Friday, December 21, 2007

A little break....




It is good to be out of Paris for awhile. Miraculously, I made it to Christmas without packing my bags and fleeing to southeast Asia (I seriously considered it at one point).

Now I am in Greece eating delicious food, sleeping well (and taking naps), and frankly not doing much of anything. Oh but yoga. It feels good to me to be doing yoga every day again. And eating foods that taste good. I feel so much more free in my body this way, more alive. It is good to be crazed. When you are not crazed any more, you realize how good it is not to be crazed. Maybe, at last, I will learn to stop being crazed.

I doubt it.

Anyways, I will be on holiday until January 8th. Greece and then Turkey. Not so bad. The Parthenon, the Eye of Sophia...

Not so bad at all.

A bientot, Monsieur le Professeur!

Monday, December 17, 2007

Aphorisms for the Theater, from Myself with special thanks to M. Prof for three months of falling on my ass.

A few reflections on my first three months with Monsieur le Professeur:

Lesson: It is horrible when actors push to be good.

Lesson: It is beautiful when an actor is surprising.
Lesson: An actor can be full of surprises if they are free to play.
Lesson: Play comes out of a game between the actors and the audience.

Lesson: It is horrible when I have an idea before I go onstage.
Lesson: When I go onstage with no idea but trying to play a game, people love it.

Lesson: Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never GO ON THE STAGE AND TRY TO BE EMOTIONAL. EVERYONE WANTS TO SLAP ME WHEN I DO THIS.

Lesson: People are more beautiful, more alive, when they are in the shit. A great actor, so confident, goes onstage and then drops an expensive prop into the pit orchestra. Hah! Their face lights up like a Christmas tree because they are in the shit.

Lesson: Really playing a game puts actors in and out of the shit all of the time. Pretending to play a game, no matter how convincing your pretend is, bores everybody. The actors have to really play.

Lesson: When I go on the stage and pretend to be in the shit, I am horrible. When I go on the stage and am playing a game and happen to fall in the shit, I am alive.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAA

SON OF A BITCH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

(te he he) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

(Burble burble burble) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

(oink oink oink) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMUTHAFUCKA

I know I can do this! I feel inside myself that I am two thousand percent capable of this

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA (SHMerrrrrrr)
It JUST
SO
HAPPENS
THAT EVERY TIME I TRY TO DO SOMETHING

MMMMMMMMMMMaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

IT IS LIKE I AM TAKING A BIG SHIT!!!!!!!!!!

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Oh god I can still smell the shits I took last week.
They are wafting through Monmartre all the way from Sceaux.

But GOD DAMN IT
I TELL YOU
I TELL YOU
I WILL FIND
MY WAY
AND WHEN I DO
I WILL BE BACK
AND UNTIL I DO
I WILL KEEP TAKING BIG
BIG
WHOPPING
STINKING
SHITS ON YOUR STAGE

You will have to change what you do.

On the stage.

Wearing a dress.

Worked on the scene for two weeks.

I say two lines. I am stopped.

"Who wants to slap Monsieur?"

Half the class raises their hands. Several are rather enthusiastic to slap me.
A girl approaches me and slaps me across the face hard.
Slap.
Begin the scene.
Slap Slap Slap.
Begin again.

"NO. YOU HAVE TO CHANGE WHAT YOU ARE DOING. YOU HAVE A SHITTY IDEA AND IT IS NOT WORKING. CHANGE"

I say a word.
NO
I open my mouth.
NO.
I say-
NO
I-
NO
I try to push throu-
NO NO NO NO NO
I start again-
NO! NO YOU ARE ABSOLOUTELY TERRIBLE. WE DO NOT SEE YOUR CHARM WE DO NOT SEE YOUR PLEASURE
I try aga-
NO.

(well when it isn't going well it isn't going well. No marvellous breakthrough today, apparently)

GET OFF THE STAGE IMMEDIATELY. LOO LOO BREAK EVERYONE.

No. I want to keep working!

WELL THE PROBLEM IS THAT I DON'T WANT TO KEEP WORKING WITH YOU. YOU BRING NOTHING. AND THE WAY YOU LOOK ON THIS STAGE, NO ONE IN THIS ROOM WILL HAVE AN ERECTION FOR SEVEN MONTHS.

(At this point I have thrown down my scarf like a gauntelet. Hardly out of anger but more for the sheer fun of refusing to get off of the stage)

YOU HAVE TO CHANGE WHAT YOU DO.
LOO LOO BREAK EVERYONE
BOOM.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Really Playing the Game

"You always have to look for the game. Having fun on the stage is important, yes. But if you stop looking for the game with your partners and jump around the stage like a boy scout or a little girl on christmas we think you are a top idiot.

The actor always looks for the game. And the actor is always trying to play the game. To really play the game, not to be a boy scout or primary school music teacher, or a priest who just realized they are a pedophile.
Bon."

Monday, December 10, 2007

What You Can Learn in the Immigrations Department.

I didn't go to class today.

No Monsieur Le Professeur.

No "HORRIBLE! Adios immediately!"

Even more heartbreaking, no: "Would we be sad if this man left the stage and did not come back for a long time, or am I drunk?"

Not today.

Today, another visit to the prefecture. And as a bonus, a visit to the sanitation and health department convenietly located about 40 minutes and a bus ride out of central Paris.

If I got on a train now, I could probably catch an hour of class. If anyone would admit me into the building. But frankly, I feel a little sick and exhausted. Maybe it is the compounded stress of the blackmailing process with my former landlord, the lease complications with my current landlord, the missing wire transfer of 4,000 dollars to one bank, the other bank which has rejected my wire transfers twice on their own fault and charged me for it and now refuses to accept responsibility, the month-long process of opening a french bank account that doesn't actually work and the person who has hung up on me twice when I called for assistance, or maybe it is the nagging notion that if the French government finds out certain things certain people WILL be put in jail and it is all over me, or maybe it has something to do with the series of older men who have taken advantage of my vulnerable situation to try and force me into horrible sexual relationships in exchange for help I think at this point I could snap one of these days and go on a rampage with these creeps, maybe it has some connection to the cellhpone company problems and University of Minnesota bill problems in the United States that refuse to resolve, no no no I cannot imagine why I feel a little tired and exhausted and am gaining weight eating junkfood all of the time because I am exhausted a little depressed and don't have energy for much of anything any longer and frankly after all of the problems that I have encountered I don't have much money to solve the problems that remain which are more than a few and now I need to find a job where do I find a job when my french is still so horrible and people still sound like automatic weapons when they talk to me not that I really have time or funds to sit down and study french right now some mornings I think I still have enough grant money that I could flee to southeast asia and fat chance anyone will be able to track me down any time soon well it could be worse I could still be living in Minneapolis hahahahaha Minneapolis jesus christ can't find a good baguette to save your life in that city at least here I have a fighting chance of eating a good baguette I also can go to the louvre and look at winged victory for hours at a time sure as hell beats the cherry spoon

En fait, I need a vacation. And what timing! I fly to Athens a week from tomorrow for a three week spell of rest. Not a moment too soon, to be sure.

