lecoqblog

Fin

2009-09-20T14:46:00.003+01:00

I'm up in Scotland directing students in street theatre again and loving it again. As I'm out of what is now my usual Sunday routine with my boyfriend I have time for pootling and old pursuits and found myself reading through my blog and enjoying happy memories from Lecoq.

This year street theatre involves the students as old style convicts chained up in groups of three. We have four sets of three and then four guards chasing them and all the obvious amusing antics that follow. If you're in the Dundee area this week they'll be performing outside Borders on city quay at 11, 12, 1 and 2. I think it could be quite good. Cautiously confident and all that.

I directed a different lot of students this summer returning to my pre-Lecoq routes and doing a Shakespeare - All's Well That Ends Well, which was much more fun than I was expecting. In fact since leaving Lecoq I've done an awful lot more acting than directing, though as avid readers of this blog (ha ha) will know that is largely by choice.

I am now turning a corner and going off in another direction so I think it's time to end writing this and perhaps to start another blog on another subject. Reading back over it I am reminded how much pleasure it gave me to write and it is I think a good discipline.

Anyhow, if anyone does end up reading this I expect that they will be people googling for info on Lecoq, perhaps before applying to go. If that is you and you're wondering whether or not it's a good idea I have this to say. Go. It was the best two years of my life.

Theatre du Soleil: Stage de Fevrier 2009

2009-02-15T20:08:00.002Z

So for someone who is supposed to be growing up and getting a sensible job it looks suspiciously like I am still smitten with the bug. But perhaps the least said eh... Suffice to say that I received a letter from the Theatre du Soleil on Xmas eve when I got back from a gorgeous few days in the countryside near Leeds. It invited me to come and interview/audition for a two week stage in February. I had a little while of wondering, but very quickly knew that it was something that I would never forgive myself if I didn't go for.

Going for it involved coming to Paris twice, firstly for an interview and then again for an audition and very happily I was excepted and am in the middle of the stage.

Though perhaps masterclass would be a better description. It is immense. There are 420 people altogether, 110+ of whom are auditors and only allowed to watch and the other 300 like me. I think about 1000 people applied. The last of these stages was six years ago, and of course it is an extraordinary company.

When I describe it to my boyfriend he says it sounds like a cult, and it does sometimes feel rather like a cult. There are lots of very strict rules, about what you wear (no green - bad luck), turning up on time, not walking on the stage (you have to go around it). Most of them are common sense. But there's a fierce austerity about how they are enforced. Each day a list goes up for people to volunteer themselves to help clean up. I did the toilets on the first day to get it out of the way and made friends with the lovely P***.

For some reason I am finding it completely exhausting. Probably because it largely entails sitting on a hard bench for hours on end listening to french. Or concentrating on what's going on on stage. Every day last week I was exhausted and couldn't wait to fall into bed.

I think back fondly to my class of 33 at Lecoq and am amused by how we grumbled about it being too big. And if the teachers at Lecoq could be harsh they were kindergarden compared to Madame Mnouchkine. Whoa. There's no limit to the length of her tongue, though she tends to be searingly accurate. And it's not only she who is amazing, but her company of actors, especially the amazing Lucio who is gobsmackingly lithe and with an endlessly brilliant imagination.

We started on Monday by coming up with ideas for an improvisation based on the terror of the stage. She worked with different groups. Mine she hated and stopped very quickly, scolded sharply and sent us back to the benches. Then we moved onto chorus work to music led by the choreyfee, almost always a member of the company, though occasionally someone from the stagieres with vareying success. She was very insistent that it shouldn't be dance. It was a sort of rhythmic improvisation which could (and did) go off onto all sorts of wild paths and ended up with more than one chorus on stage. Everyone had a go at doing that, so it took about 3 days to do.

We ended with the theme - dictators - to be used in it's widest possible sense. We got into groups again and came up with an idea to improvise. It needs the scenario, the people and their etat, the state they're in.

I am finding it amazing and agonizing, frustrating, fantastic and above all exhausting. I am scared and excited about the coming week.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see

2008-10-09T21:34:00.003+01:00

It's been a strange week. The financial world is crashing. How many people are worrying about savings? Lives feel destroyed. The world is turned on it's head.

