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.