"It's Not A Good Feydeau."

Movement was worse today in my opinion. Working on contraction and expansion. And having a sun emitting from inside you. And then talking about how it makes us feel. I see that the exercise helps the actor to be taller, and to engage their bodies with impulse and intention, which is useful...but how does it make me feel? Fucking bored. It’s a lot like what I learned in Movement at Toi Whakaari with Tom McCrory. It’s not an uncommon way to teach movement I’m sure. But I hate it. At this school, I want to warm up and stretch my body, and prepare my spirit (have some fun) for Improvisation. The kind of teaching we got today kind of goes against that I think. It’s technical and intellectual. And not fun. But I do see it can be useful for some people.

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Lee, Vicky and Mia continued working on their scene from Le Dindon. We have to see Redillon pretentious, the two women both wanting to fuck him and him panicking!

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Ben and Sophia showed their "Urals" scene again. 

The Ural Mountains

We have to see the wife being totally uncontrollable, and the husband in the shit.

"She has to be a snake...She enters and destroys everything." 

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Thomas and Lee tried the A Flea In Her Ear 'Hotel Pussy Galore' scene between Étienne and Antoinette...with Thomas playing Antoinette in drag. What they presented was totally boring. "We need to have to fun to imagine something around them." But we didn't at all. Philippe got them to play a gay couple but still not enough came. They needed to give more volume, energy, and fun. Eventually they found a game with Philippe in which he was threatening to put them on the list of the worst students of the workshop alongside Mike and Steph and Akron. "No! Please!" screamed Thomas and Lee. They were crying and melting on the floor like the Wicked Witch of the East.

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I offered a scene to read from a play called Le Système Ribadier (Now You See It) in which a husband hypnotises his wife and puts her to sleep, then has a revealing discussion with the husband of the woman he's having an affair with, in front of his sleeping wife...except this time she's only pretending to sleep. Philippe stopped us as we were reading it and said it's not so funny. I said it's Feydeau, but he said "it's not a good Feydeau." I want to find a new scene to learn - I'm feeling like time in running out now and I'd like to try a different kind of character - but this scene is not the one!

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After class Philippe spoke briefly about being a writer and expressed the importance of having details. He said when he writes, it can take a long time to collect all the details, but when he has them all suddenly he can write very quickly. "You need all the details and then you can go."