And I have been grouchy all week about my own petty misfortunes. Misfortune is really too strong a word. I'm temping in a job on reception for £8.50 an hour. Shit money. There are times when it's quite busy and fun and times when it's completely quiet. In the times it's quiet on the best kind of reception job you're allowed to read a book. Those are the very best, but usually it's tacitly understood that it's ok to browse the internet. For me at the moment that would mean flat hunting, updating my CV and working on job applications. In this job, pettily you're not allowed to. I've asked for work to do, but there isn't any.

I'm finding strategies, trying to teach myself to use excel and powerpoint and doing bits of writing under the phone message pad, but it's soul destroying.

This evening I saw a room in a houseshare in Archway which I really should have taken because it's a great deal financially, but the idea of going back to that kind of grotty student living is so depressing after my beautiful studio in Paris.

In my parents kitchen this evening the phone rang. My dad answered. Someone called Abdul on the phone wanting to speak to my mum who was lying, hairless from the chemo (breast cancer) on the sofa. 'Oh you speak to him, I can't' she tells my dad who hates speaking to anyone on the phone, even his own brothers.

So I took the phone, ready to get rid of the intruder to say no to whatever he wanted politely, but firmly.

Adbul said that my mum had donated money a couple of years ago to his charity which supported Iranian people who had been tortured. Could he speak to her? I told him no, that she was ill at the moment and we were looking after her. Oh dear, he said, nothing serious I hope. Cancer I said, flinging the word like a weapon at him.

We'll pray for her, he said. Tell her that we'll all pray for her. And you are a good daughter to be looking after her.

All I had heard was a foreign name. A money chasing call breaking into our cosy kitchen. After I put the phone down I realise what I had heard was another person who had probably been through things I cannot possibly imagine, asking for money for people which I take for granted.

I have been complaining all week because I'm not earning as much money as I feel I should, because the rooms I'm looking at aren't as large or as nice as I feel I deserve. What do I really deserve? What does he, or the people on whose behalf he was calling really deserve.

A window of answers seemed to open up to me, for a brief moment. I hope I can hold onto it. How lucky I am, warm, safe, full, surrounded by love and endless possibility.

When I heard my mum had cancer I decided it was time to grow up and stop behaving like a teenager. Time to put childish dreams aside and earn my own living, get a proper job. Which is what has lead me to disgruntled temping and job applications.

I don't know quite where I'm going at the moment. I really hope to be able to find something I can believe in. But I hope I can keep my mind open, or open it further than it seems to be at the moment, and to count my blessing here and now and as they are.

(By the way, the quote is Roethke.)

The Glebe

2008-03-09T22:48:00.002Z

Before I went to Lecoq I was teaching drama regularly at a school where the students have a range of reasons for not being in the mainstream school system. Part of my reason in going to study at Lecoq was to learn new ideas and exercises to put into practice with these children and teenagers. While there, though having a brilliant time myself, I did wonder whether the stuff we were doing would be far too complicated to ever be of any use to them and in our teaching.
So I was delighted last week to really see what I learned in France being put into practice teaching autistic children King Lear. We design our games and sections of text very carefully, of course. We talked a lot about how we would present Gloucester having his eyes gouged out. Not exactly the thing to show them or have them acting out. In the end we used the chorus in reaction idea. We had the scene 'happening' behind a screen and the kids watched and reacted to it. We started off with reacting to something happening behind the screen, but they could choose whatever they wanted and the others had to guess what it was, so for example seeing a puppy and Harry, brilliantly, seeing a girl naked in the shower.
With a different,non autistic group I did the 'emotional chairs' exercise that we did at the end of the first year with Paola. Very structured, works really nicely. And countless other of the things I learned, both specifically and more generally are finding their way from the 10eme to West Wickham near Croydon. As some of the students would say, 'nice'.

