"Without Life...We Die...(Ha Ha Ha)"

A bit of a funny energy today, with a lot of people not 'feeling it', or not knowing the text well enough. Probably because we're all tired.

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Ben worked on a monologue from Julius Caesar:

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!" 

"It has to be a for funeral...A voice to speak about the dead." Philippe got him to speak as if his voice was echoing. But Ben didn't feel that he was going to get there today and so sat back down so as not to waste time.

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Christine worked on her Portia monologue again in an attempt to give more than she did last time, but what she gave still wasn't enough. "It's not enough. You have to come back and say 'one day I will explode'...You have to explode...You have to change." After this she tried to explode, demanding Philippe to put on Vivaldi, and then she did the scene again. But "the music is more alive than you". 

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Rik did the "All the world's a stage" monologue from As You Like It. Philippe got him to do it in the style of Beijing Opera (Rik is from Singapore), and then to do it as an old Chinese story teller from Beijing, in traditional dress.

Rik kept dropping his lines though so Philippe told him to learn them and then try again.

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Daniele did Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" in Italian: "Di essere, o non essere"

He really gave as an actor, and was really good first time round with dramatic music under him - and playing a bit mad. Then Philippe got a bunch of us to gather around him as if we were all at a party, and listen to him giving a casual speech to us as we clicked along to the music. But Daniele kept dropping his lines too and he stopped as well.

"The text - you have to learn it like a machine gun...No sense."

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Claire had a go on some text from Macbeth which she had spent so long on earlier in the week with Philippe. "Is it extremely boring?...Goodbye." This time he didn't spend any time with her. He said he worked a lot but now it's up to her. What can he do? "Now I have to wait until you say: Today I want to exist."

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"The teachers job is to show you your beauty...fun...pleasure...and then let you go."

"Without life...we die...(ha ha ha)"

"When you are at the bottom of a crisis normally something is coming."

"In a crisis you must keep working. Don't give up. And you have to be worse and worse..."

Philippe asked us whether there are people in the class that make us think "uh oh" when they get up on stage. He told us "you have to tell people 'You have to change'...it doesn't help to lie...It's not nasty to tell people 'When you enter I am fucking bored...When you enter you don't give what I need."

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For the last 15 mins of class the men (finally) had an audition for King Lear.

KING LEAR
This is a dull sight. Are you not Kent?

KENT
The same,
Your servant Kent: Where is your servant Caius?

KING LEAR
He's a good fellow, I can tell you that;
He'll strike, and quickly too: he's dead and rotten.

KENT
No, my good lord; I am the very man,--

KING LEAR
I'll see that straight.

Philippe said we have to see him senile - the beauty of someone who has gone very far.

I had a go but was "too constipated". Andre was selected - he played an old man with a big smile on his face - as if he was filled with joy - but also totally in another world. I've been thinking about doing a King Lear monologue as it is something so far off what I would be cast at the moment, and I could discover many things. Also just an opportunity to have a go at something I otherwise wouldn't get a chance at. But time is running out. Decisions! Decisions!