Diagnosis: Christianity

I'm a bit Christian, maybe.
I m sorry to admit such a thing.
When I refer to Christianity, I mean a way of thinking, of moving through life, that isn't really present.
So of course I use "Christian" lightly. (And shouldn't we all use Christians lightly?)

"When did you first begin to think you might be Christian?"
-Well I was thinking about how I always am looking forward to something else. Like Irina in Chekov's "3 Sisters." Ah to Moscow to Moscow! Ah to Heaven to Heaven. Or in my case: "Ah to France/China/some new grant scheme...."

"Are people born Christian, or is it something that happens to them in their early adulthood."
-There isn't yet enough scientific evidence to support that people have a "Christian gene," but maybe it is a cultural deficiency. I am from the United States, after all. And with a broken home to boot, my family is far from one of great moral integrity. Yes, I think my Christian tendencies got going somewhere in my early life. I was always looking forward to something else because what I am doing is so unsatisfying. Yeah. And the Christian agenda certainly doesn't help.

"Christian agenda? You believe there is a Christian agenda?"
-Google "focus on the Family." Of course there is a Christian agenda. No sex. No regular indulgence of alcohol. No mastrubation. No gluttony. These pleasures make life beautiful, make us stop and smell the roses. The Christians would have us all living in some nightmarish Norman Rockwell painting. The American Fundies, anyways.

"You're changing the subject."
-Fair enough. So the point I was making is that I am a bit Christian because I am not really alive in this life, I am always looking ahead to something else. I threw away an entire year of my life looking ahead to the next one, in fact.

"Do you believe that Chrisitianity can be cured?"
-It's a slow and painful process. And you have to want to be cured. Changes won't happen overnight. A lot of people claim to be ex-Christians but eventually fall back into their evil ways again...praying and fasting in hope of enjoying the life to come. Telling themselves that their rewards will come to them in Heaven...really it is a sort of disease, I think. A disease of the mind. Early childhood developmental problems, perhaps? It's dfficult to say.


But this is how I keep myself from living my life.

How to be Dangerous

The Sacre Coeur rises over the buildings outside of my balcony like a marvellous alien bosom, the nipple of Paris. Artificial lighting flatters the normally dirty white exterior and at night time it carries an aura of blasphemous mystery. A mosque? A boob? A nice church on the hill?

I don't mind sitting alone on my balcony- but it does get more problematic when you are falling in love with someone and stuck on a little balcony with them. A fine time to go into the details of your dead fish of a romantic life Harlan. On my balcony in Paris with a glass of wine, watching the Sacre Coeur....chin-deep in shit. I don't go out nowadays. I want to curl like a fetus into a womb of books and good wine and maybe the occasional David Bowie/Janis Joplin/Prince remix. Anyone out there want to lend me a copy of Musicology, by the way? I'm feeling a little lost without it.

I know that I came onto this blog to do something. Ah, write an entry about the course, perhaps?
It's a good thing that I am so responsible. I know how to get things done. People always say "Harlan, you sure know how to set and meet goals!" Lately, this sort of phrase has been used in a less flattering way. The other day M. le Professeur said "People with strong will power are fucking horrible people, no matter what country you are in." He gave me a sideways glance. Of course my anal retentive behavior always kept me in good standing with my academic work and I always stayed in good physical condition, ate well, etc.

Like clockwork, you know. Or any other mechanized and un-lifelike image you would like to invoke. The french students, rioting in 68, had a cry of protest that went something like "Metro, boulo, booboo." Which translates roughly as "Metro, Work, space out." It's much better in French. Why did I start down this road?

Hm. Lets back up a bit. When I began my studies with M le Professeur, I decided after 3 or 4 days to quit the school. I despised and distrusted everything that was happeneing. But then something clicked, somewhere in the second week. I began to feel more alive after class, and I would walk the streets for hours at night and dream about what had happened in the school. Something was getting prodded inside me and I couldn't be sure what it was at the time. Something I think I had learned to ignore for a very long time.