Arts Council Cuts and actors demos

2008-02-03T13:17:00.000Z

The Arts Council sent out letters shortly before Christmas announcing large and sometimes even complete cuts to about 187 arts organisations including a complete cut for the newly refurbished Exeter Northcott, the Bush, The Orange Tree, The scarborough Student Drama Festival, The London Bubble, Eastern Angles, Compass, The Drill Hall, Queer Up North... the list goes on endlessly. These are just the names I know and that spring to mind.

There was unusual and perhaps unprecidented uproar in the arts community. At a meeting organised by Equity (the actors union) at the Young Vic Theatre with Peter Hewitt, then head of the Arts Council the great and the good got up and made angry speeches and the meeting ended in a vote of no confidence in the arts council.

I wasn't able to go to that meeting, but did attend a masked demonstration about how the cuts had been implemented, so suddenly, sometimes relying on incorrect information, without enough time to appeal and without the reason for the cuts being openly available to the organisations that had been cut.

The idea of this demo was that we would all stand, stock-still and slient for 15 minutes to protest. Of course actors being actors there was quite of lot of standing still and then noticing someone they knew, whipping off the mask and cries of 'hello darling!' and moving around the crowd to find people you knew and have a chat.

The final result is that some places have been reprieved including the bush, the orange tree, and the Northcott and others have been given a year's grace- eastern angles,the student drama festival (which I went to as a student many years ago and thought was fantastic).

Anyway there we are. I am asking lots of questions about the place for arts in our society. I so love theatre, but I worry about it too. Is it more fun for us or audiences, sometimes I think, sometimes.

Here are some pictures from the demo....

All you need is love

2008-01-10T21:47:00.000Z

I am quite fascinated by Sarkozy and Carla Bruni. He seemed like such a hard nut and first we had him crying when his wife left him and trying to woo her back like a big girls blouse and now he is romancing the beautiful, talented, intelligent Bruni. They are engaged, no less.

What is his secret? Evidently not charm or looks. He certainly didn't deal with the riots in 2005 very charmingly. How attractive power obviously is. All I need to do is become Prime Minister and the world and Johnny Depp will be at my feet. Though look how badly that worked for Ségolène Royal. And I suspect Hilary Clinton won't fair much better. And then of course the car crash Thatcher.

Poor Ségolène was damned if she did and damned if she didn't. She couldn't not be pretty and feminine, (I would suggest) in France and be taken seriously, and she couldn't be pretty and feminine without the jibes about her policies lacking seriousness.

Most of the French people I've talked to even if it was a little shamefacedly didn't think she could match up to the job and had a lot of faith in what Sarkozy the sledgehammer would come up with. I wonder if that faith is now shaken in the light of all his loveidoveiness.

On the other hand, I can never see people in love without feeling a mixture of jealousy and gladness. Long live love, that's what I say, however it comes.

Devoted and Disgruntled 3: What are you doing about theatre?

2008-01-06T23:45:00.000Z

I've just spent the most fantastic weekend I've had in ages. I feel more alive and invigorated and happy than I have done in some time.

This weekend has been the third annual Devoted and Disgruntled meeting. It's an open meeting for anyone who wants to come and talk about theatre, what they like, hate are frustrated by, what to change, what to keep the same.

It works on an open something or other plan. Anyone is able to propose a topic to discuss. Whoever wants to turns up to discuss it. The slots are set at an hour and a half but there is no compunction for them to last that long. They last as long as they last. They can finish early or continue on late. People can get up and leave at any point they want to, and did and without any feeling that it was somehow a bad thing to do.

It was completely democratic and egalitarian, largely because at no point did anyone have to stand up and say who they were, where they worked or what they'd done, though people could if they wanted too. It was strange to suddenly realise that you were sitting next to and discuss with a well known theatre critic, the head of theatre at the arts council or someone who ran a rep theatre. But that didn't matter, because everyone's opnion was equally valid.

I went in feeling a bit low. I want to make theatre, but I also want to be able to afford to live independently and go on holiday and at the moment I can't see how that is possible. I don't have any direct answers to how I'm going to do that, but somehow it matters less and I'm not quite sure why.

