So today was our Auto Cours presentations (mine and Taylor's first for Bouffon). I didn't really know how it was going to run or what to expect from it all so I went into it just a little bit nervous, especially since I really didn't know if what Taylor and I had come up with was going to work or not. And the nervousness was well warranted, because it was a complete train-wreck.
Somehow we drew the lucky first spot in the showing (which in hindsight is probably a bit of a blessing, because the audience had no good performances to compare our disaster with). So we got up in our stupid costumes with our stupid character choices and our stupid attempt at a scene, and we basically just died. It was really horrible. We got a few polite laughs from the audience but otherwise not much and got about halfway through our text before Philippe banged his drum to stop us. He didn't have much to say to us other than "Piece of shit. Goodbye."
And he was right. Our piece was under-rehearsed, had no clear target or anything it was really mocking, wasn't very fun, and had no point. It was just bad. Looking back, we had no idea how to interpret the exercise and how to make text work alongside the Bouffon work we've ben doing in class, which has all been improvisational. From watching other groups though I now realise that Taylor and I were nowhere near adventurous enough with the text and didn't let our imaginations go with it. We also decided that we would improvise our blocking etc and see what happened in the moment (because we thought that the improvisational side of things was where we'd been finding the fun in our Bouffon work), but we didn't put in place any structures at all for ourselves to play within and so it really just floundered. We pretty much had no idea what we were doing.
So we felt pretty crappy sitting down after that to watch everybody else present. But there were some other shockers, but also a couple of really good pieces and I learnt a lot from watching both failure and success. It seems that one of the basic principles, that I'm coming to see more and more, is just to GO FAR with whatever you do and don't hold back, no matter how bad or stupid you think it could be: "You have to be courageous to have such bad taste, but it is beautiful so we love you." There's nothing worse to watch than a half-assed and apologetic attempt. Also, the Bouffon must clearly be mocking something. If you are just on stage having a good time being nasty and vulgar and outrageous it can still be fun for an audience, but it isn't Bouffon. Bouffon must be intelligent, it must have a clear target, it must have an agenda. There were several groups today who were very entertaining but didn't really say anything or mock anything in particular.
There was only one group today who I would say were really excellent, and they got a massive round of applause from everyone, including Philippe. It was two guys who had this really well-rehearsed scene between God and Adam, where God was a sort of sexual-deviant-transvestite-priest and Adam was his slightly retarded alter boy assistant. Describing it here doesn't do it justice so I'm not going to bother with it too much. They were just a perfect example of going as far as you can (and being as disgusting as possible), picking a clear target, and having an enormous amount of fun doing it. You just watched it and were like "That's it! It's so obvious! How do I do that?" The imagination they showed in dreaming around the text and not being confined by it but using it to springboard onto bigger and better things was incredible. I suppose working with text in Bouffon should be almost completely unlike working with any other text, where you generally take maybe 90% of your clues from what is written for you. What this group showed today (and a couple of other groups, to a lesser extent) is that you use the text to say what you want to say and to have fun in any way that you want to have fun. Which is pretty cool. But is also something I do not know how to do...
At the end of class someone asked a question about whether some of the pieces performed today really fit into the form of "Bouffon". Sure they were funny, but were they really "Bouffon" in the sense we're aiming for? I'd been thinking about similar things. Philippe answered by letting us in on a 'secret':
"It is possible to not do the exercise I set and to still be good. You may not do what I tell you to do and still be good. To offer, to find freedom and discover; this is good. Bouffon has its own rules, like every other form, but you can completely ignore them and still discover something good. When I see this, then I am too happy watching something good to care whether it is Bouffon or Clown or Shakespeare or whatever. I want to watch what is good. I don't give a shit if you follow my rules, I give a shit if you discover something. I like you better than I like what I teach."
So overall it was a hard day, but a good day. And even the pain of absolute failure is not so bad in this place, it's relatively easy to laugh it off and soldier on which is nice. And we learnt some valuable lessons from today, so next week we've resolved to work about 1000 times harder on our Auto Cours and to come back and offer something hilarious and well-rehearsed full of vulgar and nasty, yet specifically-targeted and biting, parody all while having an outrageously good time. Sounds easy enough, right?
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