Metro Boulou Bouo Boo.
Right. And so sitting on this balcony over Monmartre and falling in love again for the first time in a very long time I remember why it is the first time in a very long time because suddenly I am a laughing idiot and a depressed maniac. Gloriously out of control.

REALLY DANGEROUS

The Bouffon does a parody of a bastard. Not a little bastard. A big bastard. Cheney, Hitler. Hussein. Jiang Qing.

I go up and do my parody of Jiang Qing. M le Prof stops me.

"Bon. Is he light? Or does he break our balls?"
-"He breaks my balls."
"Bon. You are breaking everyone's balls. I want you to try something. Snort like a pig."

NHGUF NGHUF NHGUF

"Do we love him more when he does his parody, or when he snorts like a pig?"
-"Pig."
"You have to have the pleasure to parody a bastard in a light way. When you are heavy, militant, aggressive, you make us uncomfortable with your parody. We must love you loving your parody. If you parody the bastard in a light way, and we love you, then you are really dangerous, Then the bastard, if he is watching, will want to kill you because you are dangerous, because you have power. When the performer is heavy, when they play like John Wayne in Vietnam, then they break our balls and they are like a little shitty idea. The poo of the dog at the gay Paris haridressers.
Bon. Thank you, goodbye."

BOOM.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"ugh.' Me staring at the Sacre Coeur, hoping it will turn into a missile silo and blow me off my balcony for the good of all. "Maybe I just need to take some time off from this school. It's exhausting, going onstage every day and being a flop."

-He stops actors, he tells them to shut up. It is because when the actor stops, they are interesting. Fixed point.

"My god. You finally, just now, after four months, made sense of that for me."

-Huh?

"Fixed point is that. It's to stop and listen to the audience. To look for what you need to give next. Thank you."

-No problem.

I look back out at the nipple of Paris and have another swig of beer (beer tonight, not wine. I'm not feeling so classy. Or maybe I've just had a little bit too much wine every night for the last two weeks in a row. Either/or. This charming person, just like that, randomly launched into an explanation of one of the most basic concepts of this school that has elided me for four months.

You, reader, have no clue what I am talking about, perhaps? Perhaps this blog makes no sense any longer.

This school makes no sense unless you're there. That is that. It doesn't work to write about it. It's too delicate and too subtle to be written about. It may just sound like a place where you go get abused doing impossible excercises but it's not.

It's an infinitely delicate little spiderweb and I've been shitty on it for a while now with this blog, taking the wild bits and exploiting them for shock value. So I should just come out and clear that up. There is no cruelty or humiliation in this school, as far as I'm concerned. And if anything, I am a little too young and a bit too inexperienced to actually understand the subtlety of what is being asked of me.

But one thing is for sure, it is making me listen a bit more carefully.

The Pleasure to...oh fuck off.

BIG BOOTY

Exercise
The Bouffons stuff their butts until they are enormous. They deform their legs by tying the knees together and turn their arms into stumps.

Then they form a chorus. Music.
They have the pleasure to dance the classical ballet or striptease.

Then they have the pleasure to mock avant garde theater. One does an interpretive dance while the other speaks.

Then they pretend to be idiot boyscouts in the forest. ? le Prof explains that boyscouts are idiots who love to help. You can always tell who the idiots are because they are ready to help. Then he laughs and looks at me.

I got up for the exercise. I walk on the stage.

NO THANK YOU.

Again.

ADIOS IMMEDIATELY. CONSTIPATED PLEASURE.


Why do I have to be happy to be on the stage?
Can't I just come on stage and tell everyone to piss off? It would really feel much more honest. "Ladies and gentlemen, I know that you have come here to be entertained. And you expect me to entertain you. Now kindly piss off.

This attitude is not going to get me very far here.

With no doubt, my present attitude is getting me nowhere. I am so bored of being kicked off the stage every day before I can even open my mouth. So if I go onstage and fight to be there, well that doesn't work either. And then the other option is of course for me to go onstage and push wildly to make something interesting happen. God does that get Mr Flop in the room in a hurry.

