Unfortunately I only made it to the last hour of class today as I’ve injured my knee and went to get it checked at the only time I could get.
But I know that some groups presented their Abortion-Autocourse scenes. And I saw an exercise in which different pairs had a go playing God and his P.A. People had fun to play God as an arsehole - a bad boss - a disgusting nasty guy. But it seems to me that we need to go further than that. Through what we say and do, we can really shit on the foundations of what God represents. We can mock and ridicule Christianity.
Class started with a little experiment. Philippe got two volunteers to come on stage and whisper to each other bad things about Vicky, without letting the audience hear what they say.
Mike and Charles did this, and they looked particularly happy with each other while they were doing it.
Philippe then announced that this exercise proved that when people say bad things about other people they are happy - all around the world. "So you have to be happy to say bad things about bastards" - and that's what we did today.
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We came up one at a time, and spoke as ourselves to the class/audience telling them about a bastard of our choice. Sometimes we would dip into playing the bastard for a bit - to imitate and to mock. And Philippe would ask questions here and there, and ask to see the bastard in a particular situation. e.g. Whilst having sex, or going to the toilet.
I got up and presented a step-father of an ex-girlfriend. A dairy farmer. Fat (although he does drink Diet Coke), lazy, awful to his wife, ignorant, and intent that the dairy industry is the important thing in the world. I had fun actually - I felt pretty naughty talking about this stuff, so I got the giggles a bit - but I had trouble to imitate him. I had trouble to exaggerate and destroy. I felt a bit stuck. "Your pleasure to say bad things is not enough."
"We don't see 'Ah! I'm going to destroy this bastard in front of my friends."
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"Never you play the bastard. Always you imitate. You don't enter the skin of the character. You just imitate...like a puppet."
"A Bouffon is ready to say bad things. You want details? No problem!" You can invent too. It doesn't have to be true.
It's good to have the sentence of your bastard. You say it and POFF we see the bastard.
The actor is not far from the Bouffon at all. You should be able to go from you to the parody and back to you instantaneously.
"The Bouffon - he plays with the spectator, having fun." You need to look at the audience. See if they like it as well.
~
Sam was great imitating an old high school teacher of hers. She started to create a whole story of her seducing a student - even though it was just a joke rumour for her initially. Soon we see her complaining about Aboriginals whilst having sex with this boy, saying "You've got to mount me! Mount me Jesse!"
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At the end of class it became clear to me that you can go really big and far with this form. Really exaggerate. As an audience, we want more!
To start with, we all danced to music and Philippe would call us out one by one to take centre stage and imitate a fitness teacher, or a priest. I tried the fitness teacher, and played a gruff macho sports trainer: "Are you pussies ready to burn that lard off your fat asses?" ... but got killed immediately.
"Not subtle at all." Oh yeah. You have to be really subtle with Bouffon. To speak about a subject, you can't just bang it on the head and say it outright. You have to slowly go there, slyly almost, so that the audience loves you and comes with you, and then you shock them.
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Today we had gay Bouffon couples come and perform in front of an audience of anti-gay activists.
Philippe suggested we speak tenderly with our partner about our love...how we met...our dreams for the future...children...etc. And through this, the actors should mock, or push the buttons, of the anti-gay activists in the audience. Although nobody really got to this point too much. However one couple - Mark & Tim - got close. They were gentle and tender with each other with good complicité - we loved them - and then as the left the stage walking slowly backwards they said "fuck you" in the same gentle tone.
Most of the groups afterwards had trouble to find something interesting/funny/alive (it's a trap to try to be funny) and all tended to try and do what Tim and Mark had done. But Philippe said it can't just be a copy of them. "Each has to have it's own tenderness."He also spoke about how "we have to see the soul of the actor" and not just a character. We have to see the individual actor and what he/she has to say.
I got up towards the end (was feeling a bit of self-doubt today) and André joined me as my gay partner. We started pretty rockily, and Philippe immediately started to make fun of us, so we changed.
We spoke in kind of Australian old-lady accents and when I said "I love you" André replied "you don't mean it" (great offer) which led to us having a little tiff. And Philippe said now it looks like we're having a divorce! So we steered it away slightly. "I don't want a divorce honey. I just don't like it when you speak to me like that." People started laughing and we had a nice complicité together. A good game. Pleasure. And we listened well. After a while, Philippe lead us to say farewell to each other, to leave in separate directions and then walk in a circle and arrive again to meet once more. We did so, and the scene was kind of a romantic comedy moment. "You look fantastic." "So do you." "Wow, what are the chances." "Tell me about it. It's been a long time." And we got close again, and the scene ended with us saying we'd love each other with wrinkles and all.
