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?