Had a great day today. Risked and relaxed and played. And starting to feel the pleasure of being on stage much easier now. I don't have to fake it or push it. It's just there. Today I was on stage and I absolutely loved it. What a joy.
Had a fun time playing with the Le Coq row-boat mime movement we've been learning (which most of the time has been a bore).
A while ago we learnt that each movement is one of the elements - water as the oar touches the river, earth as you grip the oar, fire as you push the boat from behind you, and then air as you pull the oar back up. Today we stopped thinking about the oar so much and instead just played with the rhythms and tensions of the movement. And, apparently as Le Coq had intended for this particular exercise, played with melodrama. I had a great time playing a villain: Water = "It's fine, it's fine..." Earth (turning away) = "Muahaha no it's really not" Fire = "I'm going to slice you and dice you!" Air (turning in surprise) = "Ohhh hello there."
Improvisation:
Today Philippe asked if anybody had any Greek Tragedy scenes to show and I nodded my head. So Steph and I got up and worked our scene from Medea...and we ended up working for half the class!
First up Philippe got us to both start on the floor and become different elements/materials when he calls them out. "Snow." "Wet Sand." "Purple." Starting to change between them more quickly. "I'm sorry to say: it's not bad." I found myself not caring about being good, or getting it right, but rather just exploring and trying to discover in each moment.
Then we cleared the room completely and had two choruses (of 7) in each corner. One of men behind me. And one of women behind Steph.
- "Do we do as the chorifeur does? Bigger, smaller, the same?"
- "As there are six of you, play to one sixth of the chorifeur's size. Everything you do is to help us see the chorifeur."
We then spoke the text of the scene in different materials/elements, which we called out to our chorus before speaking. Whilst Steph spoke, my chorus was still, and vice versa. I enjoyed choosing elements that opposed or complimented what she was doing. I thinking along the lines of "my partner does that, so I do this". I was thinking about being a good chorifeur (that is, followable) but also let go a bit and trusted the group would follow when I did a crazy element like 'fire' or 'pink'. After class Andre was saying that it didn't matter so much that they could follow me perfectly. They were there to support what I was doing, but didn't need to be absolutely 100% in sync with me to do that. It also felt really nice having the guys there with me. David was behind me saying "we're with you Guy" which was lovely. There's a great collegiality in the class.
Philippe then got us to dress for the scene, and we set up a set. I wore a greek tragedy cloak, and Steph wore a white dress with a gold scarf and had her face made up white - almost like a Geisha. The set was a scaffolding tower, which Steph lay down in on the middle upper level. There were also four guys standing in front of the tower as guards.
Steph was mostly worked on, as she has the majority of text in the scene. Philippe got her to speak like an upperclass Canadian diva, but Steph couldn't really get it. She was close but not quite finding the place we wanted her to go to. I think it's a thing of not fully committing, or not taking big enough risks. When it was my turn to do text I shouted like fire and ran at the guards. Philippe told me to run around the room. Then he got the guards to slowly walk towards me and then push me down to the floor and hold me down, as Steph walked over and put her foot on my chest. I was really enjoying being on stage with Steph and the guards. I was standing there watching them as Steph spoke and was feeling real pleasure from just being on stage and doing what I love. "Guy...you were Okay."
At the end of class, I asked Philippe about aggression in the theatre (as I assumed my shouting would have been aggressive) and he said I wasn't aggressive (like sending 'negative waves' aggressive). "You...you had the pleasure to shout...you were beautiful."
After us, Anna did her Clytemnestra monologue. What she showed at first was something conventional. Pretty good really, but stylistically what we would expect for the text and the play. Philippe then guided Anna to "discover another way". First he got Anna to speak a happy piece of text of Ophelia's from Hamlet (he did this to help Anna be lighter I think) then he offered various little games for Anna to play whilst she said the text, and she jumped back and forth between them. e.g. speak with a nightmare voice, a cooking class voice, a hobo's voice, speak really fast, smile and then laugh... It was superb. So exciting to watch. Really surprising and mysterious, and fun. "She's generous...she gives a lot."
"It's really important for me to help you to be beautiful...and that your character doesn't destroy your character."
After seeing Anna today, and thinking back about Gwen on the 'nightmare of the workshop' exercise, I was quite moved by what this kind of work creates. And what that is is performers who show themselves, in a really beautiful pure way. Through playing, pleasure, imagination, risk, and fear, we see the humanity inside the actor and behind the character. Character is just a cloak over an actor after all. It's wonderful to experience an actor who is really showing themselves. When it happens, I feel like it's all for me, and it's very precious. It is beautiful.
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