But this blog entry had a title. And that title had a point. Did I begin this blog entry with the intention of a rant that wishes it were the last 80 pages of James Joyce's Ulysses no I did not but sometimes these things happen. The blog was getting a little sterile anyways. Dusting off those cobwebs.

Oh right. So what did you learn today at the immigration department Harlan? I learned the need for play. The need for the clown. Everyone in their jobs looks so bored, so unhappy. Where is the poetry, the imagination? And how essential I feel these things to be to the life. How can we go about our days being sterile, nasty, by the book? Well god knows I've done it. King of the Tight-Assed Overachievers, c'est moi. But as I get over myself a bit, as I watch my ego start to relax a bit, I am realizing how dead to life we can be in our daily routines.

And the clown who plays, the actors who play cannot be dead to life. A healthy individual or society must have this dangerous presence of play that flouts utility, that defies order and logic, that refuses to be part of a corporate logo. The naughty play of life, like animals fucking.

So today I learned in the Immigration Department, I learned anew, what it means to be dead to life. Oh how badly I wanted to make a joke. Frankly, I was a little preoccupied finding a way to cheat on my eye exam. I managed the latter without too much of the former, although the opposite would have been much more interesting.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Ugly Carpets, Shit Mind

Life doesn't move in logical order like a dusty mathematician in the grocery store.

Who taught me to think in this orderly way? Where did I learn to think in like this?

My way of thinking is not ordered. It is Pollock-like. My mind moves clumsily in literal landscapes.

School taught me to think like an accountant. Everything in its proper place. What a nightmare. From an early age: the boys in this line who like race cars and the girls in that line who like barbie and no one speaks in the library with the ugly carpets.

I hate these neat ordered things. Yet I try and make my life neat and ordered when it is contrary to the way I work. Everyone wonders why I am a tight-assed wreck. Well now it is clear. I never liked race cars.

What is that you say? I have explained nothing?

Well it is simple. If you have to sit in the library with ugly carpets and learn how to use the dewey decible system, you are destined to become a tight-assed person. It's like in Star Trek. If you are a Klingon, then you are destined to be evil and try to destroy the Starship Enterprise. Or if you are from the Middle East, you are destined to be portrayed by CNN as a person obsessed with bombs and hating the United States. You simply have no choice in the matter.

So you see. Cause, effect. Ugly library carpets, horrible mind. Thanks a lot Westmont Hilltop Elementary School library.


_________________
"Our lives teach us who we are. I have learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of reality to supplant your own then you might as well be dead. Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might to my own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown instincts, no matter how great the storm. And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've fished in it for my art...It is the sea by which I was born, and which I carry within me wherever I go."
~Salman Rushdie

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Advice from M. Le Professeur

Not the Chinese upperclass.
We cannot have your horrible Chinese upperclass on stage.
Not because it is Chinese-
for sure, all upperclass people are boring
everywhere in the world.

So when you play the Greek, you must loose this terrible upperclass behavior.
It is boring.
Maybe for Hong Kong television your Chinese upperclass was good.
But it is not good for the theater.

Remember the last time we put water on your head?
This time I want you to go put a liter of water on your head.

Je vous demander

Monsieur Le Professeur,

This way of learning Greek Tragedy....everything is perfect. The actors must be godlike on the stage. Everything is the opposite of natural- lyrical, elegant, profound...

There is no smallness- characters are never arrogant or militant. They are first and always beautiful.

Why do we learn Greek Tragedy this way? Life is not like this. Life is not elegant and noble. It is dirty, nasty, horrible. All of the time. So why play with this world, the world of the Greek?
..........
If only to learn to make on the stage worlds that are not like life. A world where we do not recognize the pharmacist and the horrible hairdresser with her dog who poos on the floor of the salon. The actor has a special aura that allows the audience to dream around them. The audience dreams around them the dream of the Greek Tragedy. Another world.

But the audience's dream is destroyed if you enter on the stage with your shitty natural behavior. If you remind the audience that you are human with your voice that sounds like the rabbit fart. You know the rabbit that farts and you cannot hear it? It is just a little poof of air. Boeuf..like that. And then the rabbit thinks to itself "Oh I have farted. Now I am tired for the rest of the day." If you come on stage with this kind of voice the audience cannot love you. Or if you have the voice of the little cat whos balls were cut off "ooooOOOOoooh my ballls my balls oooOOOOOooooo." This stuff is the shitty stuff. Never can you be an actor if you have this kind of voice on the stage because it is too small. And if you are small on the stage. If you are nervous, if you have the shitty voice, if you bend your body and break your aura...for sure, never can you be an actor. Or maybe you are an actor in Manchester bed and breakfast. Everymorning you eat the outmeal. Horrible.

Finding Your Clown

We do our Greek Tragedy scene: Orestes killing Clytemnestra.


Le Prof: "Bon. What do we do with them? We don't know what to do with you. You are completely ridiculous. You both enter from the same side of the stage, you come running on in your dress and almost fall. We are all laughing. Not so good for the Greek tragedy. And in this male chorus, could this male chorus look more idiot? Who is the biggest idiot in the chorus? Anyone? "

(Oh shit. He's not even going to work with us.)

Le Prof: "Set up to do it again. We have to wait for my assisstant. While we are waiting, I tell you a story..."

(The assistant returns, he has something in his pocket)

Le Prof: "Give them to the actors."

(We are given clown noses. We put them on and restart the scene. People ask, "Do we play it straight or like clowns?" The prof ignores them and the scene begins)

Clytemnestra (Running on wearing a clown nose): What's that noise? Who is shouting?!

(The entire room explodes in laughter. I'm waiting to make my entrance as Orestes doubled over laughing at this ridiculous clytemnestra).

Clytemnestra: Get me an axe! We'll settle who is master here.
( I run on with my chorus, waving my ridiculous sword)
Orestes: You now! That man has need of nothing more.
Clytemnestra: Aegisthus! My love...
Orestes: Your love. Join him, wallow in his tomb. (This is too much. I forget the lines) Be...faithful...forever...even unto death!
Clytemnestra: Orestes, can you kill your mother? These breasts were wet with the milk that fed you.
Orestes: Pylades, can I kill my mother? (I cannot resist. I thrust my face into her breasts).
Pylades: Remember Apollo, remember the promises you made...(this guy seems to be such an idiot that everyone is howling with laughter).

