“It’s Good To See The Play/Scene Immediately With Actors. It Can Give Many Ideas.”

Today was a bit of a slower, easier day due to the fact that Philippe (and many others) are sick with colds. Present. But not full energy.

For the first half of class we worked on a new script Ben had written for hs Feydeau play. I played one of two hotel servants alongside Vicky, who were approaching Feydeau’s room cautiously. We had to be light, with good complicité. To be a loved couple. “You go first!” “No you go!” “Why me?” “Because he likes you! He likes women!”

For a writer: “It’s good to see the play/scene immediately with actors. It can give many ideas.”

Philippe suggested that just as we entered the room looking for Feydeau, he would enter from the other side of the stage (as if he had climbed out the window of his room) and have a scene. It worked really nicely. A surprise. Just when we think he’s on the right, he appears on the left.

Philippe also suggested a scene with many actors who had set up a surprise birthday party for Feydeau in the corridor of the hotel outside his room. It didn’t work. Philippe didn’t explain his idea so clearly, and so we were all a bit confused. But he got Maria to go against the door and speak quietly, pleasantly, and quickly, to Feydeau...and for a long time. He spoke about how sometimes in plays the text doesn’t have to mean anything, but the rhythm and feeling of the text can create something else.

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For the second half of class Sophia suggested we read and then improvise a scene from Feydeau’s Leonie Est En Avance (One Month Early). It’s about a woman/wife who is pregnant and is freaking out having contractions (I think it turns out by the end of the play that she’s actually just got bad gas) and she pushes her husband about, and her mother pushes the husband/son-in-law about as well. At one point, the wife recalls a dream she had the previous night which had calmed her and made her feel much better. She dreamt that her husband put a chamber pot (a potty) on his head. 

Then the wife and mother both peer pressure the husband to put it on his head. For a long time he refuses. He’s 38 years old. It’s ridiculous. But they get hysterical and eventually he puts it on. Then, after he’s put it on, they demand he takes it off. It’s upsetting the wife. It was a stupid thing to do. But the husband refuses to take it off. It took all this fuss to put it on, and now it’s staying on. Great conflict!

I played the husband alongside Sophia as the wife, Mia as the mother, and Katy as the maid. And we found many good moments in the improvisation. It’s a funny situation, a wife and mother in-law bossing about a husband! It really worked when I put this big blue bucket over my head. I couldn’t see anything (and several games came out of that), and I must have looked ridiculous. We lasted for quite a long time, and at the end Philippe said yes we could do the scene. So we’re going to learn it and present it. I’m really excited about it.