So what DO I do? Become a factory of pleasure, on could suggest. But the lovely thing about pleasure is that it is NOT a factory. It is not something that can be ordered and produced. And it is not something my little brain can cook up a way to create.

Jesus Christ. I am not an actor with big flashing neon tubes coming out of my asshole. I like libraries and walks in the woods. I hate big parties and can only tolerate dance clubs when I am totally drunk. I like drinking wine and bullshitting about politics or literature. I am boring, Monsieur le Professeur. I am a fucking boring person. I like to read Harpers and listen to the avant-garde radio station where people use a car fender to bang the inside of a piano. I am a fucking elitist bore, it is 100 percent true! I hate having to pretend people are interesting who are totally not interesting and I walk away from them and sit in a corner and do yoga. How do you like that? I do yoga and I like it. I'm a careful, polite, and voila fucking boring person.

End of rant.

Knowing how to Flop.

You are in your living room.
Alone.
And you practice for the stage.

BOOMBANGCHINGSLAMWOODLEWOODLEWOODLEWOOOOOOOO!

Aha! You say to yourself. "I have something brilliant coming onstage today."

And then you go on the stage.
And you think about what you did in your living room.
And you begin-

boeuf....boeuf....boeuf....flop....

It's not the same on the stage as in your living room.
Because on the stage, you do not know what is coming.

Constipated Olivier

You are riding in the metro and god it suddenly gets very hot. Does it always have to be so uncomfortable in the metro? You turn to your neighbor, the mountain of wrinkles with grey hair curling out from underneath her dirty kerchief. The b idea to make a passing comment about this sudden discomfort is hastily discarded upon meeting her glassly gaze. Back to looking out the window. Chatelet. Les Halles. Reumer Sebastopol. God line 4 is running slowly today.

And now we are stopping in the middle of the track? Great. A complete standstill. These are always so uncomfortable because the one thing that cannot be found in Paris is suddenly bearing down on top of you: complete silence. Ah. The man across the aisle looks at his feet and makes as if to adjust himself in his chair but hesitates for fear of breaking the quiet. Ah Paris. An angry woman standing by the door begins to tap her foot. In your mind's eye, you imagine her with a baguette tucked under her arm. Ah c'est la vie en Paris....Maybe this is a good time to compose an ode to French charm. It will be called "A la rechereche pour le charm perdu."

Finally the train starts up again. Finally at your stop, you sidestep through the aisle to the door. Flip the lever of the subway door and they rush open- you are shocked by a sudden blast of cold air oddly situated down between your...

"How could you be riding the subway, piss your pants, and not even notice for several stops?"

The question is a good one. Here is a better one for you:

"How could you pursue acting and yet make yourself badl onstage on purpose?"

When I first realized that I was actually trying to be bad onstage, it have to say that I felt very relieved. It was as if a huge weight dropped off the euphamistic shoulders. I try to be bad. Isn't that a funny thing?

An actor comes on the stage and acts. If an actor comes onstage and apologizes, well they are bad. They are making themselves bad because they are coming onstage to apologize and not to act.

This may seem painfully obvious. Well, the discomfort of coming onstage to apologize has always certainly been painful. But it has never been obvious. Why?

Because there has always been a good competent teacher or coach waiting offstage to give you a hand. To give you some guidance. That is what they are there for.

Not Monsieur le Professeur. He watches. And he hits his drum. And then he insults you.

Exercise. Drum. Insult. Exercise. Drum. Insult.

But the most import part: the question for the audience.

Your classmates are asked: Do you love it or do you hate it. And they will tell you "Yes, sorry but I hate it." (With few exceptions, when M. le Professeur asks the class whether they loved or hated it, we know it is because there was a big flop).

You look at your friends in the audience. They look at you, wince a little, and say "I could kill you" while at the same time trying to say with their eyes "Sorry my friend."

You look into your friends eyes as they judge you and maybe did you look into your friends eyes the same way during the exercise? Were you off balance and searching for the game? During the exercise, were You looking in your friends eyes the same way you do when you play "Balthazar says" and you had to ask one of your friends to kiss you in order to be spared physical torture at the hands of M le Professeur? Or were you in lala land trying to create something shitty? A big idea that doesn't work.