BOOM
Le Prof: Alors. You have something fresh. It is like a horrible amateur theater done by the 16 year olds. This one cannot remember his lines. This one is a total idiot. This one has a tit problem. You know, at this age there are the boys who always have the tit problems? But it is something fresh, you bring something special to it.
Thank you for finding your clown during the Greek Tragedy workshop.
BOOM

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Why Give a Shit about Pleasure?

Voila. A long rant about pleasure.
This is not a proper blog entry but this is me putting some thoughts together.
So it is a little indulgent, a little blahblahblah.
But I'll publish it anyways because I typed the whole thing in the "Publish Window" and I don't feel like storing it in MS Word and editing it later.
But I'm warning you...

Pleasure
Le Plaisir.
PLEASURE....
"Was he a symphony of pleasure on the stage? Or was he a pile of spaghetti left in the pressure cooker for seven years?"
"You must show us your plesaure on the pleasure pleasure pleasurepleasurepleasurepleasurepleasure..."

Why should ANYONE give a shit about whether actors have pleasure on the stage? I ask myself.

At this school, pleasure isn't important to actors, it is their reason for being. No matter how badly you execute an exercise, you can always count on a positive comment if you "have the good fun" "at least they did it with pleasure" etc.

And why this obsession with pleasure? Because indeed, this is an approach to theater based 100 percent on having pleasure. The pleasure to pretend you are a god and you are playing Greek tragedy. The pleasure to make people love you even though you pretend are an idiot and fail at everything you do voila the clown. The pleasure to play with emotions voila the melodrama. The pleasure to play with the elements the animals the colors voila the neutral mask. The pleasure to pretend you are behind a fourth wall playing Chekov....and on and on and on.

But why all of this talk about pleasure?
What the hell is the reason that we need to feel good on the stage? God knows sometimes we feel like shit in life. Why on the stage be obsessed with PLAISIR?

Alors. The search in mon ecole is not for a movement based theater. It is an impulse based theater. Techniques and ideologies are treated frivolously before the god of impulse. And voila--

When the actors on the stage are going through a private emotional crisis- or when the actors onstage have a constipation problem- or when they are trying to be right, polite, clean, etc... (ie they do not have pleasure) the impulse is dead. The only hope for a live impulse onstage is a broken prop or dropped line.

I think any actor or serious theatergoer can attest to this. When the people on the stage are having a good time, whether they are playing King Lear or Moliere, there is more life on the stage. When the actors are a little messy, a little unguarded, a little "I don't know what the fuck is going on and I'm okay with that," we are happy to watch them for several hours. It is the same for the actors. When you are playing a boring show and suddenly there is a crisis on the stage, the actors love to run out and improvise, to try and get the show out of the shit. Actors love to be in the shit this way. And the audience loves them much more when they are scrambling, confused, and playing like mad.

I did this production of "Alls Well That Ends Well." Lets face it, the only thing anyone remembers about the show was the performance where I accidentally poked an audience member in the tit with a sword. And for the next ten minutes the actors had to scramble to pull the show back together because, well, an audience member got poked in the tit and the audience was having a hard time dealing with it calmly. And the actors had to adjust like mad to this audience that was out of control. And so we all became more open, more alive, and we had a lot of fun trying to continue playing shakespeare after the whole show was put in the shit by yours truly.

Hm. Just one example. But how many fucking boring pieces of theater have I seen where I only can remember some disaster happening and all of the actors suddenly coming alive to try and deal with this disaster. But the question, of course, is how to be this alive all of the time? Well of course one can just stage a play and then regularly fuck it up, but that isn't the point. The point is that these instances of fuck up are moments when the impulse leaps open. The actors have to drop whatever they think they should be doing and work from their impulse. And of course most theater, which is carefully structured, would like to be a carefully structured container for the creative impulse that can shift now and then for the given evening. Of course it rarely is.

And this is where the pleasure comes. The raison d'être of this fucking pleasure...When the actors have pleasure to be on the stage playing with each other, with their audience. pretending they are this and that...when they have the pleasure, they are open to impulse. When they are fixed, trying to get it right, etc etc....the impulse is DEAD.

I have found this always to be true. HORRIBLE actors who have pleasure to do whatever the hell they are doing onstage- I always prefer watching them to excellent actors who trudge out on the stage and "do their job." And when I am on the stage having good fun, I may be really bad, but I am never as bad as when I am onstage trying to get it right. I can even bore myself to tears this way. Or I want to play aggressively. I come onstage with force and will. Ah well this is shitty too.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

The Kingdom of Kristine

This month, Monsieur le professeur has a partner. She is teaching some of his classes each week. Her name is Kristine, and she is very good. Her approach is the opposite of M. le prof.

I trust her a lot. Partly because her way of working is more familiar and helps me synthesize M. le professeur's approach with the water I swam in for several years in the classical American rep approach. I also trust her because she obviously has integrity and calls me on all of my bullshit.

I really suck at her exercises. I am used to sucking by now. When I am complemented, I feel like I did something wrong. I think I am here to learn how to fail well sometimes.

Anyways.

The other day, we were doing a greek scene. Of course, my work was safe, boring, and completely uninteresting. I mean shit, I was bored. Bored like hell. And I was doing it...this isn't a good sign, in my experience. I know I'm young, but this is generally a sign that Mr Flop is in the room.

After we worked together for awhile, she said to me

"You know, you are realy good when you don't know what you are doing. But when you have an idea, an approach to something, you work in a straight line. And it is very bad. You freeze up. You do a lot of homework, don't you? Stop it. Don't work in straight lines. You are so much better when you have an abstract idea or no idea at all what you are trying to do."

Hm.

Case in point, senior year of training.
Everything I did was TERRIBLE. Especially the final semester. We had these scene presentations, this senior show. Oh god was I shit. From start to finish.

But during the winter, when I was drowning in work, we did Chekov. And everyone thought I was quite good. I was doing Treplev in the seagull and I was so busy that all I did was learn my lines and show up for rehearsal half dead from exhaustion. I didn't do a fucking shred of work. And I have never felt so completely lost on the stage. And somehow, it was oddly fun. I constantly felt like I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going.

Hm. I also recal during "Hedda Gabler" that there was a point where everything went to hell and the only way I could find to fix it was to make myself forget I was in play and go onto the stage having no idea what would happen. Then the piece suddenly had ease and rhythm....

