"If You Say Things You Have To Look At Us, Otherwise It Doesn't Work."

Clown with Tom Tom today. We began with a warm up of Musical Chairs which ended up going for most of the class. If you don't get a chair when the music stops, you can try and save your life by making the audience laugh. Unfortunately I was the second person to not get to a chair in time, so there wasn't much of an audience to play to (as the rest of the class were on stage - although they were the audience as well). But I was still bad. Pushed. Too heavy. No looking to the audience.

A few people were really great though:

• Jonathan did more of the crazy sexy dancing he did yesterday (where we absolutely loved him) and, along with an annoying but likable loud foreign voice, he saved his life.

• Kat was awesome playing this kind of sad, slightly depressed and awkward persona tell us cooking instructions. She had fantastic audience contact. She looked at us, played with us (winking here and gesturing there - always checking whether we liked what she did), and was very light and sensitive. Very very funny!

• Michael was also great as an idiot not so far from himself, with stupid gestures (like making a positive 'plus sign' with his arms), and generally being happy to be a fool.

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We also did a quick fun exercise in which five of us sat on chairs (in a V formation) as if in a classroom, and Tom Tom was the teacher. The teacher 'left' the classroom for a little while, and in that time we had to have fun to say bad words.

"Try not to play the character of children."

"We love the pleasure - not the words."

"If you say things you have to look at us, otherwise it doesn't work."

I had a great time saying naughty words (but not that vulgar - it's more fun to make up new silly sounding words like 'muffaluffagus'.

'Muffaluffagus'. Not to be mistaken with Snuffaluffagus.

I used a soft voice (with a 'hoary māori accent), starting really gentle and looking at different people in the audience with pleasure in my eyes/face like I'd just said something really really naughty. I was light,  and I had fun. People liked me too. Tom Tom said I was better like this - when I'm not aggressive. So that was a nice shift from the feeling of crappiness I had yesterday. As Amanda reminded me on the phone today, isn't the whole idea just to not care whether you're good or bad, and always have fun? Yes, it is.

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A bit of a strange atmosphere in class today. Just a few moments where we weren't so together and supportive as a group. But we'll learn. We're still a very new group. And there was undoubtedly a bit of misbehaving because we had Tom Tom the 'substitute teacher' whilst Philippe was away...