"It's Good To Go To Another Side."

Today we started off with the exercise: Your Character as a Lawyer.

"If you are brilliant we save his life. If you are boring we cut off his head."

For some reason people were quite hesitant to get up today. I deliberately held off going in the first bunch of people - trying something else. I was speaking to Daniele on Saturday night and he told me that I'm very brave and the class needs someone like me. But I thought about this and realised that the problem with being the brave guinea pig is that everybody learns off your mistakes, then gets to feel what it's like when it works. So I thought I'd try and learn off others going first for a change. But ironically Philippe changed the exercise because people were consistently boring, and not particularly enthusiastic about giving it a go.

"Bravo Sara...you are very good." - Philippe got Sara to secretly say this to herself after every sentence when she was a lawyer. I think it was supposed to give her a bit more confidence - as she needed to take her space a bit more. But it also helped her rhythm - giving room for silence and fixed point, which let us in.

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We then did a bunch of TV commercials as our characters. Walk on (usually to music), say what you say/do what you do, then exit. Once everyone had done their ad we had to come out and stand in a line...Philippe would say "I kill...X" and if we thought X deserved to live then we had to shout "Oooooooh!"

We did ads for...

I got up for most of them actually. Figured, why the hell not! Was bad for the dog food one (tried to a more traditional maori approach) but got a bit of love/laugh when I conspicuously made the sound of the audience "ooohing" when he killed me.

For the Airline ad, I tried a bit of RnB singing - soft (yet powerful) with trills. In doing this, I was lighter, and more playful with myself and the audience. Philippe said "Me, I don't understand"... but everyone else did! And they liked it.

For Frankfurt Sausages I came out bouncing to the music and sand "Oh Yeah! We got Sausages" in a Louis Armstrong kind of voice. "We like him." What a relief to finally have some success! I feel like I've started to find something now - want to move away from Maori bro and more towards African American RnB singer. Amazing what a bit of success can do to my positivity and willingness to play and risk. Got to work on not losing this when things don't work all the time!

For the Marriage shop I tried a similar Louise Armstrong approach, mixed with moody RnB. "I half kill...but kill." Why? "Speak too much."

For Sports I changed my costume so I looked more like a runner with a big afro. Came out jogging/warming up. Then said as I did the actions, "On your marks...get set...Adidas." then sprinted off stage. This admittedly was an idea. But a lot of the ads people did were ideas. It's a tough one to balance. But I think ideas are okay if you're subtle with them - which in this case I wasn't.

For TGV I made a reference to slavery and how my people had been making train tracks for hundreds of years. But now the French have made TGV... Not my best work.

Finally with Apple computers I tried to do something surprising by singing with "iMac, iPod, iPad..." but it was again not subtle and a bit rubbish. Oh well.

I did discover some things today. That when I sing and dance a bit, and be silly, I feel freer to play. I asked Philippe if it's okay for me to change the character a bit - I wanted to change the costume to more of this look:

But Philippe said I need to change character altogether. I asked why (because I thought I found some things today) and he said "because you always do the same...with the legs...It's good to go to another side."

So tomorrow, a new character. Not sure what that will be right now. I feel like I should try and calculate - something that will help me play. But I dunno. I'll just make an offer. It's funny - because I've done this particular workshop before I have certain expectations of myself which are unhelpful (like thinking that it's bad to not have a final chosen character right now). But I need to relax and just go with it. It doesn't matter. Lots of people are still changing. And even if they weren't - who cares?

I was saying to Amanda tonight (who just got back from India) that I kind of can't wait for this workshop to be over so I can do Mélodrama - something I have no knowledge of - because I feel a bit stifled by my prior knowledge of this course) but that's a bit silly. There's plenty to learn over the next 2 weeks. Even if I'm crap every day! Being crap just gets to me mostly because I feel embarrassed and conscious of what others must think of me. Of how bad I am. But this is again - stupid. I don't need to compare myself to others, ever. I need to get clear on why I'm here - which is to discover things about me as a performer. I guess discovering that I get self-conscious is valid, but I don't like it - it's unhelpful to my process - so that's just something I'll have to discover how to get rid of!