Ah, my Madame Mao Zedong parody today was not, as one might say, top level.

But after I sat down, and as I was watching my classmates work, I realized that I had gone on the stage to be bad. It was that moment when the metro doors open and you feel a rush of cold air and you say to yourself: "AHA! That is why the temperature in the metro was so strange." To take this metaphor further, I don't know why I went onstage to be bad. And who knows why you would choose to pee yourself on the metro? It stinks, it is embarassing, and no one wants to see you this way. But I did. And I did. And I can see how my classmates make the same choice at times- choose to make themselves small, to make themselves easily forgotten.

And really who is ever happy to watch a performer who makes themselves small or forgettable? It is not about ego or deluded self-confidence. It is about being you and not apologizing.

Well, to return to the piss-pants on the metro. Let us not ask why the pants drip with urine. And I shall not ask why I choose to go onstage and be small. It is enough for me, tonight, to say to myself that yes, I do that. And yes, I will probably continue doing it for a very long time. Until I look at my friends with the sensitivity I have when they are agreeing with M. le Professeur that they would like to kill me and perhaps debating how.

Perhaps it is simply a matter of ceasing trying to be something and instead playing with what you've got.

THE PARODY EXERCISE

Now I have not talked about our exercises for Bouffon yet. And it would be boring to reiterate what "Bouffon" is about at the moment. See Tiff's Blog linked in the sidebar? She does a fantastic writeup on the history of the Bouffon, as narrated by M. le Professeur. But I would like to describe this exercise a bit because it is a fascinating and very fundamental one to this school's pedagogy (Christ I sound like I'm trying to write for an academic journal).

The task is for the actor to parody a bastard. A certifiable "Bastard." Not just a nasty grandma or rude traffic cop. We're talking Hitler, Cheney, Pol Pot level bastard. The audience should feel that, if the Bastard were watching this actor's parody, they would stand up and shout "THAT ISN'T ME!!!" just before collapsing, dead of a heart attack.

The trap is to play a character. The actor does not play a character of the bastard. They are adopting certain elements of the bastard's persona/voice/body in order to have the pleasure of mocking the bastard. M. Prof often makes his point in this way. He has two students onstage and asks one to whisper into the other's ear an insult about the Professeur. Inevitably, as the one student whispers into the other's ear, their entire face begins to glow with delight. This delight, this "pleasure," as M Prof never tires of pointing out, is the beginning of the parody. The pleasure to destroy the bastard.

Another trap is that the actor pushes to play the bastard (Of course, I did not push at all. I never push. I am the king of subtle acting). When the actor pushes to play the bastard, we loose the actor's fun. And we always must have a sense, as an audience, of the actor underneath the parody, having fun to play at the bastard.

So yes, my friends of the american repertory theater training. Yes you do not play a character. You embody NOTHING. You PLAY AT everything. And this is the basis of the parody. In fact, this is the basis of EVERYTHING in theater, as far as this school is concerned. And while you are playing at something, you are never of course hamming or using a lot of shitty acting tricks. It is actually extremely subtle. Because you are playing at the parody with your pleasure and always with your pleasure- your own idiosyncratic sense of fun. This cannot be dictated by techniques, methods, formulas, or nice books. And an actor with their own special fun is everything. On top of that fun they can pile on the techniques and tricks of the trade all they want, as long as they do not bury their special pleasure. But without their special sense of fun to be onstage, all of the other stuff is just conventional garbage.

Well. Am I mouthing this school's pedagogy or am I mouthing this school's pedagogy? And yet I am not just mouthing it. I am seeing, every day, how and why this pedagogy is so nice to have around.

And maybe, one of these days, I will stop making myself small. Maybe even I have a special sense of fun to be onstage. But lately I have been Constipated Jane. Why do I pick on Jane? Sorry Jane. I have been Constipated Chris. No no we'll dedicate this one to my old french landlord: Constipated Olivier.

First Week of Bouffon

Ouch.
Ouch.
Ouch.

