“You Need To Have A Tactic As A Writer Or As A Director...The More Your Tactic Is Clever, The More We Love You.”

We began with an exercise to have fun to imitate the political bastard, and then to use that imitation to speak some text from Philippe’s play No Son of Mine. Essentially the text is God telling Jesus that he’s not the nice guy his son is telling the world that he is, and that he wants Jesus to shut up.

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Mark imitated an aristocratic bastard from England. He was dressed up like him, but Philippe got Mark to change back into his unemployed skin-head outfit, but to keep just the hat from his aristocratic man.

“You don’t have to put all the costume of a guy...You don’t have to change all your costume.”

Philippe spoke about the importance of complicité between the Bouffon band. To show this Philippe got Mark to say some text, then every now and then go to shake hands with Lee, who was also on the stage. Even when one is nasty and the other is abused they are still happy to play with each other. To say fuck you together. United in purpose.

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Sophia imitated Margaret Thatcher very well.

Then Philippe got two other actors to join her, and they read another piece of Philippe’s text which was mocking the father, the son, and the holy spirit aka the bastard, the eternal love, and the arse-licker.

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Vicky tried a politician in her little goatee-d arab character, but Philippe stopped her saying “I dont think the costume of man helps you. He got her to imitate the Godfather first just to check, but she still wasn’t free. “I never saw your pleasure with this man.”

He then got her to swap costumes with Yuichi, from Japan, who is wearing a little red dress with a curly blond wig. Philippe got Vicky to imitate a virgin from Greece, and then to seduce Yuichi. It was an awkward strange scene, but funny because Vicky was in the shit and Yuichi’s English is terrible. But it was clear that Vicky was happier dressing like a pretty girl than an ugly man.

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Mike pitched an idea for a scene he’d like to write involving Cain and Abel at God’s birthday party. He wasn’t so clear however what he wanted to say and who he wanted to say it to.

“You have to know who is your audience...what you want to say.”

“If you start with the blaspheme everybody leaves. Everyone says fuck you.”

“You need to have a tactic as a writer or as a director...The more your tactic is clever, the more we love you.”

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Philippe spoke a little about just focusing on one thing in this workshop:

“If you want to discover too many things you don’t have time to work [on anything].”

I need to be aware of this, as I have a tendency to do this.

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I got up last and tried to imitate George Bush Jr.

In my head I thought I could do a good job...but in reality...no. But strangely I didn’t get killed. Philippe simply got straight onto guiding me in another way. He got me to tidy up my costume (I was dressed like Brian Tamaki today with a black suit on) and asked me to imitate an adviser to Rupert Murdoch and speak about how the phone hacking scandal was actually a good thing for journalism.

I started to play James Murdoch - son of Rupert. I had this uptight british thing going on - very smiley and diplomatic. And then I had to keep it with the text from No Son of Mine. I was light and creepy. “I like it.” Another good arse-licker...my specialty?

Philippe then got me to try to find an eternal love nice-nice person to imitate. I tried an idea of an American Boy Scout. A bit like the kid from Up!

“Hi there madam! Would you like to buy some cookies?” This was a bit shallow though. More of an idiot than eternal love. I also opted to try Michael Jackson. I spoke in a high soft voice, and played a bit. Seeing if I could find him. I sang Heal the World and at times screamed “I love you!” (which people liked) (he said this to me at the NZ HiStory concert back in the 90s).

But Philippe said this was more commercial than eternal love. So I need to find something else. But I think if I study Michael I could find something good. Because he is so gentle and loving when he speaks. And there’s a great moment in This Is It when he makes up a little song to say thank you and I love you to his crew which I could imitate with text. Making up a tune to the text.

Actually before I even tried George Bush Jr. today he reminded me that I was very good with the dream of Oscar Wilde. So I should keep trying to go back to this quality in my work at the moment.