In movement we started with a freestyle dance warmup to a Bob Dylan song which went for 8 mins! Good song but when will it end?? Then a lot of stretching (my hamstrings have always been and are still BAD) and singing (nice to do something I'm strong at).
In improvisation:
- Dancing with a partner. Wink at Philippe if your partner is boring, then when the game stops lie that it wasn't you that winked. If Philippe accuses you and your partner of having a boring time - absolutely deny it. Lie with pleasure and a lying (slightly higher and musical) voice.
- Grandma's Footsteps again - This time with just two people at a time, and together making fun of the person playing Grandma - "When we say bad things about people, we are happy."
When I did this (my partner was Fiona from Sydney) I was too aggressive. "You're like John Wayne in Vietnam. Not good." He said the game doesn't need real feelings, and that I send negative waves to the audience and to my partner. "You can't be negative with a game. You want too much. You want to be good. We see your will, but we don't see your fun. Will is good, but it's fucking boring....It's good to be bad. It helps a lot to be bad. Here, you can discover."
This thing of wanting to do well is going to be big learning for me. It's so engrained in me. How do I try not want to do well? Hmmm. There's time, which is nice.
John Wayne in Vietnam
I had a second go later with Ling from Malaysia. I actively tried to care less about winning the game, but still cared to much about getting the exercise right. This is more the problem for me I think in retrospect. "You're fun is good, but you push too much, like an idiot."
To help us out he got us to gossip with our partners about grandma in a voice so quiet and with our hands covering our mouths so that only we could hear it. The result is a much lighter presence, more pleasure, and less fear. Gives us a good taste of the state we are aiming for.
- Game of using your voice as if you were in a super echoey cave. I got up first as this helps me to not plan anything and to hopefully play and risk more. Usually as a class we don't start to get it till a few groups have gone, so the pressure is off. Plus by going first often there's the opportunity to go again at the end. ;) Nobody seemed to nail the exercise, and Gaulier never really congratulated anyone. I think it was more just an opportunity to practise having pleasure playing with words and sounds, and sharing this with an audience.
With Emma from Bristol, and then Maria from Spain, he spent a bit of time on them guiding them to be "beautiful". "When you are beautiful we see you as a teenager. As a 13 yr old. We see something special." "As an actor I show my soul - but you fight...you move to hide something. You don't want to show something beautiful." This is me with aggression. I'm hiding something simple and beautiful so I need to relax a bit and work on showing that.
He got Maria to sit and sing a lullaby to us. "This is not theatre. Just a friend to a friend" = the tone. The result eventually, after having one of Maria's friends to come and sit by her with their hand on her knee to make her feel less afraid, and making sure she maintains eye contact with us, the audience (by making her wink at someone every time he taps his drum), is very simple and clear without any kind of character at all. Beautiful. You start to see the human being.
"This actor persona of Maria's is hiding her beauty. We love her when she sings. It's simple. A much better place to start from."
"An actor must be unique. Show all their beauty, sensuality, pleasure"...This is why we continue to go and see Shakespeare. To see that in human beings.
Also finished a book today that I've been reading for a while:
I highly recommend it. It looks into consolations for a series of life's troubles (unpopularity, frustration, inadequacy, difficulties etc) by exploring different old philosophers (like Socrates, Epicurus and Montaigne) but in a really witty fun and modern way. This particular bit of text in the chapter Consolations for Difficulties (through the eyes of Friedrich Nietzsche) spoke to me about what I'm doing at the moment:
"...No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment."
It was paaaaacked!
Friday! End of a fantastic week. Absolutely loving this course, and have finally settled into Paris and feeling comfortable now. Going out for drinks and dancing now!
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