“One Stone In Your Garden”

André and I re-presented our Two Faggots number today with updated lyrics.

Marriage is meant for a husband and wife,

and now those fucking homos want to live a normal life!

But marriage is sacred - it’s ours and not yours.

It’s ours! Not yours! Not yours!

We switched it so instead of playing gays happy to be gay, we played gays mocking people who are anti-gay and against gay marriage. But by the end we came out as ourselves saying we’d “love to burn in hell”, finishing the number with the first two bars of Here Comes the Bride whilst giving the finger to the audience. I was really happy with what we did. I felt secure, and confident that it says what we want it to say. After we presented Philippe said “Yes for this one...No problem”, which was a bit of a relief. I feel a bit more relaxed about having something in the show now.

~

  Lee presented a speech of Tony Blair’s whilst trying to do the same thing he did in an improvisation once before where he got pushed around in a trolley and was put in the shit. But it didn’t work at all today. The game that was there before wasn’t there now. He rushed into telling Steph to move the trolley in a different way, and Steph made changes to the direction of the trolley too quickly. Philippe said Lee “plays too much” and is “better as an actor who leaves the stage.”

~

Tim presented a number in which he mocked an Australian bastard politician. He had several transvestites pretending to be sheep on the floor, who baa’d “in the bush” at the end of each of his sentences. He had Sam as a sheep dog herding the sheep, and Tim himself, dressed as a transvestite with a cowboy hat on, said an anti-gay, anti-immigrants, political speech. But it was unclear what he was trying to say. “I see a big idea but no Bouffon fun...impossible to understand.”

“We have to see the Bouffon happy to say ‘the fucking immigrants make more than me’.”

Q: Should we talk about many things in a number, or just one? 

A: “It’s better to have one subject.”

~

Sam presented a number she’d written for her AIDS Bouffon. She sat in a trolley and said in a low energy voice “nobody likes me...they’re so negative” whilst asking if anyone wants to play a game and coughing on playing cards before letting them drop on the floor. It was kind of interesting for a bit, but it was really heavy. “I hate her...she is militant...horrible.”

He then got her to sing a lullaby and worked on her to be lighter. He spoke to her about the importance of working on one thing at a time until you get it. “When you do it, it’s finished. It means if you do it one week [during the show] and it’s in your body then you can do something else.”

“If you succeed with that it’s one stone in your garden...you know ‘I can do that’ - it’s less panic in an audition.”

This made me think I need to do the dickheads monologue as my light Irish Oscar Wilde character. It’s a new way for me, and I don’t feel that comfortable there. It would be good for me to get that stone in my garden. And I’m here to learn new things. Not to do the things I’m already at good at - which in a way is what the Two Faggots number is.

“A new way to seduce people as an actor.”

~

Akron presented another bizarre number with his Murray Antoinette character. “I don’t understand anything but I love when I don’t understand.”

“Really funny...a good quality...one hour with this idiot and we love you all the time - it could be great.”

Philippe directed Akron to add more action to the piece, because right now it’s mostly just talking, which becomes bla bla bla. “You say the same text but with action...it has to be the same level: text and the action of the actor.”

~

Steph presented her monologue again but still didn’t get what she had before. “You play Bingo, or what? He said she can’t just leave it up to chance and hope that one day she’ll get it. He ended up getting her to imitate a singer called Barbara and saying her text to the tune of Ma Plus Belle Histoire d’Amour.

“When you start to talk it’s a bit sentimental. But when you sing, it’s not.”

So now Steph is going to sing all her text for a while! To get used to the lightness. And get that stone in her garden.

~

After class Duncan asked Philippe about how he could graduate from a young Bouffon to a professional Bouffon. Essentially how to play other sorts of characters that he’s not able to at the moment. Philippe said “everybody is different. You could not be like him and he could not be like you.”

“It’s the same, but it’s different. It depends [on] you.”

“Go with the dream you give to spectators, not with something else.”

“You - your person - and the dream you give to spectators is really important.”

~

Philippe also spoke again about the importance of trying everything, even if you think it is a bad idea.

“You never say it’s a bad idea [so] I don’t try.”

“You have to try everything on the stage. Everything.”