Philippe said what we did wasn't the Bouffon he was trying to lead us to today, in the sense that we weren't so much playing with the audience and that we weren't particularly 'saying something', but he said it was "beautiful" and "very good." He said we should write this. So we will! I imagine what we did worked because of the mix between the grotesque way we looked and the beauty of our relationship. It's interesting and heartwarming. A little like how an audience might fall in love with a handicapped couple who get married in a documentary.
~
Afterwards, people also improvised in couples shopping at Mothercare and an expensive jewellery store.
"A Bouffon who plays a nouveau riche could be good."
This made me think of doing a scene of Bouffons lining up overnight for the latest iPhone. A kind of public display of wealth and devotion to fashionable material objects, in a way.
Finally a big Bouffon group all mocked French people. It really worked when people hit on the blasé laziness of the French. "Bah oui...mais no!...Putain...tsk....merde..."
Philippe emphasised again that we're not looking for "hahaha" grotesque, but something beautiful and special.
We worked in groups today: Clumps of different Bouffons. "A chorus is always good." And Philippe offered different things to mock. We would start as a group, with a little laugh together, and then one by one we would come out and perform alone...but "if you feel you are boring you have to change." And if you flop - rush back to your fellow bouffons and laugh.
"You can have a good time after a flop because the people of God don't like what we do."
I was in a group who parodied 'ass-lickers', 'kiss-assers', 'suck-ups.' We had fun to do a wanky laugh, as if at a party, but Philippe said "we need to see a beautiful actor...not just hahaha."
Sophia did a great imitation of an intellectual wanker. Taking the piss out of deep theories, and lecturers. We also imitated choir boys, actors, singers and music teachers.
What we are going for in Bouffon is an "imitation with your opinion about the person."
"[Bouffons] know something we don't know...they're clever." They have tactics. They trick us into believing them, and then they laugh. With Bouffon, we don't cry...we receive a big shock. But it's not sentimental. We go home and think about it. But we don't cry.
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I was generally pretty bad today. But I'm not fussed. My costume was rubbish (just in drama-school blacks filled to make me look fat) which didn't help me at all. But I can also be much more light and sensitive.
"Everybody has to discover when we love him as a Bouffon."
This weekend Amanda and I took a little trip to England to see the Māori Troilus & Cressida production at Shakespeare's Globe.
But for the first two nights we stayed in Oxford where we hung out with Claudia, ate cream tea and drank too much Cider.
Then on Monday we went to London where we hung out with Kay and saw the show we had come to see!
To be honest, I didn't love the production. It was very 'traditional-Māori', which as a New Zealander I've seen many many times, so in terms of form I found it predictable and a bit boring.
I hoped they would do something new and different. What I imagined I was going to see (Shakespeare set in a Māori world) was exactly what I saw.
BUT for an international audience (which is what it was intended for) it was fantastic. Totally new and original for them. And actually, overall, we loved it.
It was such a great feeling being at the Globe in London with lots of New Zealanders and familiar faces (saw Ralph McCubbin Howell and Jeanette McDonald to name just two) was really special.
And when they did a song and haka at the end of the show we were crying. Really really proud.
And an old drama-school class mate of mine, Juanita Hepi, was in the show, which was really cool! And we got to see her at the special after-show function upstairs at The Swan (it was flash!).
We were so glad we went. It was a great little injection of home.
Amanda and I are in the middle.
A great four-day weekend. Fish'n'Chips (with curry sauce - TRY IT!) and old friends and once-in-a-lifetime Māori Shakespeare at the Globe. What a life!
More 'big stomach' bouffons to start off with today. Philippe got them to huddle in a group and for us in the audience to throw tennis balls at the them (some of us boys got a little carried away) and then over a minute the bouffons slowly turned themselves to face the audience with big grins on their face. Bouffons are something else when they are in a pack!
One at a time they had to come towards the audience and say "so nice to see you, thank you for coming" in a charming way. They also parodied an actor from their country (Sophia was great - "I'm just not feeling it...") and a boy/girl scout.
Philippe then got Ben's bouffon to sit on a chair centre stage and play God, and have Duncan sitting on his knee playing Adam. And he got Ben to speak the text (prescribed) "Adam's masturbating...that's disgusting..." After every line Ben said the whole chorus of Bouffons would burst into laughter. It was powerful. Philippe has said a few times that when a big group of Bouffons laughs like this "you receive a big shock" and you certainly do. They ended with Katy singing the Lord's Prayer softly and sweetly.
