So long and thanks for all the fish

It's our last day of school today. The fact that I'm sitting here at 6 o'clock writing this and that I've already been awake for some time shows a probable case of excess of alcohol last night more than anything else. But I think I was woken up by thoughts and feelings about all of this ending as well.

It has been two weeks of almost constant work. Days of 9am-9pm or 9am-10pm. My commande itself didn't go that well and I'm finding it hard to let go of and come to terms with. I ended up making a huge change to it on Friday night and re-working it over the weekend. I had been directing rather than being in it and decided to be in it because I wasn't able to get my (brilliant) actress to do what I wanted her to. (It was her suggestion). I worked much faster from the inside. Great lesson. Despite what everyone has said to me my entire life I am obviously not a director.

I regret extremely that I didn't ask to go on Thursday instead of Monday as it clearly wasn't ready and there were others that were. Regrets, regrets. The teachers said that it was good what there was but they wanted more. It was too short. I think they were being overly nice. . I didn't play it very well due to exhaustion and it not being ready. When you have rehearsed enough a part settles into your body. It wasn't in my body.

I was very lucky though to be cast in others people's work, and have had some nice comments on my playing in theirs. It was a real pleasure to enter into people's different worlds.

The profs have been very careful in their feedback all week, trying to right wrongs and send us off on a good note. I haven't entirely believed some of their feedback. I was watching the profs faces as they watched one of the performances and was able to see their reaction to some of the pieces and then heard a rather altered version in the feedback afterwards, above all yesterday when they were clearly trying to send us off on a good note. After such frank feedback for two years it rang a bit false.

I am so sad to leave. It has been the best two years of my life. I am scared and hopeful and excited and regretful and most of all so, so glad that I have had this amazing experience. I don't know if it's changed my life, though I suspect it will have done. I think it's changed me and changed me more than I yet realise. I feel I have two years of happiness in the bank and that I am well set up with a stock of good feelings for what it to come. I am clear about what I want for myself for the future.

When I arrived at Lecoq I was anything but clear. I had fallen out of love with theatre and with acting. I didn't believe in it any more and it was like loosing my religion. Again. I have been in love with theatre ever since 'Bandycoot'(early puppet show at Croydon library - the crocodile ate the cake), and decided to be an actress after reading my first full length book 'Mr Galliano's Circus' at about five.

I had a bit of a bumpy time towards the end of first year and retrospectively I think I was making the decision whether to stay as a performer or not. And how that could be possible. My amazingly talented friend A**, clear queen of the class, had a visit from her mother. She quoted an agent friend of hers who says 'I've never met a happy actress'. It's a bitter profession and more so for women. There are more actresses and fewer parts and the parts that there are are less diverse and more stereotyped - mother, hag, whore. I am out to prove him wrong. I think Lecoq has given me the tools to be a happy actress. I think I can.

Commandes spelt with an e

Even though it's amazingly knackering there's something much simpler and less stressful, certainly than the soiree and than autocours overall. I'm involved in nine commandes altogether, though with two of them my presence is so fleeting it hardly counts, and then I'm not acutally in my own, but there's still lots of work on that. so about seven really.

With autocours you get given your theme and then you all fight about interpretation and who has the best idea for a week. With the commandes someone comes and very flatteringly asks you, no chooses you, to be in their thing and then you turn up and they tell you what they want to do. Of course it depends a little on whether you agree with what the person is doing. If you think what they're doing is shit it could be rather depressing. Fortunately I rather like all the ones I'm doing, though I'm sure the teachers won't agree.

There's also something completely charming about entering into people's worlds, into their heads. We are all peddling our own brands of madness.

Make Poverty History

Can we? Let's try eh?

Sign below petition to actually try and do something instead of just being depressed about how bad it all is....

www.oct17.org

World Day to Overcome Extreme Poverty
17 October 2007

- I am in solidarity with all those who are fighting throughout the world to eliminate extreme poverty.

- I want to contribute to promoting respect for the dignity of all people, and their effective access to human rights.

