"The Audience Love It When You Break The Rhythm."

Philippe announced that he received a phone call from Madame Dumas earlier today, and unfortunately Monsieur Dumas passed away this morning at 4:07AM. His last words were "you have to put your heart...your guts...on the...on the..." and then he died. So today was for him.

We could choose any Mélo we wanted to do today and either perform it normally, or as a nightmare. 

I got up with Steph, who wanted to do the scene I was interested in too - the one in which a man (ex-lover) comes to a bar where a woman (ex-lover) is working. He orders a drink, but nothing more is ever said. It's never acknowledged anything happened between them. We did it as a nightmare - with drumming by Thomas. I was working on coming on with a different rhythm, and changing/breaking the rhythm.

"The audience love it when you break the rhythm."

Our scene had quite a sexual feeling about it - as if in the nightmare we were reliving passionate moments from before. I took a few risks, letting it go in this direction - which could have gone badly - but it seemed to work. But then Philippe started picking on Steph, making her apologise for being so boring, and got her to tell me to leave her because she was so boring. This made Steph crack up a lot, and our scene started drifting away from Mélodrama quickly. When I had my moments Philippe got me to speak in a deep deep voice, through the teeth, and he reminded me when it's my turn to have my scene I have to change the rhythm. But the exercise really came to be for Steph, which was fine. I was a bit confused at the end to how we went, or what just happened (!) but Philippe said "not so bad" so I guess that's that...?

"Sometimes to find something sensitive you can't be loud."

A few others had a go at nightmares. Emma had a wonderful moment after Philippe had killed her and told her to leave the stage, and she said "fuck you" to him (Philippe had said earlier that sometimes it can be a great thing to say to a teacher). It wasn't nasty. We could see she was doing it as an exploration, as a way of claiming her place on the stage. Philippe was strict with her (she was already quite upset and frustrated) and eventually he got her to choose her two close friends (David and Rocio) to come up on stage with her. Soon she was tall and light and open and beautiful. It wasn't that easy - it never is - it's a super fine line - but she had moments of it and we loved her. She was very brave and vulnerable with us. Philippe said she needs to be in this place all the time.

He spoke at the end of class about how when he is strict and says "Thank you, good bye" and asks somebody to leave the stage "many times there's a miracle." When a student leaves and then comes back on stage "something has changed...it's easier to see you." He said it's hard to know exactly why, but often you lose the will to be good, you let go, and thus you're lighter and more sensitive.

Showing day again tomorrow. He said we can do whatever we want really, and he'll follow and try and help us to make it work. "Me, I look and try to discover where you want to go."