Big Bum Bouffon

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!!!

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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...