Day Twelve

Another somewhat confusing and difficult class with Philippe today, as we more or less continued the work from yesterday. While some things got a bit clearer through the work we did and through Philippe’s explanations, there was still a lot of confusion for me about the purpose of the exercise. It was also the second day in a row where I wasn’t able to get up and be worked (I did try today) and I found that a bit frustrating too.

We all got into our costumes before Philippe arrived today – I was ready and waiting in my homeless guy ensemble that I had pulled together from the stuff I had at home (didn’t actually look too bad I thought). Once we began class, Philippe asked to have a group of all the ‘poot’ (his word for prostitute – is it actually French? I don’t know) up on stage together. So that straight away meant I couldn’t go up. Annoying. So there were a group of about seven or eight prostitutes up on stage ready to be worked. And, out of a 135-minute class, we spent the next 115 odd minutes working slowly (sometimes painfully so, I thought) through this group one by one.

One of the clarifications Philippe made early on for us was about what exactly this exercise was, since we didn’t seem to be actively trying to mock anything and nor were we playing a ‘bastard’. He explained to us that this was the ‘neutral Bouffon’, where we try to get the actor to find the beauty of the Bouffon without any of the mocking. We as the audience have to love you as the Bouffon when you are not acting the bastard yet, and when you do mock the bastard you don't lose the Bouffon and we must still see you and your beauty. Still kind of getting my head around that. Another key clarification he made was that you should never be playing the ugliness of the Bouffon or how disgusting the Bouffon is, we always want to see the beauty: "If you say to me 'I am like this because my character is like this' I will kill you. You are killed. Forever."

So we saw a bunch of prostitutes trying in various ways to be 'beautiful', without much success. A couple of times someone would find something, but it didn't seem to me to really be in the realm of Bouffon - it was much more still and less funny and crazy than Bouffon. but I guess that ties in with Philippe's whole ethos of discovery and beauty over rules and form: as long as the actor is discovering something beautiful in their work then he doesn't really care if it follows his rules or not. One guy (playing a prostitute) managed to find something that was beautiful and much more in the realm of Bouffon. It was funny, it was charming, and it was mildly disturbing and we all really liked it. The only thing is I don't know why Philippe was able to guide him to this place and not anyone else, or even what this place is and how we are supposed to know how to find it for ourselves. Very confusing.

A couple of good quotes from today:

"I don't care what you do. You do whatever you want, only you must be fantastically beautiful."

"You did just what you did yesterday. It was a bit frozen food."

"If you play too much you are ugly. If you play exactly what we need in order to dream around you, you are beautiful."

"First we love your spirit. When we love you, it is because we love your spirit."

When this first group were finally done, we had a chance to have others get up for the last 15 minutes of class. About eight of us got up to work, but because of the limited time only about three people actually got to go (I wasn't one of them). Even if I had gotten a chance to work though I have no idea what I would have done. I just didn't have any clue about how to approach the exercise or what part of myself or what quality I should be trying to offer. Maybe that would've been a good thing though, maybe from this place I would've been able to find something beautiful. Who knows. Hopefully I'll get a chance to find out tomorrow.

Only three days left now - and really only one more class with Philippe, with his Garage Day on Thursday and the Auto Cours on Friday. Better get the most out of tomorrow, and hopefully crack this whole Bouffon thing.