And what was so energising was all the passion in the room, people who love hugely varying theatre, except Lee who says he doesn't. I am going to start compiling a list of suggestions for him.

Taking stock

2008-01-01T22:53:00.000Z

So, another new year and it's taking stock time. Looking back over the what was and towards the what will be, or the hopes of what will be.

For the first time ever I was brave enough to stay in and see the new year in alone and am delighted to say that it was just as peaceful and centre-ing as one could wish. (And lovely and cheap too.)

I'm trying to write a play, which is the thing I like best that I'm attempting to do at the moment, but I don't want to jinx it by saying too much about it. My biggest aim with it is to finish it. To write it all the way through without too much self-censorship.

I went and saw 'Chatroom/Citizenship' at the RNT this evening as inspiration, and was quite inspired. This (trying to write) makes me want to go and see and read as many plays as I can get my hands on.

The year had quite a nice finish to it. I was doing a project at the Globe with some very nice people. So good on two counts. The people and the place.

And the place is extraordinary. You may have heard people waffle about how inspiring it is. Everything you've heard is true. It is a real work of art, wooden ('this wooden O'), open to the elements, brightly painted. I was lucky enough to be in the group working the main stage and I LOVED it. Unfortunately it's made me want to work at the Globe. Unfortunate because I try not to desire things I don't think can happen. Ah Shakespeare, ah the globe, ah well.

Anyhow I had a good time and here are some photos.

Lots of plans and schemes for the new year - a scratch at BAC, a play at the CPT in April, bits and pieces of teaching etc etc. I want a bit more shape to it all, direction.

To infinity and beyond!

2007-11-07T22:31:00.000Z

Not wanting to give the impression that my body is almost entirely falling apart, but tonight I went and had an MRI scan to try and get to the bottom of the wierd symphony of snap, crackle and pop that has been dancing inside my ears for nearly a year and a half now. It is to say the very least, amazingly irritating.

I had rather hoped when I was diagnosed with the thyroid thing that they would be linked and the ear popping would magically stop with the tiredness, depression and mad weight gain. No such luck. So off I went to St Helier Hosptial for my MRI scan this evening, again with an amazement and awareness of how lucky I am to live in a country where, when there is something wrong with me, I go to the doctors and am sent for expensive scans and given medicine for free.

I was rather excited by the whole prospect. It is now clear to me that I've watched far too many episodes of House. I am strangely addicted to it. That and Location, Location, Location. The housing one is more understandable - the huge desire to have a place of my own. But House is rather formulaic, though Hugh Laurie is very funny.

Anyway, so there I was in my very own medical drama, happily without Dr House, and even more happily without one of those ugly medical gowns that open at the back to show the world your naked bottom. I was allowed to stay in my tracksuit bottoms and jumper.

I lay down on a long pull out shelf/plank and my head was wedged still and they put ear plugs in my ears and told me it would take about 10 minutes and be very noisy and to do my best not to move. No problem.

The tray slid in, rather like the contraptions they keep dead bodies on in a morgue. I was in a spacey white cylinder, unable to move, with a pump in my hand, like old fashioned photographers have for taking the photo, to press if I started to panic. Above me there was a little mirror so I could see out if I wanted, but I decided to keep my eyes shut.

The scan itself was like a practical joke. It sounded like a very contemporary piece of music. A mixture of african drum beats and sirens. Very strange. I wouldn't be surprised to turn up at the Sadlers Wells and see Rambert doing a dance piece to something similar.

It went on for 10 minutes in bursts of three or one and then that was that and I went home on my bike. That machine could see inside my head. Isn't that amazing? Those odd sounds were it looking inside my head to try and find out what is making the popping... There's nought as strange as folk, or at least, nought as strange as what folk have made for other folk.

Hypothyroidism

2007-11-01T23:51:00.000Z

I met up for coffee today with a very old, very dear friend and mentioned that another old and dear friend had said that she'd been reading the blog and was worried about me due to my posts. She said that she had been too. So just in case there are friends out there actually reading this and worried about my maudlin don't be, there is an explanation.

