"We Love You Because You Want To Stay On The Stage."

Today we had to make the audience believe that we are a doctor. 

Monsieur Marcel says if you say "take your clothes off" everyone will think you are a doctor.

We also had the option of saying "thirty three" which is the french equivalent of your doctor asking you to cough. The throaty "trente-trois" does the same thing! 

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Jonathan and Michael were great screaming TAKE YOUR CLOTHES OFF!!! and THIRTY THREE THIRTY THREE!!! at the top of their lungs. They had great complicité and a good game (Jonathan was helping Michael really yell by pressing on his diaphragm - as Michael has been hestitant to really yell for a while now).

"We love you because you want to stay on the stage… You seduce us because you want to stay."

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Simone and Nicko were also great with this ridiculous repetition of "Hey! What? How are you? Good! Thank you!" Philippe said it's the first time he's loved them. "They want to stay."

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"A good clown number… The audience thinks 'so stupid…but I love it.'"

"We love him because he thinks he is funny with something absolutely not funny."

"When you run [around the circle] you present your clown team."

"If you speak loud we are sure you are not ashamed."

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I went up with Katie. My goal was to work on doing something for just five seconds, then stopping and seeing how it landed, as well as not being ashamed. I did what I intended to do, but Philippe said that although I didn't look ashamed, I didn't look happy. "We see you doubt." I didn't think 'ah I'm going to crack them.' And the things I did to make the audience laugh weren't five seconds worth - more like two seconds worth - and I didn't try lots of crazy things. I was blocked and repeated the same thing more or less. Where as Katie did a lot of things with her body to try to stay on the stage and in the end she cracked it doing this strange hip thrusting dance whilst flicking her skirt up now and then. 

I actually also did two other things that definitely didn't work. When we entered to run around the stage I deliberately tripped up and fell on the ground, but it wasn't clear that it was a joke and people thought it was for real. So they worried about me. My intention was to get 'stuck' and play the scene from the back of the stage, but my fall wasn't quite clever enough and so my foot was free from the start and I couldn't get myself re-stuck. Also, at one point whilst we were flopping Philippe started speaking the audience as he does sometimes to provoke and I decided to react to it and see what happens. I said in a loud voice something along the lines of "Why don't you stop looking at the clock and start concentrating on what we're doing on stage because we're working here!" I didn't mean it. It was just me trying something new. But it definitely came across as negative and aggressive. It wasn't light and fun. And it made the audience instantly hate me in a way.

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So slowly learning bit by bit. But I really need to loosen up and have fun. I'm too tense and I want too much at the moment. I'm not free to be silly. I'm paralysed by the requirement to make the audience laugh.