They got back into a huddle whilst she finished the song. The lights faded to black. And then Philippe got Katy to laugh to herself very quietly in the darkness. SPOOKY!!!
~
Another group then did the 'Big Bum Bouffon'. We started with the same Tennis balls attack, and then came out one at a time and imitated politicians from our country. Sam (from Australia) was first up, and was bad, and so Philippe sent her back to Australia. And then I was bad and he sent me there too. And soon nearly everybody was being sent to Australia! I had fun to sing Waltzing Matilda and the Australian National Anthem when people got banished to down under.
We also had to mock the pope.
I had a great time pretending to speak Latin, but then adding dirty words, swear words, french words, Harry Potter spells, and other obscenities into the text. "Corpus victarum...vagina..wingardium leviosa...I have a small penis...levez-vous asseyez-vous...fanny face..." I had a great time, was really light with it, and it worked. I'd like to write the text properly and present this as a number later on in the workshop. At the end Philippe told me that was enough and I blurted out "wingardium Philippe has a small willy!" which just came out! Woops! But it was okay. I just covered it with a big ugly Bouffon laugh. Naughty...
We started with another mock-somebody-in-the-class game. Today was Thomas. A bunch of us got up to imitate him. I had fun to poke my head and my gut out, and ended up undoing my belt and unbuttoning my pants (something Thomas often does when he sits down) and then hurriedly putting my pants back on properly whenever I answered a question. And over the exercise I let my pants slip further and further down my legs. Not exactly what Thomas was doing on stage at all, but something that we all know of him, so it got a great reaction. It made me realise that in order to mock somebody, the audience all need to know them pretty well.
"You have to take something true from him."
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We did more priests, but everybody that went up was bad so Philippe changed the exercise because we were in a "bad corridor."
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On Monday, we have to do a parody of a bastard that we know (one from our country). I'm gutted because I'm going to be away Monday/Tuesday (going to London) so I'll miss out. Although stay tuned for guest blog posts! I think if I had done it - which I probably could still do later - I would have done Michael Laws...a big bastard from New Zealand.
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Today we did the 'Big Stomach' bouffon - in which your stomach leads you. Again with stubs for arms and tied together knees.
- Imitate the most boring woman from your country whilst dancing to the music
- Now do the same but whilst saying bad things about black/indigenous people
- Imitate a man who speaks about what he would do if he won the lottery (spend it all on himself)
Don't speak too much!
Pleasure!
Use your arms!
Listen to the music!
Don't forget to dance!
Be charming!
Be light!
Not enough!
Then in threes, we walked slowly from towards the front of the stage, with the two on the outside idolising the middle person as if they were a king. And the middle person was to say vulgar things in a posh voice. "We send our most sincere greetings...you fucking cunts." Some people sang ("singing helps to be light") little songs too. Like Charle's How Much Is That Doggy In The Window?
I had fun, when Philippe was being grumpy with my group of three, to gently say to him Why so grumpy? and There's no need to be in a bad mood. I ended up saying lots of little inspirational/motivational quotes like you can do it and believe in yourself which was fun. It's good to be charming and light, but with energy.
We started as a group dancing gracefully to beautiful music. Then we attended Lady Diana's funeral. We had to walk solemnly in pairs from the back of the stage to the front whilst saying lovely things about Diana in a posh voice.
Walk together!
Leave some silence!
Be gentle!
Listen to the music!
Later, we did exactly the same thing again, but changed the text from lovely things to horrible vulgar things - "She sure did like a bit of Arab cock" - but said with the posh solemn voice. Shocking! But funny.
Philippe played some music of a french crooner which we had to imitate as our bouffons. To be charming. I had fun doing this. Singing a little cheesily, with a smile on my face, and using my stubs-for-arms to accentuate my voice.
Some of us also tried reciting a poem as if at a poetry reading. I tried, mocking a Pakeha-writer who is trying to be cultural by using Māori words. My poem was called Tongariro. I was okay but then got a bit heavy. "It needs to be more sensitive...artistic."
~
We then did a 'tall Bouffon' and mocked (really charming) fanatic priests and preachers. I had a great time playing Bishop Brian Tamaki of Destiny Church.