I was at a very low ebb this summer, as it seems was apparent. Indeed so much so that I actually went to the doctor because I was getting a bit worried about myself. She did a blood test and discovered that I have hypothyroidism. This sounds very flash and rather scary, but actually is quite straight forward. It means that for some strange reason my body doesn't produce enough thyroxine.

The Internet superhighway tells me that:-

"Hypothyroidism is a condition in which the body lacks sufficient thyroid hormone. Since the main purpose of thyroid hormone is to "run the body's metabolism", it is understandable that people with this condition will have symptoms associated with a slow metabolism. Over five million Americans have this common medical condition. In fact, as many as ten percent of women may have some degree of thyroid hormone deficiency. Hypothyroidism is more common than you would believe...and, millions of people are currently hypothyroid and don't know it!

Symptoms:

Fatigue
Weakness
Weight gain or increased difficulty losing weight
Coarse, dry hair
Dry, rough pale skin
Hair loss
Cold intolerance (can't tolerate the cold like those around you)
Muscle cramps and frequent muscle aches
Constipation
Depression
Irritability
Memory loss
Abnormal menstrual cycles
Decreased libido"

I am tick box on quite a few of these - depression, exhaustion, difficulty loosing weight, feeling the cold etc. but the fantastic thing is that all you need to do is take a pill (each day forever) and then you feel fine.

And I do feel so fine. Amazingly well. It's extraordinary to feel my vitality returning, my energy, my delight in life. And most of all mentally. I had got so worried about how difficult I found it to focus and concentrate. I felt like I was swimming through lead both mentally and physically. And now I don't. It's as though my life has been given back to me.

It makes me think of all the people who suffer from this, or something much worse and aren't able to just go to the doctors and be given a pill and have to suffer on, unknowing.

I am still questioning a lot. About what I want to do with my life, what the right path is. I don't want to just throw it away. I want to be of use to the world. I believe in theatre, but perhaps not for a narrow middle class audience. But what then? It means huge changes and I'm not quite sure what they should be and feel a little scared at the prospect, but excited too. And now I'm buzzing with 75mg I feel capable of almost anything. And I'm not even up to 100mg yet... ahh, drugs. How I love them.

Thank you for the kind thoughts.
xx

The northern line on a monday night, 11pm

2007-10-16T00:41:00.000+01:00

The tube home is a dizziness of reality. Glissens of conversations, sliplights into the cracks of other peoples eyes. The world is loosened by alcohol. Images slip and glide. Words are drowned by the rumble of the tunnel and tracks and bouts emerge into clarity and disappear again with a squeal and a screech.

My heart is breaking slowly again. Dissolving into the pain of impossibility. Stammers of hope waken it, stir it, and bam-bam-you're-dead-fifty-bullets-in-your-head.

stops my breath. Sits high in my chest. central. stolid lump of un-com-for-table (spell out each crickcrack)............ nothing. All the things I don't allow myself to admit.

The boy along from me is tapping and tilting his head side to side to a rhythm I can't hear. His trainers shine bright white in my peripheral view.
This station is borough. This train terminates at Morden.
How nice.

I sit. I focus on my book. The lump dissolves and hardens again. I try to swallow it away, but it's grasping at my throat, pulling at the bottom of my tongue.

People have left the debris of their day lent up against the windows. A Tesco's bag knotted at the collar, a stately coke can sitting shiny behind the seats.

Some people close their eyes, or rest their heads in their hands. Two girls are turned in towards each other, still animated despite the night.

The tube stops. Conversations come into clarity, soften as their speakers see they're no longer guarded by the journey.

'...He's such a perve n'all...'

The next station is Kennington.

'...If you cut your hair... past your route...'

Change here for northbound services via Charing Cross.

Looking for Great Travel Insurance. Insure and Go!

People stare morosely at the advertising opposite them.

This train terminates at Morden.

Silence. The electric breath of the lights.

....'We thought we were going to celebrate on the Thursday, like we assumed... I'm not going dancing, no way...

From over the moon to the honeymoon.

...terminates at... terminates....

'I didn't want to be somebody who stood by and did nothing'.
Helen, Volunteer Police Officer.

