"A Writer Is Always Looking For A Character."

We started today with Philippe's notorious firing squad.

  "Ready, Aim, Fire." Before the word "fire" is said you have to do something beautiful. "You have to be beautiful. If not, bang."

"You have one second to exist with something beautiful."

"We have to see you beautiful."

We each got two goes. And nobody survived.

~

It's Duncan's 22nd birthday today, and after the firing squad Philippe got Duncan to go and sit on a seat at the back of the stage. He then got the whole class to call him. "Duncan! Come! Duncan! Come with us!" He advised Duncan to take his time, and when it's the right moment, slowly rise and walk towards us. He did this, whilst we were all cheering for him, and he was tall and open and beautiful. At the end Philippe simply said, "It's your birthday."

"An actor, he feels so many people asking him to come." You walk, carried by your friends.

"When we say 'come' to somebody, everyone is beautiful...They called me!...They want me!"

~

Ben and I got up and presented the short scene between Camille and Finache that Mike tried yesterday. It didn't work. Essentially, I'm not having any fun to speak the way I'm speaking, and so it's boring. "We don't think you have fun." And I don't. Philippe said what I did was forced and heavy. "Push too much. Push too much. Push too much. Push too much." Not funny. And I "want too much." 

He tried to assist me in finding a funny voice to imitate. Like the Hungarian language, Samoan language, and even a throat cancer victim with a hole and tube in his mouth.

I was trying different things, but Philippe kept getting at me for pushing too much. I'd go to speak and he'd say "push too much" and I'd go again trying to make an adjustment and again he'd say "push too much." I eventually just stopped and calmed down, looked at Ben, and then went again from a more grounded simple place. But I wasn't really in a happy mood for discovering a funny voice. I just got really frustrated. 

I haven't been killed properly in a while. And it didn't really hurt, because I know it's bad and I understand it's about the thing I'm trying to do. But it felt really unhelpful. Like, I wanted to ask Philippe "Why do you do this? What is the point in humiliating actors? Does it help at all?" Because if he hadn't, and he'd simply said "this voice doesn't work - let's find another one" I think I would have been able to. I would have felt safer and freer to play. But that's not how this school works. And I know that. And I'm sure he'd say if we can't have fun with being bad then it's just depressing. And as well, the killing could make me more sensitive (it appears it has!) which will help me with my heaviness problem. And that it could push me into a crisis which makes me come back stronger. But it's still pretty shit. I can't help but wonder whether a lot of the actors in the class would be thriving if we weren't killed every time we were bad.

He did however say Camille "needs to be normal", meaning the only thing that is strange about him is his voice. But everything else is fine. And I now know that I need to find a funny voice that gives me pleasure to speak with.

~

Ben then presented another scene for his Feydeau play, in which a woman comes into his office who wants to be an actress. He falls in love with her right then and there. Philippe was trying to find something  beautiful for the woman. "You have to show something special."

"A writer is always looking for a character...He looks at people on the street." Georges needs to look at the actrice in this way.

I tried playing Feydeau with Mia as the woman. I started on the phone, pretending I was speaking to a theatre owner assuring him I would have a play for him by the end of the week. I played kind of confident/charming, but Philippe killed me for being heavy "from Wellington, New Zealand" and said I was just administration - a stage manager - and there was nothing poetic about what I did. Nothing poetic? That hurts. But yes, I agree. I'm starting to get scared that I've caught the heavy bug again that I dealt with for most of last year! But Mia did something fantastic. She was absolutely beautiful as this mysterious character. Still, slow, open.

"Now we have something. We don't know what, but there is a world and it's interesting."

"La, we have something and we dream."

~

I'm pissed off with the class again today. Really pissed off. I just can't help it. I keep trying to just focus on myself and what I am doing, but when it comes down to it, I do care about how the class is doing and the atmosphere and relationship and drive we have. These are my colleagues. It's important. It's important for me to feel supported, and want to support them to. And to be inspired and challenged. And I don't feel that way. In fact, I feel the opposite. From the majority of people in my class I feel uninspired by, disappointed, and pissed off with. I don't have much respect for them anymore. And it's because I don't feel like they are pulling their weight. Like they are putting into the class what some of us are. It feels like there's a few of us that are serious about learning and about theatre, and a bunch that are just here for shits and giggles. And I'm getting sick of it. I've been thinking about leaving school. Because I feel like I'd be happier and more inspired and productive out of it, than in it. I do want to do Bouffon and Clown, but perhaps I should just do the summer courses. Get it done in a shorter time - because it's more the forms that I'm interested in than the acting anyway. But right now, it's the Vaudeville workshop I'm concerned with. I'm sick of being one of the only brave people in the class to get up first. I hate waiting about, so I get up, but I get up for the wrong reasons, and then it's over. Because nobody is presenting new scenes, we keep working on Ben's Feydeau play which is not Vaudeville - not the workshop we signed up for - but we're only doing that because there's nothing to see! And people have said "tomorrow" for presenting scenes for the past five weeks. And we have a show to put on in a week and a half. It's a big problem. And I'll be pissed off if Philippe cancels the show because we don't have enough material, or it's not of a good enough standard. We need to work! I've been holding off saying something to the class out of fear of coming across badly. Of people not liking me. But I'm considering it now because time is running out, and it's important to me.