A Kiwi In Paris: "You Always Have To Pretend You Know Exactly What You Are Doing"

Woah. My blog posts are way too long! Sorry about that. I will work on compressing them down.

I was half an hour late for Movement today due to the train strikes going on. We'd been told that whilst the strikes are on it's okay if we're late but I couldn't get in when I pushed the buzzer because nobody was around the office. So instead I went into the Sceaux township and finished off the final procedures of getting my visa verified. All done. I've got my visa. My accommodation. My school. My job. All I need now is a bank account and I'm fully sorted. :)

The Sceaux Township.

We had Thomas today for improvisation as Philippe is on his 'garage day'. Thomas is more gentle and gives you clearer feedback on why what you did didn't work. Whereas Philippe gives you something simple then leaves you to figure it out for yourself.

We did some warm up games:

"Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit" "RABBIT!" ..."Pig Pig Pig" .."PIG!" doh!

A cool game in which you have to tell a made up story to your partner starting off from a word like 'chocolate' and the your partner can say 'yes' if they want you to continue with what your saying, or 'no' if they want you to go back and revise the last bit you just said. The result is really crazy stories!

We played various versions of Grandma's Footsteps (in the style of classical ballet, contemporary dance etc). Presence and pleasure are important here. Well, I think pleasure creates presence. And it's important not to have aggression, as in, 'I want something'. This is me! Let it go!

"When we see actors with pleasure there's a big chance the audience will like them."

Also did a (really difficult) exercise in which three people go up on stage and have to 'find a game' without anyone leading, or acting, telling a story. Do this through listening to each other and copying and extending and playing. Most died. After a while we started to "understand it a bit more" (people do need to make offers, and it needs to be shared with the audience).

"You always have to pretend you know exactly what you are doing." - Thomas would help us along with this kind of thinking. "Now! I want to see the great spectacle you've rehearsed for 6 years. Are you ready?"

The final exercise was to one by one walk out from behind the screen at the back of the room into the centre of the stage being 'beautiful' and then sing a lullaby to the audience whilst walking forward. "You have to sell us your beauty. Simple task but very difficult." I walked out with a tall neck and good posture. Looked at the audience as I walked. Everyone laughed! Then started singing 'Twinkle Twinkle' and Boom. "You look like a primary school teacher." I didn't really get this at the time. But I asked Thomas afterwards he said it was a combination of my long neck and my glasses. He said next time don't wear them. I think I'm not going to wear them from now on. They define my face too much and I want to learn about myself without thick black frames! Those that didn't get banged straight away "you can feel their warmth". But Thomas also said "you could be much more beautiful. You are nowhere near your maximum."

I love this stuff in theatre. Pleasure. Complicité. Beauty.