I played an old teacher of mine actually, speaking Māori a little bit here and there, with an accent to go with it. I said hello to Aunty Kelly and acknowledged Uncle Biff (like one would at a Marae) and then told a story of a conversation I'd had earlier in the day between a young boy Tama. Tama had confided in me that he was having strange feelings about his friend James. And I told him to read the good book, in chapter 6:4;3 where it says "The shall not be friends with my friend too much." It was really funny, and I was having a great time. But over the improvisation I lost it as I went more and more fanatic (part of the exercise). And when Philippe beat his drum to signal for me to touch my balls (a game he'd offered earlier) I did it because I had to, but didn't make it mine.
So at the end Philippe said I was really good "as this idiot...this mongol"but I changed towards the end in a bad way. But that's okay. I can go back to what I did before. And I'd like to. To buy a shiny suit, paint my face tanned-brown, and wear an awful mullet-wig. I could have a lot of fun to make a number, or even a show, out of this guy.
~
"It has to be your fun to parody...with the pleasure...'I'm going to shit on you'."
"If you are too much the character we don't see your freedom and your pleasure...to mock and destroy."
Big big hunchbacks. Stubs for arms. Dirty Face. Legs tied together tightly at the knees.
Eight people got dressed up and then stayed on stage for the whole class. Each having a go at different games Philippe offered, starting with a game of soccer.
Then, make us believe you are a figure skating champion...classical ballet dancer... Imitate a fascist (Vicky was fantastic at this)...a gymnastics teacher...
Say a poem, sing a song, tell us (in a gay voice) why you don’t like homosexuals.
Look at us!
Show your face!
Stay down!
Quiet on your feet!
Play with your arms!
Already it’s clear that lightness is important. The image is so heavy, so light movement and light voice helps to give something else. And when the text is poetic and light, it works nicely.
Bouffon is “good for politics”...it’s “good if you have something to say.”
“The more you are handicapped [the better]...it gives something to discover for the actor.”
“It’s better to have a voice [that] comes from far.”
“The don’t mock something beautiful...they mock bastards.”
In the middle ages, all those that were ‘not-normal’ (mad, deformed, dwarves, gays, Jews etc) were kicked away to the forests and the swamps and the ghettos with bells on them (to give ‘normal’ people warning). But once a year the church opened it’s doors to the ‘not-normal’ and they were allowed to blaspheme for twenty-four hours.
In this workshop we’re going to look at five or six different shapes of Bouffon, and then we’re going to discover the Bouffons of today. “We are going to explore this world with a lot of fun and no respect.”
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Michael opted to be the guinea pig and dress as a dwarf today - as a little person.
With stubs for arms, and stubs for legs. A dirty face and black holes in his teeth. Philippe got him to speak as a gay, to dance, to sing, to smile. It looks very strange and quite scary. Watching, I get an awkward feeling of not knowing whether to laugh or to look away (in society we usually look away).
Then ten of us got up - all standing (on our knees - on blue fitness mats) side by side with our hands (elbows, with hands folded into our shirts) touching. Philippe got us each to imitate the prime minister/president from our country, then to speak as a snobby posh rich person. Then to sing a religious song together. We ended up singing O Holy Night.
Whilst singing it, at one point we all had to look at each other and smile. Then at another point, to touch and rub each other. And then, finally, to break out into an all out orgy on the floor...whilst singing full-boar. Then afterwards, all of us had to burst into laughter which was loud and hearty and lasted for a long time. And then we had to stop laughing, pretend to be serious, and to apologise to the audience. “I’m sorry.”
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“The fun to blaspheme...the pleasure to blaspheme...to mock the people whom god is their friend.”
“You are allowed to be below the belt...they can be terrible.”
“The people we mock are people of power...the people who could say ‘go to the ghetto - we don’t want you’.”
“Fuck you.”
~
Then, like we did in Le Jeu, Charles got up to be interviewed by Philippe, and if we wanted to imitate him, we could get up beside him and repeat his words and actions in a mocking way. I gave it a go - which I never did in Le Jeu - and had fun to exaggerate Charles’ low Bristol voice and punctuating hand gestures.
“To imitate is to have fun - to mock with love. To parody is to destroy the other person.”
“In a way parody is like a caricaturist.”
“You can imitate with fun, and you can imitate to be really nasty.”
“Because you were kicked away you are allowed to do a big big parody.”
~
At the end of class Philippe told us a story about how he had worked with a theatre company with handicapped actors in it and they did Bouffon. One actor, also a little person, wanted to play God, which he did. And in his performance, he used a watering can to water the apple tree which he would later use to ensnare Eve. And his text surely would have been nasty. I think this sounds thrilling. An opportunity for somebody who God has not ‘been kind to’ (somebody deformed and not traditionally ‘beautiful’) to say “fuck you God”. It seems that Bouffon can give a voice to those without one. With Bouffon, you can say unspoken things.
