Where Is The Fight?

Today we started by showing different numbers for the cabaret this Friday. One group consisting of Mia, Thomas, Duncan, Katy and Mark (from the first year) did quite a long scene which turns out they had translated it to the stage from an HBO special. It wasn’t bad. It had music, great costumes, different rhythms, play etc. But the story was unclear. Philippe said it could be good but the writer has to fix it. They said it was HBO’s fault. Maybe it was. But it didn’t make any sense on stage. But a good effort! I was surprised by the amount of work that was done.

Ben, Thomas, Duncan and I showed our proposed intro to the cabaret with a bum-bum-bumming barbershop quartet, with me introducing the night, and then us finishing with a tag: Welcome to the Cabaret! The singing was off, which I thought it might be. It was the first time we had sung it in front of an audience, and four part harmony is hard to sing without an audience let alone with one! But it didn’t matter. The pleasure and fun was there. Philippe was kind of like ‘yeah’. As in ‘okay it’s something that could work’. But it’s not really a number, which I think he was hoping for. In a way he’s just announced there is going to be a cabaret and that it needs numbers and is expecting it to be filled. But it feels like maybe there won’t be many numbers. I’m not sure. We’ll see. I would have loved to put something together - to use the cabaret to test out some ideas I have for future shows - and I will next time, but unfortunately this time I haven’t found the time to do that. I feel a bit stink about it. But I also feel justified, and after today, realised I am in fact offering a few options to be in the show.

Mia and Vicky presented a song with Mia singing and Vicky playing accordion. It was good. Dramatic and clear. Philippe said that Mia shouldn’t look to the musician as her friend. This is her show. 

Ben and I also tried an idea to host together with Ben speaking normally and me speaking like Camille from La Puce à L’Oreille with only vowel sounds. We did it to introduce a number by Katy which Ben had directed in which she sings a song with the lyrics “everybody’s fucking but me” and we also entered towards the end of her song as sensual male back up dancers. 

Philippe said because of the vulgar lyrics, it needs to be a drag queen that sings the song. I totally agree. With a woman it’s sad and gross. With a man in the role it will be ridiculous and fun. So that will change! And in terms of what Ben and I tried as the hosts, Philippe made fun of us saying “it was fantastic!” (it wasn’t). I asked how it could be better and he said it couldn’t! And then I asked how it could be worse and he admitted that it could work, we just need to rehearse it. The problem I think was that after I speak totally incomprehensibly, there needs to be a gap in which we assume the audience gets it, and then Ben continues as if nothing was wrong. When we did it Ben kind of translated what I said. So a bit of fine tuning is needed.

~

We continued with Le Fil à la Patte again today. This play is breaking my balls! At least in the English translation exactly what’s going on is quite unclear - I think because the drama is more in the action than the text (and when we’ve read we have missed out the action). So today and yesterday was pretty weak. 

But we tried anyway. Today - the scene was between a woman (the mother of a famous singer who is going to get married very soon), a butler, and a lawyer/accountant-type guy called ‘Bouzin’ who dreams of being a musician. The mother wants to see her daughter, but the Butler has to say ‘no’ until he gets permission. And Bouzin wants to see the daughter as well, because he has written a (bad) song for her, but again the Butler has to say ‘no’. That’s about all I got. I know it’s not nothing! But nobody found anything. 

Philippe said Bouzin has to be crazy. Very strange. And desperate. I only played the Butler today, in a scene with Steph as the woman and Ben as Bouzin. I feel a bit pissed off because we went first...because nobody else had the guts to get up essentially...And so we ‘took one for the team’ in a sense, so that others didn’t have to be the first, but then we didn’t get time for another go after exactly what the scene needs has started to make itself clear! I’ve felt a bit negative the last few days because of the attitude of the class. There’s only 15 of us, which means we could have a lot of time on stage, but so much of it is wasted by people too scared to get up. Or wasted on giving people a ‘second try’ when what they do doesn’t change at all. I wish we didn’t get second tries immediately after the first. It’s hard to change that quickly - time to process is helpful - and it makes things less intense. More nice. And that doesn’t feel right for this kind of school. It’s a bit too relaxed for my liking. Funnily enough! I know I can’t control anybody else but myself, but I’m feeling fed up. Where is the fight? We need one.