I think certain approaches I learned to actually actually contradict with the way I think. I am a messy thinker. I think in patches. Like a quilt. I don't think in a linear a to z form. I think first over here, then over there, then over there. And I think if I approach theater in this way I will work in a way more authentic to my "way." God this is a liberating revelation. I feel that I have been knocking around if for weeks. As soon as she said that I try to work in straight lines and I shouldn't, it was like lightning struck me. DUH!!!!! I am a patchwork thinker. I should try being a patchwork actor.

What does that mean? Well, I have a few months more here to play around and to find out what that means. But thinking about it too much is obviously not at this point going to help.

The Beautiful World of the Greek

"In the Greek theater, everything is beautiful, perfect. The actor on the stage must be so beautiful that we could watch them on the stage for hours and then go home and dream about them.

The actor playing Greek is never scared. Their character is never scared. Destiny taps them on the head and then they go in that direction. If they show their fear, the gods say 'oooo! Look at the poor human who is scared!!!' So the character can never be scared in the Greek tragedy. Even when they are about to be murdered or kill themselves.

Greek theater is not very funny. Maybe we laugh a little bit at this servant who comes in and is an idiot. But the actor in Greek tragedy makes the audience dream. The audience dreams around the actor, the aura of the beautiful actor on the stage. So the actor can never bend their body and break their beautiful aura. The actor is tall and strong.

In this scene, Antigone comes onto the stage and tels Creon that she will not follow his command. We must see this Antigone and think that we can remmber her for 2,000 years after. If Antigone is militant, if she thinks she is a police woman, then she is not beautiful. She simply is saying no to Creon. And we watch her and think how beautiful she is. And Creon does not get angry with Antigone. He does not act facist. The actor playing Creon may have the pleasure to yell, to command. But first is the pleasure. On top of the pleasure the actor yells and has good fun to make everyone obey him. And the spectators think how powerful this beautiful man must be. And always in the head of Antigone and Creon is the game "Can I win? Can I beat Creon?" So you move on the stage with the tactic of the game, to beat each other. To be more powerful, more beautiful. And if you bend your body and wave like a facist, we will never remember you. If you are still, if you are beautiful, then the audience can dream around you. A lot of things can happen in their imagination around your aura."

Greek Tragedy

We begin the Greek Tragedy.

We start with that terrible lecoq exercise where we balance the stage. But of course, in this school, we cannot be bothered with technique at the expense of playing. As soon as possible, this painfully boring technique is transported into a lively game of cat and mouse. Thank god. I always hated this exercise anyways. At least now it is interesting.


PS.
Thank you, Lucinda, for several years of excellent voice work. I would be 100% fucked without it.

The End of Neutral Mask

The final day of our neutral mask workshop. Really?

We are Greek chorus. A chorus of orange and a chorus of fire.

I am the chorus leader. I take of my mask and begin to speak a text.

“MORE” Professeur screams.

I try and give more.

“HE IS NOT GIVING ENOUGH” He says again.

I retry.

“SHUT UP AN PUT ON YOUR MASK. WE DON’T WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU ANYMORE TODAY. YOU ARE TOO SMALL.”

Oh I was pissed off. Completely. What the fuck am I supposed to do, scream like Laurence Olivier as he hammed his way through Othello? Damn you Monsieur le Professeur. Ok so I didn’t say that in class. Which he probably would have preferred to me putting me back on my mask- which of course I did. But this guy doesn’t give much of a shit for obedience. I missed an opportunity to resist, to earn my right to stay on the stage. Shit!

I was being to natural he told me. Of course I was. I was connected to what I was saying, I was working simply, and god knows I was fucking boring to boot.

Well I don’t feel about writing about the rest of the workshop because other people did really good work and it pissed me off. Cheers.

The Bitch Comes Out of the Closet

I’m sitting in a café talking with an old professor and friend. We are talking about my experiences at school here in Paris and formerly in Minneapolis.

“You hated what I taught you but you didn’t have the balls to tell me then.”

I like people who talk to me this way. People who surprise me. It is always a pleasure to talk to them, especially when it is not a pleasure.

I think back to my life in Minnesota. I have a lot of time to think about things now. I think when I was in Minnesota I was unhappy to the degree that I invented 2000 different ways to occupy myself. And as a consequence, I really wasn’t able to think about how unhappy I was. This is a very effective tactic, as the last two generations of my family could tell you.

But that isn’t the point. The point is that I didn’t have the balls to come right out and say most of the things that I felt when I lived in Minnesota. This had less to do with dishonesty than with my incapacity to feel what I was feeling- uhm, to allow myself to feel what I was feeling.

So now I am here. Thinking and feeling a bit more. And you know what I am learning?

I am a really bitchy person! It’s quite funny actually. I am a naughty naughty bitch. And I spent many many years developing a sunny and positive personality in order to deflect the severely bitchy thoughts that enter my mind every 15 seconds or so.

One could accuse me, of course, of adapting to this school and this teacher by claiming/adapting a nasty attitude. As nastiness is the lifeblood of this school (the charming and revealing kind of nastiness, not the boring kind. The nastiness of the court jester or the wacked-out ascetic monk). Hm. No, that is not completely true. No, I’m just hearing every day the person in authority saying really naughty things.

And I find them quite funny. So when my mind whispers a very naughty thought in my ear, I no longer smooth it over or pretend not to hear it. When I see someone on the street and think they look like a complete idiot, I do not scold myself. I have a laugh. And of course my bitchiness is not a superior sort of bitchiness. Not the bratty girl bitchiness. No no no. I’m the kind of bitch who laughs at how silly someone is and then proceeds to make a total ass out of myself and laugh about that too.

Sometimes I am a complete idiot. And it is very funny. It keeps things interesting. You know, I used to be so virtuous. How horrible! I don’t want to be virtuous anymore. I want to be a sweet idiot, or maybe a bitchy moron, or maybe a beautiful generous person. I want to feel alive damnit. I have had it with mind-numbing morals and coma-inducing slogans about how everyone should be this or that.

Slaugter on the Farm

This week, everyone is dying. Over and over again. Everyone.

We are doing farm animals. Cow, sheep, horse.

On the stage. Wear the mask, develop the animal.
BOOM.
Remove the mask.
BOOM
Resume moving. Play with each other. Become a human with these traits.
BOOM
Your name is called by le prof. You must begin speaking a text.
BOOM

“He is terrible? Or am I drunk?”
“Me, I kill everyone on the stage.”
“You know that sport where you go to the bridge. The high bridge. And you jump with the rope? Ah, bungie. Bungie jumping. If I took her to the bridge and paid for her to jump, how would you feel if I cut her rope ?”

“Do we see Harlan’s pleasure on the stage, or do we see his shitty idea? Susanna?”
Susanna: “Shitty idea.”
BOOM.
“Adios immediately.”

