“Nobody Has Taken The Decision To Be An Actor.”

Auto-Course showing day today. Throughout this week we have been working on a Patriotic Mélodrama. The play starts with a family who get a letter from their son who is at war. It says he is safe and doing well, and that he has earned himself a medal for his bravery. But then there is a knock on the door and the Mayor arrives with the son’s medal and announces he has died in battle. The family react, the father gives a patriotic speech, then the son announces he will go to war and leaves. Time passes. The mayor returns and announces that son has died too. Family reacts, father gives patriotic speech... Then the daughter announces she will go to work as a nurse at war and goes. Time passes. The mayor returns and announces the daughter has died too. Family reacts, father gives patriotic speech… Then the mother announces she will go and be a nurse too, the father doesn’t stop her – she goes. Time passes, the mayor returns (she’s died too), the father gives a patriotic speech then goes to war himself. Then in the final scene, all the family come back on stage, all bloodied up as if they’ve died in war, and they sing a patriotic song, waving a flag.

A Patriotic Mélodrama. These were done a lot during WWI apparently.

My group was Maria (mother), Katy (daughter), Australian Tom (son), Austrian Thomas (Mayor) and me (father). There were 5 groups - we performed first.

We ended up performing the whole thing we had written and rehearsed. About half an hours worth of stage time! In a way we were lucky, because Philippe was being nice and letting everyone show the entirety of what they'd made, when usually he would have killed us much earlier.

But we did it, and had many good moments. Some lightness in there, everybody had their scene. When Maria and I spoke, the audience stopped laughing, which I thought was a good sign that we are taking space and changing the atmosphere.

Afterwards, in Philippe's critique, he said “nobody has taken the decision to be an actor.” To be beautiful…effects…to change the rhythm…to surprise. And he said we didn't love any of the actors enough. "They [the family] can die…We don’t care.”

To me he said: “I don’t say you’re not an actor, but you don’t make the decision today.” I tried to be an actor, to have my scene. But I guess I didn't fully ever ground myself and be with the audience. I was rushing a bit, and trying harder than I needed to.

“But they did it…Not so bad.”

That's right - we did do it! I was really happy with what we achieved in the time that we had. It was a big piece of work...a five act play! And whilst there lacked something special in the performance of it, the structural writing was clear and sound. And the something special would have come with more rehearsal time (we didn't get a chance to get to much specifics). I've also learnt that writing as a group slows things down, and see now that perhaps if we'd got onto our feet a day earlier we would have had the time to get to specifics. But again, for our situation (including various days with group members missing - Twyla Tharp was right, these things do happen!) we did well.

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Philippe also said to me my voice is “Too much boh boh boh, not enough grrr [through the teeth].”

Philippe plays this man's speeches (André Malraux) as an example of what kind of voice we are going for. As Andre Jewson said, it’s lyrical. It’s as if lines of text are almost sung. Consonants are chewed on, ‘R’s are rolled, pitch and volume crescendos and decrescendos.

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An actor should love saying their beautiful words: “We didn’t think the actor loves the text.”

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I ended up taking quite a leadership role in this week’s Auto-Course. My group’s dynamic was supportive and positive, but tentative, so I started to nudge us along. This leader role grew to the point where I was directing in the final rehearsal. Throughout the process I was always worried that people weren’t happy to follow me. I guess because there was no formal decision to put me in a leader position. I sought reassurance about this issue a few times during the process, and it turned out that people were indeed happy to follow me. So that’s a good lesson for me: don’t doubt my ability to lead. I enjoyed directing too – I feel like I’m developing a good practical understanding of dramaturgy. i.e. You’re in major here, he’s in minor. This is your game, this is hers. You need to play this, and you need to play that (opposite)…for the conflict to work best.

Next week there is a two-hander scene, and Philippe has said there has to be a director. So I’m going to give it a go, and try to back myself as a leader.