Day Two - "Fight To Be Loved"

As I walked down to the metro this morning I looked to my right and saw this stunning building.

I knew the Sacre Coeur was close to my apartment but this is 2 mins away! Beautiful!

Got breakfast from a little Patisserie down a side street. The food wasn't labelled so I'm not sure what they call this (I said "je voudrais ça s'il vous plais) but it was like a big sweet baguette with chocolate chips. Really good. 

This morning I went secondhand shopping with a bunch of my classmates to find a costume for class. I ended up getting these awesome shiny pink parachute pants, a black leather vest and a red and white striped scarf. Looked like a rebel genie. There was a music video being shot in the store whilst we were in there. It was quite funny seeing a mod looking french man lip sincing as he strolled around the clothing aisles.

I freaked out a bit because I'd lost track of time and was running late for class. I ended up getting to the RER but the next train wasn't for 40mins or so and then it ran late. So that was not good. However I felt slightly better to find that there three others in the same situation as me. When we arrived to Movement late, the new teacher came over to me (and others) and acted all nice and happy to see me "Hi what is your name?" etc then quickly changed and started hitting me saying "don't be late to class!". Lesson learnt. 

In class with Philippe today we were set the task to come out one by one from behind the screens at either side of the room in our costumes. He wanted us to enjoy the pleasure of the audience not recognising us. We were to come out as the character of our costume and say "Guuuy? Where aaaarrree you? Guy? Where have you gone?" and then change back into ourselves on the phone talking to our mum/dad/girlfriend etc telling them how funny and how great it feels that nobody knows who we are.

Most of us were terrible and 'killed'. "Do you think Sarumi was fucking boring Japanese and you want her to die?" "...Yes Philippe. She was boring and Japanese and I want her to die".

The ones that worked were fantastic and joyous. They worked because there was subtlely and play and nothing was obvious. The character formed out on the stage with the audience - not before it made its entrance. 

I came out as an Italian-American aggressive type with my body all arrogant and my voice hard. It didn't go so well. My feedback was that I was too heavy. From discussion after class I learned that when Philippe uses the term 'heavy' he means that everything is underlined and there is nothing for the actor or the audience to discover. The joy of theatre is that the actor and the audience discover a character together, every night. This process is what makes the actor the artist. So if there is nothing to be discovered then we are bored, and therefore want to kill the actor. I, like many others, also got the feedback that our costumes were bad and that we were completely recognisable. Tomorrow I am going to find a costume that even I can't recognise myself in!

I liked that at the discussion at the end of class Philippe spoke about when he 'kills' us its not because we are terrible actors or people. It is because at that moment right then, it was really bad.  He said every actor wants to be loved and that by constantly being killed it makes us fight to be loved. I liked that a lot. 

There was also a discussion about whether or not to split the class into two because it is so large. He said whenever a class is split in two one of the groups is "fucking boring" and that having a big class makes all the emotions more extreme which is what we want. Others also said that splitting the class makes it affects everybody socially also. We decided to keep it as is for now. I like having the big class and watching everybody. It's good to see people who have been at the school for a while and to see how they approach things. I also like the idea of a smaller group because it provides the opportunity to get up more than once in a day and shed those initial nerves that I am getting. 

I feel like my first impulse is to impress, to be good, and to entertain. It seems that all the successful performances have been funny and have made us laugh, which makes me feel that in order to be successful I need to make people laugh as well. Which then makes me feel I need to perform etc etc.  I am going to try and come out next time without an 'idea' and just be open and sensitive to my surroundings. I also want to shed these nerves and go out looking to have fun and enjoy myself. Why would I want to avoid pleasure?

Went to Mark's place for dinner tonight. We made pasta collectively.

This is Anaas, Fauv from London, and Marieka from Holland.

That's Mark. 

 

And this is for all the feminists out there. Two really cool posters I thought.