‘Les Batons Merde’

We continued with the same scene from On Purge Bébé today with the fighting couple.

They have to be “happy to shout...happy to fight.”

Barbara had a go (speaking in Spanish) with Lee and they were close, but Barbara wasn’t big or loud enough. Philippe was asking for more - “louder” - and more, but it took her a while to realise how big she needed to go. She touched on it a bit, but held back from really going there. I had this experience a bit working with the students from Long Cloud back in Wellington. I would say “louder...ten times louder...fifty times louder!” and still they would hold back. I guess it’s scary to go that big, but in the theatre, sometimes it’s needed. For the scene today, when Barbara was really big and loud, it suddenly popped and worked. But when it wasn’t quite at the level it became boring.

“The French - they shout all the time.”

Ben and Sophia had a go and it was brilliant! Sophia came in right on the mark in terms of intensity and attitude. Loud. Emotional. Ready to fight. And Ben was there with her. It was hilarious! Great to see Sophia back on stage too - as she’s been on the bench for week one due to injury.

I then had another go with Christine as my wife...except I misunderstood and thought that Christine was going to play the maid...so Christine came out speaking only French, and I treated her like the maid. “How many times have I told you Rose, I don’t speak English.” And she says back to me in French: “I’m not the cleaner! I’m your wife you idiot!” It was very funny. We instantly had a good game. I was teaching her how to clean in very bad broken french, and she’s getting more and more frustrated. I’m yelling for my wife Elisabeth saying the cleaner’s gone mad again, and Christine is responding because I’m actually calling her name. Afterwards Philippe critiqued Christine about ‘negative energy’ but didn’t say anything about me. He did this earlier when I did a scene with Steph. I’m assuming it’s because I’m in the right zone, so I’ll keep exploring in this area. 

Afterwards Ben and I tried out our scene from La Puce à L’Oreille with text, which we had prepared over the last few days. But what we showed was frantic and messy. “It’s bad." It was. But I’m not upset about it. We got out the first panicky attempt, and in the process got some guidance on how to play the scene. I moved to move today - no fixed points - but I don’t need to do that. That’s Ben’s job - to be crazy. I need to play embarrassed and sensitive. In order to get this quality, Philippe got me pretend to hold ‘Les Batons Merde’ - a French saying for ‘shit sticks’. I didn’t know what the hell he was on about but I went with it anyway. In hindsight, I think this describes how sensitive and careful you have to be when you try to pick up and transport dog shit with sticks. So anyway - I’m pretending to do that, which makes my body all squirmish, tense and delicate, and Philippe got me to slowly say my text, sobbing at one point. It wasn’t fantastic, but it made it clear that to play embarrassed clearly I have to go in that direction. So I’ll hopefully try that tomorrow.