Have you ever bought a bag of oranges and set it on the table and then a month later you are doing some cleaning up and voila- you find one of those oranges had rolled behind the fridge? When you pick it up, it’s a bit warm and soft like the top of an infant's head. Large patches of it have turned various shades of blue, green, and purple. There are little white cracks through the skin, like a piece of cardboard that has been bent one way and then another, over and over again.

This is the present state of my ego.

“At what point, Harlan, did you realize that you were gay?”
-Well I was 19 and having sex with a girl and it wasn’t going so well. Ok, to be honest with you, I felt that I was about to throw up. I think it hit me somewhere between the bed and the garbage can that maybe, when I stare at the men in the gym, I am not just admiring them.

“When did you realize that you have an ego like China’s economy?”
-Ah. That was probably this week. I think I was having a temper tantrum about the French paperwork. I am no stranger to temper tantrums about the French paperwork. As a matter of fact, it was only this afternoon that I found myself waiting, once again, in a line to-
“But Harlan, this really is very boring. I asked you about your ego problem.”
-Hm. Right. I do like to go on about my problems, don’t I?
“You’d think there was nothing more interesting than your problems in this world.”
-I shut up about my problems with French paperwork now.
“Thank you. But Harlan, will you answer the question. Ego? China's economy?”
- Imagine that you are in a dark room. And you keep tripping over something. It is big and cushy with lots of hard angles. ‘What the hell!’ You cry and try to get around it. Then your shin slams into another hard angle and you think ‘Voila I am a genius, I am tripping over mother’s horrible floral-print sofa!’ But then you reach down and feel something knobby. ‘My god! Grandma is that you?’ And so you keep tripping over this strange thing, cursing whatever it is and whoever left it there. It is difficult to answer because there is no moment that I discovered this ego problem. It was only bit by bit, like this. But I did realize the other day something very important. Like usual, I was feeling bad for myself because I was a flop.
“And then?”
-Well and then I realized that nothing was in my way except me and my big ego. And that really as long as I am hiding behind my ego I can never be a performer.
“So performers have no ego?”
-That’s very funny. Performers keep their ego out of the way on the stage. No doubt all performers have big fucking egos. People who claim to have no ego are fucking idiots. But anyways. When actors manage to stand astride of their charming ego on the stage, we don't see it but we see them playing. When we see bad ideas and pinched little defenses, then we see the ego. And mine is very large and very in charge at the moment. I have to be honest with you, it’s embarrassing. To go in front of everyone and be such a failure every day. To stumble around onstage with my horrible defense mechanisms like in a kid’s nightmare- where his pants around his ankles in front of the whole school. So embarassing, this ego.

Monsieur le Professeur:
“You have to change what you do.”

DO I DOUBT MYSELF?

Merci, M. le Professeur, merci beaucoup. Bien sûr, vous me dirait quand je ne transformerais pas.

Hm. It’s clearer now. What we are looking for in this school. It is more simple than I ever imagined. It is what I have been searching for all of this time. I feel that I found it by accident, here, with this mad Professeur and this charming oddball collection of students.

Do I doubt that I am capable? Hm. It is not about being capable. This is shitty competitive theatre talk. Theater monologue contest in the Lincoln Center’s filthy armpit talk. It is not really a matter of doubt. Not at all. Because everyone has the capacity to play, and when they play- when they really play, they are fucking gorgeous and beyond competition.
The actor who plays with their unique beauty is so beautiful that, watching them, I can dream for days and weeks about their play. About the new spaces it opens- the new possibilities to imagine…
Each actor has their own unique play and of course it can not be matched or imitated. To do so would be ridiculous. So this is not about armpit monologue competition theatre.
But I do feel something close to doubt. Something inside, a sort of sinking stone. And no it’s not just emotional turmoil over my latest love life disaster. Haha. “Love life.” Way to abuse a cliché Harlan. No it is not my fart of a love life (to be fair, I wasn’t a total flop in Greece. Pole dancing in an Athens gay bar on Christmas day with a medical student named Nicos. Hm. Part of me thinks I did it just for the kitsch value of recounting the details).
So what is this sinking feeling, if it isn’t my pole dancing fart of a love life? Honestly, I feel very humbled.

