"Everybody Has A Way To Play"

Sam worked a monologue of Helena from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

How happy some o'er other some can be!

Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.

But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;

He will not know what all but he do know:

And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes,

So I, admiring of his qualities:

Philippe worked with her a lot on taking her time. "Move slowly...Listen to the music...Don't talk so much." At one point he got her to lie on the floor like a Mermaid looking at herself in a mirror. 

He got her to do the text like a Chanel No. 5 advert. And he got her to pretend she was sitting in her dressing room taking off her makeup after a show, and then a man (me) came in and said "Bravo Sam. You were fantastic" and then she was to say the text in the way of her response. Light and beautiful. Sam did really well - it's a lot to cope with when you're young and new. It kind of illustrates all the things we've learnt this year, and how hard they are, when watching her learn them now.

"If you are ugly you are not an actor - you are ugly."

"A director has to know how this actor could be jealous in a beautiful way."

"Everybody has a way to play - and it's with your beauty."

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Sara worked on Ophelia again. Philippe got her to wet her hair, whiten her face with makeup, and hold an umbrella. He got her to sing a song school girls sing in Brazil (similar to Ring-a-ring-rosie type thing). To say the text in this way. To laugh in this way. To cry in this way.

"She has to stay in our head in a beautiful way, otherwise Ophelia doesn't exist."

"This is the problem with theatre: We have to leave the show with fantastic ghosts in our head."

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Maria-Luisa worked on a monologue as Nina from The Seagull, but she didn't show anything beautiful. Philippe said he'd worked a lot with her earlier to help her discover her beauty, but she didn't remember we she'd done, so "goodbye". He's being a bit harder on some of us now. But it's for our own good - we can't just rely on him to make us great.

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Sophia got up at the end of class. She hasn't got up to work on anything except in Auto-Course so far - so it was good to see her up on stage! She did a monologue from A Midsummer Night's Dream. To get her to come alive Philippe got her to speak like a British snob - commenting on Vicky (a.k.a. Madame Gaulier - because she 'raped' Philippe's son Samuel...) - who was sitting right in the middle of the audience. "She's intelligent...in her own way..." 

Sophia made some good steps but was holding back. Hiding.

"You don't feed the text with a fun."

"In the street we cheat a lot. But on the stage we don't cheat."

Photo from here.

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We are showing works of our choice this Friday. Philippe was saying it's good to have a director as it's hard as actors to know if what we are doing is good or not.

"As an actor you need a director...to tell you if you bring something special."