Fuck Your Shitty Technique

I have done neutral mask before. Oh yes I have.

You sit for hours watching people move about on the stage. It is generally a long, precise, and delicate process. And it takes a very long time.

The person is searching to express, through their body, the elements, the colors, animals, materials. How do you express glue through your body so that all of us can see it by watching just your body? Can you make us see oil? Olive oil? Truck oil?

What about
Acid, vinegar, a lake, the ocean, a spring, mud, quicksand, fire, cotton, a tree, a fly, a cat, a lion, a leopard, pink, blue, orange, red,…?

It is a very long process, in my experience.

But with Monsieur le professeur, it is a bit different.

You work in your body for a few minutes. Zero feedback about how you use your body except maybe “too stiff” “too heavy” “wrong rhythm” “not strong enough.” No painstaking feedback about how you use your spine, your fingers, you pelvis.

M. le professeur doesn’t give a rats ass about your shitty movement techniques.

Do you have the pleasure to pretend to move this way? Do we see your pleasure to pretend?
This is what is at stake with M. le professeur.

And how do we see your pleasure? Well, we back up a bit. We back up to the exercise. You have the mask removed from your face. Then you stand up as the element/material/element. You go backstage. Then you come onstage and perform in a cabaret. That’s it. Go out and sing, speak a text, dance, what-fucking-ever. Just do it. And be beautiful. Have the pleasure to pretend you are that element/material/whatever.

Professeur doesn’t want to teach us how to be good at the neutral mask. He doesn’t care if we can perform the neutral mask well. If our neck is held or free. If the spine is flexible. If the body movements are precise and revealing of something larger. No. He is using the neutral mask to teach us another way of playing.

I thought I would come here and do neutral mask. Learn the technique. But I am learning something I could have never anticipated: I am learning what it means to approach theatre techniques as different ways of playing.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

From Material to Bank Robbery

You wear the mask. You pretend the movement of an element or material.

You exit backstage. Then you reenter and you must tell the audience of a bank robbery you witnessed.

The text cannot overpower the movement.
You must have pleasure in your movement. Your own special pleasure.

Or maybe you come on the stage to perform a cabaret song. Same challenge.

Why is it so hard to keep the physical rhythm once the actor stands on two legs?

Or you tell te audience of falling in love. If you play love. If you play an emotion. Adios immediately.

Feedback

A question.

Only a simple question.

Do you know that sport, where you go on the bridge. And then you jump off, with the rope. The bungie? Yes, you do?

Well lets say that we take Madame to the bridge. We say oh yes my little friend, I will pay for you to go. 20 euros? Not so bad! There you go. And jump!

Then we cut her rope.

Would anyone here be sad to see her die? Or would you be happy to kil her and her horrible voice? This whole group was terrible, but she was top level. I ahd to think up a special death for her.

Bon. We put the whole group in a van. Maybe we give them some morphine to make things easier. Then we lead them to the bungie jump. Come my friends. Then snap snap snap. Who here says oh no nonono! They were beautiful!

No one? Bon. Thank you for that horrible moment. Adios immediately.

The Pleasure to Pretend

Prof: "When you do these exercises, you are looking for your own special sense of play. How is my play with this element? With this material? If my play is good, if I love to play in this way, maybe I can use it to build a character. If my play is blahblahblah, then maybe no one will like to see me on the stage playing this way.

This is how an actor builds a character. They bring things to the character that are fun for them to play. That is where the actor starts. We do not care about the ideas of the play, the horrible analysis of my balls. No, the actor creates the character out of their pleasure to pretend. And so we have this workshop to find different ways that you have the pleasure to pretend.

Of course, the impulse is always first. The impulse guides the movement. And then on top of the movement comes the text. In this way, we do not have blah blah blah theater. We have the theater of impulse. The theater of game. The game, the impulse, it starts and we do not know where it is going. It will be a surprise.

I do not care if you are funny. Only that you are surprising. This way, you follow your impulses, wherever they lead you, And you cannot know where you are going.

We come to the theater to see you play. We don't care about your pain, about your suffering. This is the secret of your life. It is not for us. Your play is for us. You have the pleasure to play a character who suffers. But if you come out to the stage to suffer with your private pain, you break everyone's balls. "

Theater of My Balls

Push push push. This is how I ever got things in life was to push push push.

So then I go onstage and of course it is push push push.

Prof: "You are doing theater of my balls. You are too aggressive on the stage. There is no play, just aggression."

My god. My god. My god.

I sit in the cafe in Paris. I have wine. I sit for three hours and don't worry about doing anything. Maybe I enjoy my life a little...

Maybe I don't push so much now.

Theater is much more interesting when the impulse is alive.

Theater of push push push is theater of my balls. Everyone leaves the theater and their balls have bruises.

Be More Alive Than That

You wear the neutral mask. You go on the stage.

You interpret with you body the movement of the elements. Earth, fire, wind, water.

You interpret materials: glue, acid, vinegar, oil, bleach, glass...

Prof: "Your movement, it is too mechanical. You find one thing to do with your body and you repeat it. It is like the traditional theater. You find one thing that works and then you repeat it after your impulse has died. You must be more alive than that."

The students go up. They play with their bodies. The drum is hit and they freeze. Their masks are removed. They ontinue to move.

The students are told to speak text as they move. The text must not guide the movement. The movement informs the text. The student has the pleasure to play with the text as the element. The text does not take over the element, the text does not take over the physical impulse.

The impulse. It changes. It is alive. We start with the impulse and we never know where we are going.

So I wait to begin the exercise. I do not knw what will happen. I try not to think, only to stay open and know that SOMETHING will happen. Then I begin. I look for the play. How do I play?

I play with vinegar.
Prof: "You are the homosexual vinegar. We put you in the museum for top level homosexual vinegar."

I play with acid.
Prof: "Before, when you played with homosexual vinegar, you were light. You had your special pleasure. Now you are militant heterosexual. This is so terrible. John Wayne in Vietnam aggressive. Horrible. You must be light, not aggressive."

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

The Pleasure to Pretend

The actor wears a neutral mask.

The actor must pretend to be water.

Prof: "You see these actors on the stage pretending to be water. They pretend to be a lake. Bon. Which lakes are clear and which are dirty? Which lake would you swim in? This student has a clear and beautiful lake, but this one absoloutely horrible. I would never go in that lake. Dirty water. Spiders. Plastic bags. To go in this lake, I would be dead."

Questions from the exercise:
How does embodying movement change the way that an actor plays with the space and their text? How does the change in the impulse to movement shift the way the actor plays?

