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!)

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.