I asked about whether we should be sensitive to other people’s beliefs in the class. i.e. If I go on stage and mock Christianity, and there’s a Christian in our class, I might offend them. But Philippe said if they are not fanatics, then they should be okay with seeing different interpretations of their beliefs. He described a time when a priest wanted to do the Bouffon course, which Philippe repeatedly said “no, it’s not for you”, but eventually gave in. He said to the priest that he was allowed to disagree and correct Philippe, whenever he said or did something that wasn’t correct, but the priest said nothing. And at the end of the workshop, the priest came up to Philippe and said “Thank you...I now know what the devil looks like.” So we’re free to go where we want to.
“You have to find three good people [powerful people] to mock.”Already, I’d like to mock Captain Cook, Jesus, and perhaps the royal family.
~
It was really great to see everybody again after the break. We have about twenty in the class now. All familiar faces, including André (a good friend of mine) who just returned from Australia. And we have a new movement teacher, Carlos, from Italy, who is adorable. We all fell in love with him today as he tried to teach us this bizarre songs (which he kept on forgetting the tune and words to).
So just finished three weeks of holidays. The time flew! I actually stayed in Paris the whole time, but found plenty of things to do...
Made hot cross buns for Good Friday and ate plenty of chocolate on Sunday.
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Saw Gross und Klein (Big and Small) at Théâtre de la Ville - a Sydney Theatre Company production starring Cate Blanchette.
Blanchette was absolutely stunning. A fantastic performance. Actually the whole cast were brilliant. I didn't quite understand the play (or at all - but this isn't unusual for me...) but it was inventive and had lots of beautiful images.
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Went to The Suit at Théâtre des Bouffes des Nord directed by Peter Brook, Marie Hélène Estienne, and Franck Krawczyk. A play based on a short story by South African Author Can Themba.
Really simple and clear direction - nothing other than the necessary. And beautiful, simple, and very charming actors. It was very good. It wasn't really to my taste - I wanted something a bit more complex I think - maybe something a bit flashy - a bit of 'a show' - but it was very good.
Highlight: Ling being brought on stage to go to the 'party' in the play. Hilarious!
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Also so Mass für Mass (Measure for Measure) directed by Thomas Ostermeier at Théâtre de l'Odéon. The same director from the german Othello I saw last year in Sceaux. He's a big deal right now in the theatre scene apparently. His productions are really bold - and this one was too. Really enjoyed it! Great actors, fantastic set (just a box, but with dirty walls which the actors sprayed clean). Amanda was sitting front row, center, and had several actors come and sit next to her during the show. Pretty exciting!!
We paid 13€ each to see this show, and we got front row tickets. Amazing. If this came to New Zealand, it would only come for an international festival, and you'd pay ten times more for the seats we got!
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Finally saw Le Malade Imaginaire by Molière at Comedie Française
Unfortunately really really boring. I suspect my lack of French didn't help - but the audience weren't laughing too much either. This is the only state funded company in France that has a full time ensemble. Some actors were really great, but this particular production was pretty dead.
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Watched a great documentary called Catfish. Great inspiration for a Facebook inspired play I'm writing.
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Watched the American's take on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. It was actually quite good. It was a bit sexier, which I thought the swedish version lacked a bit.
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Dragged Amanda to Sur la piste du Marsupilami which has been pumped with advertising all over Paris.
Based on the comic book character above, which is very famous in France I think. It was heaps of fun. Big characters. Big performances. Ridiculous. Totally my kind of thing.
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Finished Ken Robinson's The Element. A good book, but as I already feel like I've found my element, I was a bit like "yep". But his call to action for a drastic change in the education system (especially in the west) is inspiring, scary, and vitally important.
I've started reading We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, which is really getting me down. It's so negative! Evil children...Depressed mothers... But I'm enjoying it at the same time.
~
For the last week and half of the holidays I worked on a new website for Dad. I discovered a great website called Cargo Collective which is great for creating really nice designer-y-non-wordpress looking websites. I'm really happy with what I've done, even though it's fairly simple. But I've taught myself a bit of html/CSS coding (which I thought was impossible but is actually fairly simple) and done something really great for my Dad.
And now ten weeks of Bouffon! I'm looking forward to a new dynamic in the class (with more people and some new and old faces), and I'm curious to discover what this mysterious Bouffon is really like...