Lets be honest. I showed up here with a lot of training and a reasonable amount of professional experience for an actor of my age. And I had a little fucking attitude that I knew what I was doing. A little shithead attitude. Not competetive, not really. I've never been that kind of idiot. Not quite. It was really just sort of an idea that I knew what I was doing. A sort of assurance.

And then I have endured months of (literally) getting slapped across the face on stage. Because when I come on the stage I bring my shitty little self-assured nonsense. And of course I am always terrible. But. And this is a big but. A butt sort of but no but a BIG BUT:

I have seen things on the stage more beautiful than my little mind could have ever cooked up. Only in my dreams could I have imagined what I have seen. And only in my imagination is there any hope of me finding my own way into this way of making theatre. All of my shitty concepts lie like a pile of shit in my grandma’s Depends after a tall glass of Pedialite.

AS THE FRENCH SAY, TU EST UN CON TETU

So sit back with a glass of wine Harlan and have a good laugh about all of your plans and project, all of your hard work. Because really you have been such a bull headed snob! But really it has been a good time. And if you were not such a bull-headed snob, you wouldn’t be here drinking wine and laughing about what a bull-headed snob you are/were.

“Are you the only snob in your family?”
-When Monsieur le Professeur asked me this question, I loved him for his good aim. I used to cry and have such a fit when anyone would call me a snob. How dare they! I was so precious about it. After four months with Monsieur le Professeur, I don’t know if a person can go on being precious about anything.


Perhaps a nice Vaseline. (for my ego) Some cream?

BEAUTIFUL IN A BEAUTIFUL WAY

How do I describe this feeling? When I was 7 years old, I determined to find out, once and for all, if there was a Santa Clause. So I left Santa a long note on the kitchen table, asking him to please prove his existence. I lay a camera on top of the note and also attached a long list of objects he could photograph that would qualify, in my view, as proof of his existence. Of course, to soften the blow of this tiresome inquisition I put the note next to a plate of cookies. To be sure this would remind him that he was loved and not just a victim of childhood curiosity!
Then next morning, I found on the table Dun! Dun! Dun! That the camera had been used during the night. I screamed with joy. Ah! It was a good morning. Shortly thereafter, I opened my presents and what did Grandma give me this year for Christmas? I fake leather coat. My mother preserved this beautiful moment for posterity on the video camera. There I am, crouched over the box in my green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pyjamas. I look as if I am about to have some sort of asphyxiating attack.
“OH MY GOD” I shriek, laying my hands gently on the cool material that smelled like the seats on my great-aunt’s jeep. “A FAKE LEATHER COAT! I. CAN’T. BELIEVE IT!!!!”

This is the precise feeling that I have in class when I see an actor who is freely playing in their own unique way. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh it is so beautiful to see this special side of an actor, when they are just having fun and not trying to do anything. Just to play. I could cry when I think about some of the fellow performers- how beautiful they are on the stage.
When the actor is in possession of their own powers on the stage, when they move in the way that they move and think in the way that they think, and they do not have anything in their way. My god, what is not possible?

Bouffon

Today: the hunchback.

The hunchback has stumps for arms, knees together like a wobbly tree, and a horrible lump in the back. The hunchback comes to us from the swamps and smiles.

8 students come onstage and begin fumbling with piles of fabric, ropes, belts, whatever they can lay their hands on. In costume, they slide and wobble around the stage like drunk chickens with one leg an inch too long. I can hardly recognize some of their faces.

They are pushed together in the center of the stage like goats being herded. Then they are pelted with tennis balls as if they are being stoned to death. After being stoned, they slowly turn to us, smiling.

They begin a little dance, moving together as a chorus towards us. Then one emerges from the group with the pleasure to pretend they are John Wayne, Maye West...

"The bouffon must not play with aggression. The bouffound always tries to be graceful, to be beautiful."

More tomorrow....