“It’s Always Good To Shit On A Rose.”

I was quite nervous today because Sophia, Mia, Katy and I were ready to present our chamber-pot-on-my-head scene again, and it’s ‘yes or no for the show’ time. But Philippe wanted to see new scenes (ones he’d never seen before) first, and so we didn’t even get the chance to get up. Why was I nervous? Because I care about the work we’ve done, and I don’t want it to be binned. And I want to be in the show. But actually, wanting to be in the show isn’t going to help me much. It’s a given. But I don’t need to dwell on it. And I’m really happy with the work I’ve done in this workshop, so I’m going to try and just go with the flow.

~

Vicky and Steph presented a mother/daughter scene from A Flea in her Ear. Vicky was good - alive and fun, but Steph didn’t show herself. She didn’t present herself with fun and life. “This scene is in the bin. Always. I do not want to see it again...it’s a pity because I liked the monster [Vicky].”

~

Mike and Akron presented the scene in which Bouzin has to give his pants away. Akron was okay (he’s finally starting to come out of his shell a bit) but Mike was bad. “No no no. Impossible to present it again. Forbidden.”

Philippe said the scene is funny if we look at the guy who has no pants and we think he will ask Bouzin for his...and then he does. “But today...nothing.”

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Duncan presented some text of which the first half was something modern (I don’t know what) and the second half was Macbeth. Philippe worked with him for a long time. Playing in a bureaucratic kind of way, with white face, whilst playing cards. Speaking in a neutral tone, like a weather forecast. 

He also got Duncan dressed in a straight jacket, and tied with rope held by a guardian - as if he was in a mental hospital. Speaking as if his body is here, but his mind is far far way. Somewhere else.

“The text is really dramatic so if you put more sauce...[it becomes too much]...but if the way you say is neutral we hear much better.”

 I asked Philippe about playing against the text, about playing the opposite. But he denied doing either. “I try to find a beautiful colour of the text with the pleasure of the actor. It’s not opposite.” Sophia asked “should we play the image?” , i.e. play how we look, and he said “the image is enough.”

He spoke about how image, text, and actors all do different things. And they are not the same. Music has it’s life. Set has it’s life. “The director has to give life to many things.”  To help us dream for all these different elements, and “all the dreams don’t go to the same place.”

Asked why he goes in different ways with different actors he replied: “The play could go to this way with this actor. But with another actor the play could go another way. It depends on the poetry of the actor.”

~

Lee also showed a monologue from a play called Rhinoceros by Unesco. A wee way in Philippe got Lee to say “I speak too much and I don’t show the humanity of the character.”

“We don’t see your humanity. We see bla bla bla.”

“We don’t dream around the character because we hear too many words.”

~

Philippe spoke a little at the end of class about rejecting the past and going in your own way. 

“It’s always good to shit on a rose...I don’t want to understand like my father. I want to understand like me.”