"You Enter To Sell The Character. You Don't Enter To Play The Character. You Enter To Sell."

We made speeches for the masses in the first half of the class today.

"Either beautiful, this speech. Or une merde."

"Either we go [with you], or it's 'fuck you'...in a way."

 Different kinds of speeches for different kinds of characters. For the upperclass characters - a speech to the audience after a wonderful opera. For the Spanish - something Spanishy (?). For the Anglo Saxons - a speech about Steph finally finding love after three years (as the rumour is out that she kissed a boy on the weekend and Philippe is teasing her as much as possible).

Philippe was super hard on people with this exercise. He'd beat the drum to kill them within seconds. 

"Be careful. It's really delicate. Ooh la la... You can be a genius, or it's a big flop."

You've got to get the timing right. Not too early, or quick to stand up. When you speak, leave room around the words for us to dream, to digest, to dream.

"A character exists if we dream around the character."

"You don't have to do much."

"I didn't see you having fun to give words to your character."

"The actor, because he's simple with the character - we dream around the character." 

Philippe spoke about how Laurence Olivier is essentially always the same, but because he's dressed differently, we dream differently. 

"We just have to do a little homeopathy and up! We go this way with the character. Oh! He's like this now. Oh! He's like this now."

When I went had a go I was in the Anglo-Saxons group - instead of opera music Philippe played Scottish bagpipes which was fun. I tried to be really simple. Open, sensitive, no accent - just my voice. No character at all really. I started with a clear resonant voice: "Love." Took my time - being with the audience - letting them dream around my words. "Love." Then looked at Steph and said "Three years." My humour started coming through naturally. I didn't have to force it. And I didn't need to think about being funny. "Steph, when I saw you three years ago, I thought...it's never gonna happen. But now...well, you did it." It really worked. The audience were with me, and they were cracking up. I was much simpler than I have been before, and surprisingly (not really - but for me, yes) more grounded, light, and sensitive. I didn't get any personal feedback - other than Philippe saying to the group "Not totally bad" but I discovered something here. This is a much better place to work from for me. Good.

I spoke to Philippe about this moment at the end of class. Asking why he thinks it is that when I play as myself I'm better than when I do a voice. Is it because I push too much? He said it could be that I push too much, or want too much, but "you are looking for something and you miss it. It's normal. But you are not boring...You are not boring."

~

At halftime, we did a big character swap. It was absolutely joyous watching people imitate each other - either imitating the character, or the actor. Interesting that often we prefer the imitating actor more over the original. "The person who imitates is more free", whereas some of us are "prisioners of our character."

I dressed as Franck's new character. A kind of russian dude. I entered the stage trying to mock Franck's awkward walk - but pushed too much, and mocked so far off reality that it didn't ring true) - then I stopped - looked at the audience - then imitated Franck's beloved mask character doing Arabic "HULLAH!" It worked really well initially, but then faded. I pushed too much. But the joke died too. But I saved myself by jumping to imitating Franck's relaxed indifferent way when Philippe told me I was bad. "Yeah...er...maybe tomorrow?" 

"You enter to sell the character. You don't enter to play the character. You enter to sell."

Philippe said today "everybody had the pleasure to sell their character".