"Guy! He Is GOOD! [As Monsieur Loyale]"

Philippe began class today talking about children and how they are usually happy to be with the family when there are guests around. I like to play up and to be noticed. He spoke about his son Balthazar, and how he dressed up as D'Artagnan as a child...but really didn't have a clue who D'Artagnan was. But he would have fun pretending to be D'Artagnan regardless. He also spoke about what a child is like when they want to stay up late after bedtime. They use all of their charm to get another 10 minutes awake time. These are key things for Clown too. To have fun with pretending to be something (regardless of whether it's 'correct' or not, and to do everything you can to stay on the stage. 

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For today's exercise (named 'Spotlight 22') we had to pretend to be a good technician. 

Philippe got me to play Monsieur Loyale, and my job was tell the audience that there is going to be a quick break in the show so a technician can fix the lights. I'd then welcome on a clown and they had to have fun to pretend they knew what they were doing. Philippe suggested saying stock technician phrases like "we've got juice" and "the guy that did this job before did a really bad job." 

I didn't write many notes at all today because I was onstage for the entire class! I had a good time as Monsieur Loyale and did a good job. At one point Philippe yelled "Guy! He is GOOD!" as if it pained him to do it. It felt good because I was able to help the clowns. Sometimes I could sense a game they could play, and so I tried to steer them towards that. For example, with Jonathan I could hear that he was talking loudly and excitedly to the audience, so I came out and pretended to be angry telling him that his job is not to chat to the audience but to fix the lights. And then he had a nice game to play with the audience in which secretly spoke to them, and then pretended that he wasn't when I entered. And as Monsieur Loyale you can play a good fixed point / play-it-straight to the ridiculous clown beside you. There were several times that a clown and I had the audience in hysterics! People were really thankful and supportive too, cheering me on and congratulating me after class. So although I didn't do anything as a clown, I rocked it as Monsieur Loyale, and that felt great.