Guest Blog Post...

Today's blog post is brought to you by my good friend André Jewson!

The second half of the class had fun today to discover the ‘big bum’.

To help the group find complicité, Philippe had us dance together for a while with our

big bums.

Then the exercise of imitation/play began.

We had to have fun to imitate:

- a silly song

- boy scout

- a chinese song

- use the text “greetings…” in a rap

- a rock n roll song – imitate elvis presley afterwards use the text ‘I must be sick’

- boy scout – Sophia took charge as a scout leader, getting us to form a line and

- sing a scout song

- the pope – I began by imitating the old pope, (Pope John-Paul II) very old,

almost dead, taking a mass in latin. Philippe then got me to use the text “I

must be sick” in the same way – in the style of a latin mass.

The second part of the class – you choose the bouffon that you feel comfortable with.

Philippe invited about 10 people to choose the bouffon they felt they had a certain

affinity with and begin to explore the costume more deeply.

Mark took centre stage as a bouffon priest surrounded by his followers…he stood on

a ladder with a huge piece of cloth to hide the ladder and his legs, with a pair of shoes

sitting at the bottom of the cloth to suggest that he was as tall as a giant.

Mark spoke the ‘welcome’ text in a way that suggested he was a bombastic preacher

of the deep American south, using grand gestures and rousing the rabble at his feet.

Philippe encouraged the group to find complicité, and to have fun to repeat Mark’s

text. Sometimes he would focus on one or two actors, notably Duncan and Vicki who

had terrific fun playing with their text, sharing lines, shooting words backwards and

forwards, playing with the sound of their voices together and solo.

Charles came out with hideous sounds – long, strained, guttural groanings that

worked incredibly well. There was a delight in him, a pleasure with the stupid sound

he made that worked really well. Philippe got Michael to speak ‘a beautiful text’ over

the top of Charles’s animalistic screeches…sometimes coming in and out, sometimes

speaking over the top of Charles. Mike chose ‘to be or not to be’ and the effect was

surrealistically beautiful as well as being very funny.

The group of bouffons in the second half of the class were:

Mark, Charles, Lee, Duncan, Mike, Barbara, Vicki, Thomas, Yuichi

Cheers André!