Les Mis Monday

We started off class by pretending to die. None of us really got it! "Did you see one artistic? Or are they all ugly?"

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For the rest of class we did a scene from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. 

The one in which Jean Valjean enters the inn of the nasty couple that have been looking after Cosette, checks out the situation, and eventually pays for Cosette to leave there forever and join him = the first time she has ever felt truly safe in her life.

It was a kind of nit-picky scene, complicated and requiring specific performances from each character. I'm not familiar with the book (although I'm going to read it now..) so I held off for a while, but eventually gave it a go.

Basically there's a nasty man and woman ("anything they could take, they take"), who are horrible to Cosette - a young girl who is working there, and then Jean Valjean is a figure of justice: "the John Wayne of the time."

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"You have to show something innocent."

"Don't forget nobody is communist in Mélodrama. They have the destiny of poor people and they will be poor all their life."

"To play bla bla bla - it doesn't work...You need silence...You are just speaking but there is no game between the actors."

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I had a go as Jean Valjean but was "not enough justice" and "too small." 

I was on "the same level" as the nasty characters, when I needed to be above them. With this character, we need to see that he's seen what he needs to see, and that he's waiting to play his cards at the right time.

I also had a go at the nasty man at the end of class, and it was BAD! Haha!

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It's starting to get warmer and sunnier in Paris now, which is wonderful! For Auto-Course my group (I'm directing Andre and Maria) rehearsed out in the sun at the park down the road. And after class we all went for a drink at the park. Daylight savings is coming very soon too. Bring on summer!