Ugly in a Beautiful Way

Boars, Part 2

2008-08-27T05:27:00.000-07:00

No moon tonight.

I come to the path at the edge of the woods. Blackness. I know the path is there but I am staring into nothing. I close my eyes and open them. They adjust? Still nothing.

I step out in front of me. Still gravel under my feet. Still on the path. I swing out my left hand and brush a tree trunk. When walking through the woods after two bottles of wine, tree trunks are welcome friends.

The divets in the ground are not.

I stumble along until I can dimly make out the white body of the caravan in front of me on the path. No water, no electricity, but home sweet home.

I trace my hand along the side of it and my knuckles grind along it's corrugated surface. Suddenly from out of the bushes by my feet comes a sound like a lawn mower roaring to life.

I run madly around the corner of the caravan, throw open the door, slam it close behind me. Lock it just in case. Only the sound of my breath. A pain shoots through the side of my head. In the rush to get in the caravan, I knocked my head.

Wine and boars don't mix.

Boars, Part 1

2008-08-27T05:18:00.000-07:00

"Mira?."

"I need help."

Mira sits on the bed opposite mine. Her big cheeks are streaked with tears.

"Can you walk me back to my place?"

I do not want to walk Mira back to her place because it is 2 in the morning and it is a 20 minute hike up a blinding dark mountain road to the cottage she is staying in.

"Boar?"
"Three of them. In the road. My path was blocked." Mira stifles a sob.

"Mira, there are three free beds in this room. Why dont you sleep here ?"

Mira rises to her feet. . "I'm not a sissy." Her voice shakes "I am not afraid of pigs. But I'm in the dark. I cannot see in front of me. And I hear this horrible growling in front of me. And the bushes by the road are shaking but I cannot see them shaking. I can see nothing. I just hear this awful sound."

What I learned at Ecole Philippe Gaulier

2008-02-07T07:10:00.000-08:00

Dear Teachers and Friends,

The voices in my head have kindly reminded me that I am currently enrolled for university credits for my study at Ecole Phillipe Gaulier. Of course I have not forgotten this, as over 1/4th of my grant money has been thrown into the garbage bin paying university fees. Another 1/3rd fell through the giant crack between the dollar and the Euro. Whoops!

Luckily I work part time as a prostitute, giving old men hand jobs in Bois de Bologne.

J/K!

It feels so rewarding to be a hard-working, responsible student. To turn in assignments on time. To make regular reports. Which reminds me. The voices in my head said to me "Harlan, you really should be writing about your expeiences with Philippe Gaulier. All of the useful things that you have learned."

And I asked the voices, "My dear friends" (I am a bit British when I speak to the voices in my head) "My dear friends, I am afraid to explain what I actually learned."

Of course the voices politely insisted that I explain myself. You see, I was awarded a lot of money to study with Mr Gaulier. A lot of money. And at a minimum, for me to put this money to good use, I should be able to write a full report on what I have learned.

Well, I am growing a bit exasperated with the voices. I could fabricate something. "At Ecole Philippe Gaulier, I learned how to listen." But the voices will not be very impressed by this. I already spent for years training how to be a good listener on the stage. "Well yes," I would reply. "But what I discovered at this school is that when I get lost on stage, I stop listening. And when I stop listening, I stop playing." Ah this is starting to sound a bit more useful now!

I will be frank. I hate writing this shit.

It's total shit. Because I cannot actually articulate in words the process I have been through at this Ecole. Yes I have been insulted, humiliated, and wildly entertained. But none of that is what the school was about. And the school is NOT about theory. Theory is not unimportant, it is just irrelevant. One could theorize for months about what happens in this school. And here is the key. Here is my beautiful artistic discovery of a lifetime. Here is why I spent thousands of dollars studying with Philippe Gaulier:

All of my theories, my ideas, ALL of them. They are tiny compared to what happens onstage when I play instead of trying to make an idea work.

That is it. Thousands of dollars for that.

I am not joking now.

Best lesson ever.

_________________________________
I have an idea. I go onstage and try to make it work:

Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop.

I have NO idea. I go onstage and I search for a game.

No game?

Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop.

But if I can find the game. And play it. And not PLAY but just play the game. And be lost trying to figure the game out. And be a human being who is lost and playing and having a good time then is lost and then falls silent listening and trying to figure out the game and then and then and then and then

Maybe the Flop is held at bay.

And something happens. Something that is bigger than an idea.
Something that sparks 10,000 ideas and 5000,00000000000 theories in one microsecond. That makes Roland Barthes and Noam Chomsky looks like snivelling blahblahs.

And that is it.

And right now, I have no idea how to do this on the stage.

And no one can teach it to me.

I have to find it for myself.
It will take a very long time. I am a slow learner this way.
I will come back maybe in a few years and try again.

I need to live a bit, to experience a bit of life, before I will be capable of doing what I dream to do on the stage.

And voila. That is what I learned.

I hope you voices are happy now.

I learned that I am young, I expect to much of myself, I work too hard, I don't understand life at all.

I learned to laugh at my own arrogance, my snobbery, my absurd expectations and my cheap sentimentality.

And I learned to laugh at the arrogance of others, their horrible habits and their bizarre ideas about the world. To laugh and to enjoy being alive. Because an artist who only seeks what is useful, what improves a society, what will save people is not an artist at all but a Marxist-Leninist shitbag. I was trained in America to be useful always. Not by this or that but by everything around me. To make myself useful. And art is not useful. Art makes the Useful feel they have lived so little. And that is a powerful thing.