_____
You have to embody the lake.
So you do the exercise.
The professor says it is terrible.
He lets you try again.

Oh god this again. "be a lake" "be water" what a load of hippie bullshit. Like I'm in a meeting of transcendentalist vegans in Berkeley California.

And then something happens to you. You stop thinking about how to do the exercise and you become aware of the room. You imagine for a moment the size of a lake, its immensity. Your body stops moving so much and feels somehow supported by this imagined size and immensity.

Your mask is removed. You are told to rise to your feet while maintaining this quality, and speak a text.

So you rise, you speak, and this size it stays with you. And you feel free.
__________

Prof: "He was beautiful, wasn't he? He had a good face. All the time on the stage you look like an idiot. An American optimist with a big idiot smile, with the American flag in the background. Absoloutely horrible. But now you are on the stage and you are open. Much better to see you this way than to see the horrible American who thinks that everything will be ok."

Monday, November 5, 2007

Porte le texte comme un chapeau

The actor wears a neutral mask.

They sleep, wake up, see the sunrise, and rise to standing with the sunrise.

Prof: "You move like you have Parkinsons. Too fast! Too idiot!"

"You move like a camel in the desert. Your head bobs up and down. The neutral mask did not get drunk last night or smoke hashish. The neutral mask is neutral. It goes to bed, it wakes up, and it gets up. Nothing else. When you move with the mask you bend your head like the virgin mary."

So.

The actor rises. Slowly. "Neutral." They attempt to suggest nothing.

Drum beat. The actor freezes. The mask is removed. Drum beat. The actor continues moving.

Now, the actor speaks. But the actor does not embody the text. The text is placed on top of the movement. The text follows the impulse of the body and never shapes it.

The actor is focused not on the text but the movement. The actor has the pleasure to put the text on the movement.

There is no life in the text. The text is text. The life is in the actor. If the actor cannot have life seperate from the text, then the actor is a zombie idiot servant to the text. The actor only knows how to make sense of text and break everybody's balls.

There is only life in the actor. And the actor's impulse. The impulse is not the text. The actor puts the text on the impulse. The actor wears the text like a hat.

Ugly in a Beautiful Way

Exercise:

Two actors onstage. A ball. One actor throws the other the ball. The actor who receives the ball thanks their partner and then turns their head to the audience. When they look at the audience, they must show in their eyes their special pleasure.”

We all go up. We are all terrible at this exercise.

Then She goes up. She tries twice the exercise.

Prof: “We hate her on the stage. No? Alors, we hate you on the stage madame. Continue.”

She: “No. I don’t want to do it again.”

Prof: “This is a problem. You are afraid to be bad?”

She: “No.”

Prof: “Why won’t you do the exercise again?”

She: “I want to be funny and I can’t.”

Prof: “You do not want to fail. You want to be good at the exercise. If you want to be good at everything you do, then go to a good drama school. You will learn how to be a good actor on the stage, like a mechanical doll. You will be clean. Your work will be clean and boring, like the Shaw Festival at Niagara on the Lake.

Students have to go through the tunnel of failure. This is the most important thing. You must get to know Mr. Flop. I am an expert in Mr Flop. I have flopped everywhere. Flopped in Spain, flopped in Switzerland, flopped in London, flopped in Denmark.

You go deep into the tunnel of the flop and then you keep going. Then, we start to love you. We love you when you are in the shit. But we hate you when you think you are being good. You bore us. You break our balls.

When students go through the tunnel of failure, when they meet Mr Flop and stay there, they come out with a special light in their eyes, a special pleasure in the voice. They can be ugly in a beautiful way.

It is only in this way that you can find your clown. You clown wants to be good but will fail over and over again. And we love when the clown fails. The clown only wants to be loved by us.

Well. That is all today. That is the end of the first workshop. Thank you.”


…..And so ends the first month of work with Monsieur le Professeur. And so begins my love affair with Mr Flop.

When have I ever been told to be bad? And yet here I am, forced to be bad, set up to be bad, over and over. And Christ I am so fucking bad. I have stood onstage, stared at a room of people, and felt myself turn scarlet with humiliation.

Better to be small and safe than to be loud and bad, right? Right? ….? right?

All of my precious fucking sentimentality about my work, my work, my work. In the bin. The ash heap

This is nuts.

Save your life

Everyone lines up onstage. You are about to be shot. The General screams “READY, AIM” Then you have one second to become beautiful and save your life.

We line up. Everyone gets executed except one girl who bursts into song. She is full and beautiful.

I get shot. Some get shot multiple times. One girl turns and offers to have her ass shot. I, personally, would have spared her.

Walls up or down?

Exercise: Go on the stage. You must be a rebel leader giving a speech. Not a fighter, not a hero. A leader. You don’t die with a gun, you die in your bed. You must charm us, sweep us into your revolution. Go.

The first student enters. He screams, he blusters, he is shut up by the Prof’s drum after a minute.

Prof: “Should we call the psychiatric hospital? Bon. Go to the hospital. As soon as possible. Would anyone be sorry if this person left the stage? No? Bon. Thank you for that horrible moment.”


I walk on the stage.

Prof: “He is nervous, no?” [Several students agree]. “The young kid from America is nervous. Go again. If you enter nervous, that is all for you today.”

Piece of cake.

So I enter again. By now, most of the room is laughing at me. The Prof turns on music. “The Star Spangled Banner.” It is oddly reassuring. I begin my speech. I picked a topic close to my heart. Everyone stops laughing and watches me. I am continuing my speech.

The Prof starts shouting instructions.

“Taller. TALLER. Walk towards us. TALLER. Walk backwards. Now shut up. Now speak. TALLER. Walk. Shut up. Speak. TALLER. Rise your arms. SLOWLY.”

This continues. Four minutes? Then I let my arms fall. The Prof cringes. He shuts of the music.

Prof “What was that movement, that fast movement? You killed it. You want to be natural on the stage. The stage is not natural. When you move too quickly, the audience cannot dream around you. But sometimes, you were very beautiful. You smile a lot. You want to be charming. We do not like you like this on the stage. Maybe in the life, but on the stage you do not need to try and charm us.”

I said before that I was building a wall around myself to try and stop pleasing people. But maybe what I need to do is lower a wall.

Dinner Guests

If you tell me that you are having a dinner and everyone there is so nice, so smart, I think I will never come. But tell me there is a dinner with this guy who strangled his grandmother, with this guy who likes to rob the jewellery story, then maybe I come

I never trust people who are always nice. Politicians. Or people who are always serious. Who never have a joke. These people come over for dinner and break my balls with some theory. People who think they know something.

That is why I love having actors for dinner, because they always have something for the fun, for the play. They never break my balls with stupid theories or boring speeches.

