Day Nine

No delays on the trains today! So Taylor and I arrived in Etampes even a bit early for Movement class - woah. Movement was fun again today, a slightly smaller class because of the earlier start on Thursday's but still good. We did some stretching, some moving, some dancing, some running, some jumping, some singing, and some games. I think more than anything what I'm getting out of these movement classes is the spirit of light and fun that Carlo encourages. It's not such a technical approach to Movement as I'm used to, but I find that it's far easier and makes a lot more sense when you have a bit of fun with it and just play. Especially when it comes to the games. I love games.

So then, being Thursday and Philippe's garage day, we had class with Tom Tom again. And today was an absolutely mental class. It kinda just felt like everybody was a little bit hysterical or something, and it was just crazy. Not in a bad way, just in a kind of weird way. But there were lots and lots and lots laughs to be had, and eventually I even got some of them myself which was nice.

First thing's first: we needed to take the opportunity to be nasty about the new Pope. So a group of five got up, deformed and costumed themselves however they wished, and then came out onto the stage as a group to some really religious music to one by one say a prayer for the new Pope. There was pretty limited success at this exercise on most fronts. Tom Tom kept encouraging people to be nastier with their prayers, but on the whole it was a bit safe and not that hilarious. There were a couple of really good moments, but mostly it was not great. The second group was much the same really (Taylor was particularly embarrassed about his contribution to the exercise, calling it "the worst thing he's ever done on stage").

So I got up with the third group, and for the vast majority of our time we really followed suit with the previous groups in how bad we were. We were up there kind of floundering in trying to make a funny prayer, and then confessing our sins and nothing was really working. I think that there wasn't really enough structure to this exercise to help it work properly - we didn't have any definite character or archetype to play, no specific deformity or costume, all we really had was knowing that we had to make a nasty prayer about the Pope, which wasn't a lot to go off. And it showed in everyone's performances and the way the audience received them.

So everything was going badly until Tom Tom asked for us to one by one tell some dirty jokes. I told a racist one that got some laughs, and so Tom Tom picked up on it and called me forward to tell more racist jokes. I had to think of all the racist jokes I knew as quick as I could and deliver them to the audience: the moment I finished one Tom Tom would yell "more!" I had to make them up. So there I am, on stage in an oversized Disney sweatshirt and no pants (coz that was my costume choice - good one, Jack) walking up and down and pulling racist jokes out of thin air. And when I ran out, I had to keep going, I had to make up my own racist jokes on the spot. I wasn't allowed time to think. I just had to do it. Most of them weren't clever or witty, sometimes they barely made sense. They were mostly very rude. And the audience loved it. Again, I was at the very edge of my brain's capabilities and garbage was just pouring out of my mouth, and it was offensive but apparently very funny. I probably was telling racist jokes for 2 minutes straight, just going with the flow of whatever came out of my mouth first and seeing where it would go. It was exhausting, but people seemed to really like it and I got a round of applause at the end of it.

That was the last group of people praying for the Pope and we moved onto a couple of groups of people being anorexic models before class finished. This had some better moments in it, as there was more of a structure to follow, more of a definite character or archetype to play, just generally more for a performer to work with I think. The clearer the framework around what you're doing and the better you know the material (or the more material there is), the freer you are to let go and to play around. When I was at my freest was when I had the framework of simply churning out racist joke after racist joke, and that was all I had to do. I didn't have to invent something clever or be amazing in any completely original way, I just had to completely commit myself to the task at hand which had a set of very clear rules.

A very very bizarre class all in all. But still really good. And there were some good lessons to come out of it.

Looking back at photos of the workshop so far is very very funny, and you have moments of a removed perspective of everything where you just go "what the hell are we doing?" But that's good. These classes are unlike anything I've ever done before. They are the strangest, most offensive, funniest, most bizarre, craziest place to be. When I stop and think that I've travelled halfway round the world and paid a small fortune to take this course I can't help but laugh. It's absolutely hilarious. But it's a completely unique environment and a unique way of learning that I am sure I won't ever find anywhere else. And in years to come, who knows, maybe it will all start to make sense in a deeply profound cosmic sort of way - maybe in 15 years I'll realise the secret of acting because of my crazy 3 week crash-course in Bouffon. Who knows. Even if not, I'm still having a hilarious time.