"You Don't Have A Big Problem...We See You. You Are Alive. You Are Open." ... (you're just bad right now)

Today we had an acting awards night: Give an acceptance speech as your character.

"Ah! That is so good for the character...Or conventional, without spirit...goodbye."

~

I had a go as a presenter, along with two others. Tried lots of different voices and styles. German, British, Just Me. Mysterious, Loud, Silly, Beautiful. I found little little things, but nothing solid. Bad again. Philippe had no comments for me really. I mean, it was clearly bad. But he gave no guidance. "His country is shaking so I can't be mean to him." He did let me stay on for a while which was nice though. I felt pretty gutted after my turn was up. Just disappointed that nothing was coming after all that.

~

"We have to say: Ah! They have fun with the character."

"You don't discover the character with us...you KNOW your character."

"We see your spirit - we accept everything. We see your idea - no."

"An actor gives his fun to the character."

"You can try so many things to discover your fun, your fantasy. In a way, that's what this workshop is about...And you can't cheat doing that."

"It's good to have humour."

We have a showing on Friday: "Work with someone you like. Don't work with someone you don't like." I love this - so honest and frank - and so different from other training I've had in which I've been told to work with the people that scare you the most.

~

At the end of class we all got up on stage and Philippe did a check to see who needs to change their character. For me, he said "Guy - You have pleasure, but you are really bad." He said it's up to me whether I change. I asked if was it going to make any difference if I change - as I feel like it's an actor problem, not so much a character one. But he said yes - "The pleasure nobody recognises me can help." So I'm going to change again. Exciting actually!

~

I spoke to Philippe at the end of class today. Wanted a bit of guidance. I feel a bit dumb for going to ask - because I feel like it's a bit of a cop out. And when I went to him he kind of looked at me like 'What are you doing coming crawling to me?' I caught him saying to Sophia that she needs to take a big risk - that she's holding herself back from something. And I asked, Is this the same for me? As I've been feeling like it is - and have been trying to be more open on stage. Trying to take that risk and show my self more. But he said 'no' quite definitely. He said the characters I've had so far have been bad, but "you don't have a big problem...We see you. You are alive. You are open." He said I'm bad a lot but that is fantastic. I think because I am changing a lot too.

I got the feeling from him that there is nothing to worry about. That I'm close, so chill out. Which is actually what both Nicole and Thomas have said to me too. So time to take that on board. I've just been really uncomfortable being bad so often. But I see now that being bad is not bad. Actually. It's necessary in order to be good. I've known this before, I've said it before, but I think I understand it now. It's like when I made WANNABE - it was bad for the first 6 weeks of the making process at least. But then it found it's feet and worked out great. What I'm doing at school right now is building up a resilience of being bad. Which is a great thing to have. So I feel better about where I am right now. Gonna bring new character offers on Monday - and keep being bad and trying to not let it get to me, and instead accept that it's apart of the journey towards being good.