People who always have nice things to say are terrible. Epouvantable. I hate these people who say they are polite and then lie about how they are feeling, smile at people they don’t like. They are not polite. They are idiots.

Bavarder avec le con

Etudiant de Con: “I really feel like the teacher doesn’t like you. Yesterday he said he didn’t like you. Why do you think he doesn’t like you?”

What I said: “Your feeling is wrong. It’s just his way of joking with me.”

What I wanted to say: “This is coming from the person whom the teacher compared to a Priest who just discovered he was a pedophile?”

Why do these doofs have to come into my life and aggravate my neuroses?

Exercise

Koraphus is the “leader.” He must lead the chorus of 7 people across the stage in a dance. He must make every chorus member feel they are part of the dance, the pleasure, that he loves them. They all must share this with the audience.

I go first. Koraphus. Shit. Well, think Marcella Harlan. Think Marcella.

He tells us to let him know if we do not like the music.

Prof starts the music. Big band music. Ok! I turn to Prof and give him thumbs up. He stops the music.

“WHY IS THE FUCKING YOUNG KID FROM AMERICA TURNING AROUND AND TELLING ME YES YES LIKE AN IDIOT? NO! NO! YOU MUST LOOK AT YOUR CHORUS AND FIND OUT IF THEY LIKE IT. START AGAIN.”


We start again. I make sure to look at everyone. I make fucking sure.

We move across the floor. We finish.

Prof: “Not so bad. I am disappointed. I don’t like you, young kid from America. I was really hoping I could say to you that you were terrible, that you thought you were in Iraq and you were destroying everything. But no. It was not too bad. But some times you looked like a gym teacher. Leading the class in exercises. This is very bad. This could get you a zero in the class. A red zero. Bon. Thank you.”

Another boy goes. They begin. They are stopped after just a few moments.

Prof: “Absoloutely terrible. You look like a bunch of hippies coming out of a vegetarian restaurant in India. You all just smoked too much hashish. Bon. And you, the leader, you still look like a pedophile. A pedophile leading a bunch of children back to his house. Come children! Come play! This way! Alors. You are a pedophile leading a bunch of hippie children out of a vegetarian restaurant, back to your house after smoking too much hashish. Bon.”

Woof Woof Woof

The Cabaret exercise from yesterday. A girl on the stage. She speaks a poem.

Prof: “You have a large body. A monster body. Why do you go onstage and act like a cute little girl? You bend your body. You make yourself like a hairdresser’s poodle. The ones who shit on the sidewalk. Little green piles of shit. Get off the stage.”

The Girl screams with fury. She explodes. Tears running down her face.

Prof: “STAND TALLER. SPEAK YOUR POEM AGAIN.”

She begins again. Her voice a register lower. I can’t help but think she really is on her throat right now….Harlan shut up.

Prof: “NO YOU ARE MAKING YOURSELF SMALL AGAIN”

The Girl screams louder, she explodes with rage and tears.

Prof: “Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof!”

The Girl is furious and defiant. She speaks her poem.

Prof: “Woof! Woof! Woof!”

She grows larger, more furious, she struggles. The minutes go by. He won’t stop barking at her. Not a big loud bark. A little nagging insistent one.

“woof woof woof woof woof!”

She resists him. His mocking rumbling bark.

“Woof woof woof woof”

Finally….it is over. The girl is exhausted. We all are exhausted.

Prof: “You make yourself small. You pretend that you are a little girl. But you are a beautiful monster. You hide. You hide this and you make yourself like a little poodle who pisses on the floor of the hair salon.”

Beautiful

Exercise:
We all sit in a cabaret. An actor must take the stage and introduce the next act. We must love them.

Then the act must come out and sing a song or recite a poem. If we think they are beautiful, a symphony of pleasure, then we order champagne. If we think they are top level boring, we order a diet coke.

And so the performer sings.

“You look angry when you sing. You make an ugly face. You are not here with us, with the audience. Wink to the audience while you sing, send a message. After the song is over, the people you wink to must be wanting to fuck you.”

And so the performer sings again.

“Did you think he wanted to fuck you, or do you think oh lalala I need a coffee?”

“Be beautiful on the stage. You move to fast. You do not take time to be with us, to let us fall in love with you. You move too much and you destroy what is beautiful about you on the stage.”

A girl comes on the stage and is beautiful. We all know it. Everyone knows it. She was simple, direct, and open.

“She was beautiful, no?”

“But you, you were terrible. Waiter, six diet cokes.”

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Breaking My Balls

Exercise:

Music in foreign language. Actor onstage must show their pleasure imitating the singer. Then the music turns off and the actor must continue, singing.

Exercise:

Actor enters singing. When they feel they are boring the audience, they must pick up phone and call in another actor. The two performers have a tennis ball they throw back and forth to exchange being in major and minor. A third actor waits in the wings and, whenever the two actors onstage are terrible, the third must come in and save the show.

Prof: [to students onstage] “Leave the stage, right now. You’re breaking my balls. [to classmates watching] Whose balls are full? Who says, stop bouncing on my balls? [Several students raise their hands]. Bon. You are breaking everyone’s balls, thank you. You want too much. When you want too much, you break the balls of everybody. You come onstage to prove that you deserve to be there, not to make miracles happen. You don’t have to prove anything onstage, you have nothing to prove, only lots of things to have fun with.”

The Prof has nothing to prove. That is for certain. He gives his students exercises at which they fail miserably over and over again. His feedback never offers suggestions or advice. He rarely even critiques why something doesn’t work. He just responds, violently, to that which does not work.
I am put in situations where I fail terribly, horribly. Over and over. And I am given scathing critiques. The torrent of abuse has no clear reasoning. There is never a discussion and rarely a debate. All that you know is that your work is not being given approval. That you are boring. The audience does not love you.
Here is what I am used to: the teacher is to be a voice of reason, of clear and comprehensible authority. The teacher’s critiques are informative and constructive. The Prof destroys this relationship. The teacher is neither a source of knowledge nor authority; the teacher becomes simply a source of provocation: “Show us how you play. That wasn’t you playing, try again. No. Again. No. Again. No. Again.” The student is constantly thrown back onto themselves. It is impossible to rely on an authority for what is “right.” In fact, it is impossible to know what is “right.”
Sometimes I feel horrified and discouraged. Other times inspired and dying to have another go. But always I am deeply curious. I feel that it is possible to discover something within myself from this onslaught of abuse and these impossible exercises where I go in front of a room of people and make a total fool of myself over and over again.