It does not interest me to heal the world. To make the world a better place one person at a time. Because I believe that the world will always be a messy unfair place and thus I have no desire to change it. The naive arrogance I once harbored- that I could somehow rescue the world- now seems so silly.

The best I could ever hope to do is create something that makes people more alive. Whatever the hell that means anyways, it sounds good so I will stick with it.

The world is big. And my ideas about the world are small.

Thank you, Philippe Gaulier, for your hard lesson.

A good old-fashioned trashing

2008-02-07T06:42:00.000-08:00

The bouffon workshop ended.

I decided not to continue with the melodrama workshop. I made the decision the morning of the workshop with little hesitation..

For over a week during the Bouffon workshorp I did not want to go to class. I felt sick to my stomach starting when I woke up. It was like a little animal was running in frantic circles through my intestines.

Close to lunchtime the feeling would get more intense. I tried eating a lot and drinking alcohol to make the feeling go away. Eating didn't help. Alcohol helped a little bit. I would sit on the train stare out the window. I couldn't concentrate on reading a book, a paper, listening to language lessons on my ipod. My mind wandered aimlessly.

At school the creature in my stomach grew increasingly aggressive during movement class. Two or three times during movement class, a voice in my head reminded me of what was coming next, and I felt little ball of acid pop open in my gut.

As I put on my costume, my makeup before class I focused only on the steps I needed to take. Fastening my hunchback or blackening my teeth. It was only when I would walk into the studio that a sensation of mild helplesness washed over me. I would sit on a bench around the stage and wait for it to begin.

The way I measured the class was on a scale of
1) I escaped humiliation today
2) I was humiliated today as a member of a group and therefore it was not all my fault.
3) I was humiliated today by myself, but so were many others
4) Many people were very highly praised today and I was humiliating.
5) Today almost everyone was praised as brilliant on the stage; I on the other hand was told that I was one of the worst things that had ever been seen on the stage. After the class, other students shot me sideways glances, ignored me as they made plans for the evening, and/or made nasty comments to me during the train ride back to central Paris.

#5 happened a bit more than I would have liked. In the dressing room, after class each day, I felt like a shit stain on the wall. And I resent the students (and there were quite a few of them) who treated me with less respect because I was struggling with the course. To quote another girl who had I similar experience, "I felt like the fat kid in gym class."

Of course, there was one day that I did something wonderful onstage with two other girls. The three of us had been the class flops for weeks, and then we went onstage and made something wonderful happen. That same day, all of the class prodigies went onstage and flopped. Afterwards, one of the class prodigies was kind enough to pay me a complement:

"Good work Harlan. Sometimes when you have been failing so long you just need a success to be more confident."

I think that this large, jolly (un petit peu connard?) fellow actually thought he was paying me a complement. I never did get around to slapping him...

__________
So my last month with the Gaulier school was not a Sunday afternoon picnic with the women's rotary club in northwest Alabama. I learned a lot. I don't want towrite about what I learned. I want to write about all of the nasty, egomaniacal students who showed up for this workshop. The narcissistic prick with his head ten miles up his ass, for example. I am not feeling so nice about what happened during that workshop, and I want to do some good old fashioned trashing.

_____________

Of course, thisis all a bit sentimental and indulgent. Because I dropped any pretense of writing an orderly, academic blog about this school a long time ago I don't think it matters much at this point. I should write about what I learned.

Diagnosis: Christianity

2008-01-22T16:11:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-20T10:29:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-01-15T15:09:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-01-14T15:46:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-14T13:56:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-13T14:27:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-08T14:29:00.000-08:00

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....

A little break....

2007-12-21T06:36:00.000-08:00

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!

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

2007-12-17T03:03:00.000-08:00

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.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

2007-12-15T17:02:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-12-15T16:29:00.000-08:00

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.

Really Playing the Game

2007-12-12T01:14:00.000-08:00

"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."

What You Can Learn in the Immigrations Department.

2007-12-10T06:59:00.000-08:00

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.

Ugly Carpets, Shit Mind

2007-12-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

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

Advice from M. Le Professeur

2007-12-08T02:50:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-08T02:34:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-08T02:19:00.000-08:00

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

Why Give a Shit about Pleasure?

2007-12-06T00:47:00.000-08:00

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.

The Kingdom of Kristine

2007-12-01T18:04:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-01T17:53:00.000-08:00

"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

2007-12-01T17:40:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-01T11:53:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-01T11:47:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-01T11:28:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

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.

From Material to Bank Robbery

2007-11-14T17:02:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-14T16:59:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-14T16:52:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-14T16:42:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-14T16:33:00.000-08:00

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."

The Pleasure to Pretend

2007-11-07T15:33:00.000-08:00

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."

Porte le texte comme un chapeau

2007-11-05T15:43:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-05T00:44:00.005-08:00

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

2007-11-05T00:44:00.003-08:00

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?

2007-11-05T00:44:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-05T00:43:00.005-08:00

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

2007-11-05T00:43:00.003-08:00

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

2007-11-05T00:43:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-05T00:42:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-05T00:40:00.000-08:00

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.”

Breaking My Balls

2007-10-25T02:17:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-23T09:29:00.001-07:00

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

2007-10-23T09:28:00.004-07:00

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

2007-10-23T09:28:00.003-07:00

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

2007-10-23T09:28:00.001-07:00

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

2007-10-23T09:27:00.001-07:00

[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

2007-10-23T09:25:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-10-23T09:21:00.001-07:00

Je partis à Paris

2007-09-27T11:10:00.000-07:00

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