"If You Have An Idea But You Know It's Bad...DO IT! YOU HAVE TO TRY!"

I did some really good forward hand springs in Movement today! 

Starting to trust my body and relax into it now. Singing whilst I do it helps. A happy distraction.

Kol Simcha are Nicole's music of choice. Really fun Klezmer music.

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Sara worked on a scene from Uncle Vanya (I think). Philippe led her to play lots of different rhythms. "Now you stop! Now you change the rhythm!...Always with the pleasure of discovering the snow."

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Claire de France worked on a Juliet monologue from Romeo & Juliet.

She was moving too much at first, for no particular reason. "Everything you do - it's a message to the spectator. If you move but you don't know why, we have to write 'she moved a lot but she doesn't know why'."

Philippe got her to read the Paris Pratique (street guide) and then the text in the same way, to get a really simple and beautiful reading of the text.

Then he got her to say "prend moi" (take me). She had trouble saying this in the right way - as it's easy to be too little, or too much, but it was fun.

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Mike did Iago's "I hate the Moor" monologue. Philippe got him to do it in the style of a Royal Bank of Canada advertisement, which got a wonderfully cheesy and lying quality out of him.

Then in the style of a beer commercial - "a beer for men that cut trees". He got him to do this whilst playing Grandma's Keys, which got a game alive in him, and gave him good fixed points. Then he got him to dress like a woman, and got him to sing a song with another eight beautiful woman from class accompanying him. He sang Backstreet Boy's 'I Want It That Way'. 

Then he said his text in the style of the song/cabaret performance. He was good like this, but people asked (as this has been the question with a few of the 'out-there' performances we've seen lately) how would this fit in a real production in the real world?

"If he does the same without the costume he will not be boring. La, he is something beautiful because he feels ridiculous...He was good because he was not secure and felt like an idiot."

I actually think stuff the 'real world'! If it doesn't fit there, let's do it ourselves somewhere else. It's so much more exciting!

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Daniele & Mia worked on a scene from Chekhov's A Marriage Proposal, which I know nothing about. But they both were totally committed, with great presence and rhythm changes.

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"Game is a way to breath between actor to actor."

It's really interesting watching Philippe try to find the ways we love each individual actor. He offers many different games to play in search of the game that the actor is free with and has the most pleasure from. And this one is usually the one we love the actor in too.

"To stay with the love of the audience you have to be really careful...the audience is sensitive."

"If you have an idea but you know it's bad...DO IT! YOU HAVE TO TRY!"

"You have to try many many bad ideas before you get the good one."

At the end of class I heard Philippe talking about how it hurts him when people do theatre in a conventional way. Why don't they say "I am going to be different." To show their humanity. He said that for people that do this, the theatre calls them - they don't call the theatre.

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Tonight I went to a performance by the Austrian Camerata Salzburg orchestra at Theatre des Champs-Elysees.

Directed by Louis Langree (who was wonderfully physical and full of life), the orchestra were stunning!

They played Mozart's 39th, 40th and 41st Symphonies.

Such beautiful music, and this orchestra are the best of the best at Mozart - says Thomas, the classical music expert - who got him, Mia and I free tickets thanks to one of his friends being in the orchestra. A real treat. I loved it.