I am accustomed to structure. Words. A story to tell. A character. But now I have no structure. Nothing to hide behind. Even when I was doing Meisner I had a partner, there were rules. But now, no. How can I go onstage and be full of play, of pleasure, without any of those things? No givens? No objective? No rules? Well, there are rules. But they are so simple. Have a strong complicite with your partner…etc. Go onstage and show us your pleasure. Speak text, we don’t care what it is, and don’t play the meaning of the text. What??? What???? What????

How do I do this????

I don’t know

I don’t understand. Not at all.

I feel completely lost. (Thank god!)

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Text and movement

Walk across the stage, speak a text. Show your special pleasure.

Simple. Fucking impossible.

Prof:
“The body and the text are not together. Don’t move in the rhythm of the text. When you use your body, your physical life, to accentuate the meaning of the text, you say the same thing twice. You underline the text. You break the balls of the audience. Boring.”

The actor and the text.
They are separate. They contradict. Dissonance. If the actor integrates then everything becomes too close for the play, for the pleasure.

The text is not the impulse. The text follows the impulse. The text comes on top of the impulse. The impulse is physical. The text comes on top of the physical. It is not part of the physical.

What the hell!

Trial and Error

I am building a wall around myself. To stop trying to please people. Because the Prof attacks me if I try to please him. I gave up trying to understand his exercises long ago. But part of me still wants to seem like I know what I am doing onstage. And I only fail more miserably.

Stop trying to please people. I tell myself.

I am building a wall. Not to keep people out. To keep the need to please people in. Every time the little impulse comes to placate someone else, it runs into the wall. Like a little lizard dashing right into a sliding glass door. Oops!

I go in front of the class. Well, I don’t understand this exercise. But I will do it. And I will enjoy it. I have a sort of idea of what I should do. I set my mind to consciously not try and please anyone.

I fail. The Prof says “today you get a zero. Oh, it is only Monday. Well I will give you a zero tomorrow for what you did today.”

I followed ideas of what I should look like when I do the exercise. Well that does not work.

Trial and error.

How to go onstage and not feel like a pile of shit?

Trial and error. Try again.

Go up for every exercise. Look like an idiot. Maybe, one day, I understand why I am so bad onstage.

Trial and error. Try Try Try Fail Fail Fail. Idiot Idiot Idiot.

I go onstage. No idea what to do. I build my little wall in my mind “Don’t do this for their sake Harlan. Just enjoy the damned ridiculous exercise.”

After. Someone offers to kill me with a gun. Many people in the class got shot with fake guns today after the exercise. One got machine gunned. Another got a grenade thrown at them.

The Prof turns to my killer. “No, Harlan was not so bad.”

Trial and error.

Exercise

It is simple. The actor has no background information. No givens. No prewritten text. No environment (but the stage, maybe a chair and a table).

The actor must improvise with other actors. The actor must move. Speak. Above all, the actor must show their special pleasure.

Here is what the actor has to use
-fixed point
-major/minor
-complicité

The actor goes onto the stage. They can speak text, move, anything. The actor is in major, so the actor must speak in major. The other actor is minor. They are like a criminal waiting for their partner to give them the game. Once they have the game, they are in major and the other is in minor. Then they get to show their special pleasure.

It is simple. The actors have no story. They decide nothing. If they talk to much, it is blablla theatre. They must go onstage and reveal their special pleasure.

This is fucking impossible.

Exercise

Two actors. A sock in the back of each actors’ pants. The actors try and steal each others’ socks. One succeeds. The actor is now in major. They speak. They tease the other actor. They show their pleasure to be in major.

No givens.
Does the actor in major show their special pleasure?
Do the two actors have good complicité?

Finally, the other actor gets the sock. They freeze.
Do the actors have strong fixed point?

The actor in minor is now in major. They have the pleasure to tease the other actor. Haha I am in major. Now I show my special pleasure.

When I do the exercise, I am stopped. The exercise is too aggressive. The Prof tells me that he knows that in America we like to kill our presidents, but that I have to be less aggressive. I do not show my special pleasure to be in major.

What the hell is this?

The Prof gives his students unique feedback


[After I finished an exercise]
Prof: “You look totally gay.”
Me: “I try.”
Prof: “You should be a model for gay clothing. In Kosovo. Gay clothing in Kosovo. In the northern part; it is more boring there.”

[After I finished an exercise with a partner]
Prof: “Bon. Absoloutely horrible. Who wants to kill the girl?” [Several students raise their hands] “And who wants to slap Monsieur?” [Several students enthusiastically offer to slap me]. “You two will open the class tomorrow. And you will suffer. A lot. Get ready tonight. Rub some cream on your body.”

Prof: [After a girl finishes an exercise] “You are from Denmark, no? You are nice and boring, like everyone in Scandanavia. Worse is Canada. Canada is top level boring. People go to Canada, walk in the woods, maybe see a bear. Terrible.”

Prof: “Thank you for that horrible moment.”

Prof: “He acts like a complete idiot. Maybe tonight you go home, you eat some fish.”

Prof: “When she moves her body, do you think that this is a beautiful body? Could she be Nureyev’s sister? Or do you think that maybe this is a hippopotamus on her birthday having an erotic crisis?”

Prof: “She has beautiful eyes. They are alive like the Virgin Mary when Joseph says ‘Lets go to restaurant.’ “

Me: “Monsieur, your class is totally different from anything I have ever done.”
Prof: “Well you are from America. American actors are very boring. I taught in America. Completely boring. Everyone.”

Prof: [After a student finishes an exercise]: “Would you like to spend six months on an island with this woman, or would you like to kill her and put her into several trash bags in the back of a London pub?”

Aphorisms for the Theater, from the Prof

Theatre is as serious as a child’s game.

When theatre is not a game, it is boring.

When an actor plays a game, they are open and alive like a child. They have a face like a 7 year old.

Each actor has their own special pleasure. It makes them unique and beautiful. The actor must show their pleasure onstage. They must take pleasure in the game.

The actor is not a character. The actor takes the pleasure to pretend to be a character.

The actor is not their text. The text is only for the fun of the actor’s game.

Every time that an actor speaks, their voice must be filled with the pleasure of the game. An actor who takes no pleasure to speak sounds like a rabbit fart or a police woman behind a desk in Paris. When the actor opens their mouth, we must hear the big band, the mountains and jungles.

The game is a thing of pleasure between the people who play it. The people who play together must have good complicité. Without complicité between the actors, the game is boring.

The actor always is taking pleasure in playing the game.

The actor cannot play the game alone. Complicité. The ham actor has no sensitivity to the other people on the stage.

An actor must play the game. If they are trying to play an idea of the game, they are boring. They are like a village idiot.

Naturalism is rabbit fart theatre. Totally boring.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Je partis à Paris

My studies at L’Ecole.....
.
Here I share my experiences.