwalk, and show our their beauty. Beauty was the central theme of today's lesson. 

Where is my beauty? How do I show my beauty?

From my modelling  experience (in which I did a kind of seductive indian dance) I learnt that you can't push beauty. It needs to be subtle. It needs to be internal. A confidence. A knowing. But never pushed. If it is pushed it becomes too much and is unattractive. But then again if there is no confidence whatsoever then we are bored. It's funny writing this now - because what I have written is actually something I have said about beauty for a while now. But when I got onstage I forgot about this and instead felt the need to do something. Those that really worked on the catwalk did hardly anything at all, but were very watchable.

A few notes from today:

• When the audience loves us then we feel free.
  

• Make the audience dream around you!
  

• Question: Do I use my voice or my character's voice?
• Answer: It's always your voice. But you can enjoy pretending you have a different voice.

• "Pretending is for the theatre...Believing is for the church."

• "Feeling is the privilege of idiots."
  

These modelling sessions took up nearly all of the three hour class, which I found very tiring. For the last 20mins ten of us got on stage and walked on the street as our characters, and were stopped by Trygvi's character who was interviewing people about the economic crisis for BBC one. Trygvi is incredible at this kind of thing. Very witty and charming. When it came to my turn I played my character as if he was overly excited to be on television. This was a bit of an idea...But created a lightness in me. When it came to the interview I immediately went into swearing ("it's fucking terrible I tell you" etc) hoping the success of my character swearing yesterday may also be successful today, but no. Trygvi, as journalist, had the power to finish an interview whenever he felt he needed to and he cut me off as soon as I swore on live TV! I have noticed that when I think I'm going onstage to participate in a game I don't really feel nervous. I need to transfer this idea to everything I do on the stage! It is all a game. Le jeu.

After class Oli and I were planning to meet Kate and go and see a show, however Kate was feeling a bit ill from all her flying, so went home early for a nap. Oli and I stopped at Cité Universitaire for a cheap eat. It was brilliant. 

A whole pizza, two bread rolls, a side salad and an apple = all for 4.80 euros.

We then caught the metro to Place de Clichy in the hopes of going and seeing 'Doubt' at the movies. The cinema that we went to wasn't playing the film, and the next showing at the other cinemas wasn't for an hour...So we went home. And here I am! So today has been a slightly disappointing day. But that's okay. I'm pretty tired so an early night will do me just fine.