- I want to join efforts to enable those living in extreme poverty and exclusion to participate fully in their societies, including the commemoration of October 17th, International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

- I ask all members of civil society, local and national authorities, and the United Nations to:

* Consider those in extreme poverty as the first to take action in the fight against poverty;
* Ensure that people living in poverty fully participate in the development, implementation and evaluation of policies and programmes that concern them and that are inspired by a commitment to a world without poverty - a world where the rights to family life, decent work, social, cultural and political participation are respected;
* Support events organized each October 17th to ensure that the participation of people with direct experience of poverty be at the heart of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.
* Participate in an ongoing, long-term dialogue with people who, in refusing to accept extreme poverty, are building peace.

19813 Signatories

Three weeks to go

We had our last class with Jos today which I found very sad and cried at the end like a stupid idiot.
The tension levels are extremely high in the class. We wasted most of autocours today with a long and completely unecessary meeting, or almost unecessary meeting where everyone had to say something about something.
I think we were all trying to avoid getting down to work and also to try and manage or organise our unconcious or concious fear, tension etc. Of course the best way to counter these is in doing. Start something even if it's the wrong thing.
I did an impro with N** and C***** who are going to play for me. I've made the luxurious decision to sit out and not be in my thing, though of course it's possible I may completely change my mind.
I think we'll muddle through.
More than anything I am screaming with sadness, with dread about leaving. I feel as though I'll never work again. Never be happy again. Very melodramatic. Again the best way to cope with this is to live it and hope.
It's probably partly the post soiree/after xmas/nothing nice will ever happen again amplified and with applied command pressure.
Jos said we're not teacher-student any more, we're colleagues which is much better. I think I disagree because from now on I won't get to work with him any more.
This happy, happy time of my life is coming to an end. At least I had it. At least it happened.

Commands

(Mood music is tiny fragments of Beth Gibbons on her site. Fantastic new album which I recommend).

We were given rather distant, under whelming feedback on the soiree. I found it a bit sad. I thought we'd done a really good job and people were saying it was one of the better soirees they'd seen. We certainly didn't get that impression from the teachers. They said we seemed tenser than we had done the night before and were slightly off timing or rhythm as a result. That certainly was true of one of my pieces, but not of the other which went much better and much further in my performance than it ever had before. I'd always felt that that was the way to go, and knew there was more play there but the people I was playing with disagreed, or one of them. Anyhow I was a bit sad that they couldn't have been a bit more cheerful about our last soiree. Though I suppose not surprising that they weren't.

Then we were given our envelopes with our names printed on the outside and inside on a card with the school's logo our names and beneath our title, the final provocation. Jos made a point of saying that they were new titles and that they had been chosen randomly so not to try and read any great psychological depth.

Just to explain to the uniniated the commands are the final 'provocation' given by the school. We're given titles and then have three weeks to work on a present them entirely independently of the teachers. When we perform them for the public it's the first time they see them.

The general consensus of opinion is that they haven't been chosen randomly. They do seem to suit people's talents and style inclinations very specifically. I LOVE mine as a title, but haven't got any specific ideas of where to go.

I'm attacking it in a roundabout way. I'm going to do some sketching and go to galleries tomorrow and see what it throws up.

I think simplicity is key. Not trying to overreach myself. After all we only have between 2-7 minutes. Paola warned us that people had been stopped in the past.

We have a last lesson with each of the profs this week and then that's it. How can it be this week? The 20 movement are starting... hum. I really want to go and watch some of them, to see them with a year's distance.

I've kept notes every day about what we've done here. I read all last years over the summer and I think I'm going to try and read the whole lot of them tomorrow, just to refresh myself on all the width and possibilities we've been exposed to.

It's really important to me that I talk about a big something. Relationships, love, death. Perhaps obvious, but all the same.

Three weeks left. It's so sad I can't begin to confront it. I don't want to leave Paris. I suppose in theory I don't have to, but reality feels like I must. The idea of going back to London, skint, and living with my parents and having to pay out £100's of pounds to go to weddings and hen nights and visit all the new babies that are being produced... ahh I'm getting maudlin. Excuse me please. Definitely time for bed I think.

Party!!!