Annual Multi-trip £30. Winter Sports £17. Single trip £6. Back packing £11. Kids go for free.

'...she came home wild...'

! In an emergency use the passenger alarm to alert the driver. It is safer to stay in the train than attempting to get off. Follow instructions from staff or emergency services.
DO NOT TAKE ANY RISKS.

I do what I am told Each breath is a sherbet pain A taut canvas across my chest.

Because
Iyouhe

I am all unfinished cups of tea and watchings

Being Alive

2007-10-03T22:20:00.000+01:00

I met up for a cup of tea at the festival hall this evening with my friend A*** and managed to chase the black dog away further than he's been in a while. He's been at my heels a great deal recently.

We were talking about the project we're both involved with that she has already put a huge amount of work into, ideas for and about it and plays we had seen. It was one of those lovely evenings that seems as though the flow of conversation can only have lasted 30 minutes, when actually it's lasted three hours, where words cram one against another with over eager thoughts. It makes it all seem worth it. All the black.

My fears come from the very far ahead future. A vision of myself in the future. How not to be a burden. Responsibility. How long do the risks last for? Sensible. Ahem says the little girl next door. Ahem. Time to be proper. Time to take stock.

Or not.

"The message we are getting from Rangoon is 'Please help us'....

2007-10-03T21:50:00.000+01:00

I plan to be there. Please join me.

MARCH FOR BURMA

JOIN THE UK¹S BIGGEST EVER DEMONSTRATION IN SUPPORT OF THE PEOPLE OF BURMA.

UN SECURITY COUNCIL MUST ACT!

No-one knows the true scale of the Burmese junta¹s brutal crackdown on Monks
and Burmese democracy activists. Troops fired directly into protesting
crowds, using automatic weapons on at least one occasion.

THOUSANDS HAVE BEEN ARRESTED

HUNDREDS MAY HAVE BEEN KILLED

PRISONERS FACE BRUTAL TORTURE

The message we are getting from Rangoon is: ³PLEASE HELP US.²

JOIN THE MARCH SUPPORT THE PEOPLE OF BURMA

Assemble 11am at Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1P 4RG, nearest tube Pimlico, for
March and rally at Trafalgar Sq, 12.45pm.

My directorial debut!

2007-09-25T21:52:00.000+01:00

Separated at birth? 2

2007-09-25T21:51:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the world

2007-09-25T21:15:00.000+01:00

Can I introduce you to my beautiful new niece? ... isn't she peachy? Or perhaps I should say Rosey or, to be more precise, Rosa.

I've just got back from a fantastic three weeks directing a street theatre project with students in Dundee. They were fantastic and so was the result. It was a bit like blissful autocours where when I said my opinion it had hugely more weight than everyone else's and I would always get my way, though I like to think that I was a diplomatic tyrant.

One of the students said 'did you always want to be a teacher?' which gave me a very strange moment. I'm so used to that question with 'actor' on the end.

Ch-ch-ch Changes...

2007-08-26T22:27:00.000+01:00

Back in England and the main changes seem to be

1. That people have started drinking cider with ice in it, apparently a skillful marketing campagin to mask the sharp taste of a badly selling brand.

And

2. All teenagers are wearing tight black skinny jeans.

Other than that things are pretty much the same. Even the smoking ban feels as though it's been here forever. People loll around outside pubs and restaurants provoking new vocabulary- smirking or slirting or something like that. Neither sounds very nice. It's taking up smoking so that you can go and flirt outside. How stupid can you get?

I went up to the Edinburgh festival with L*****, who was like an arts critic on speed. We would go our separate ways and meet up later in the day. In the meantime she would have seen eight different shows at locations all over Edinburgh while I had been drinking tea with my friend Bates. I used to do the mad rushing around and then about seven years ago I just stopped.

It was really good to be there though. I did see some interesting theatre, and Jos was there with his show and we said hello afterwards. It was lovely to see him. I met up with lots of old friends and for the first time since I got back to Britain I started to feel really here. I started to settle back in and see a bit of a future.

Back to telephone hell (my current employment!) the week after I sat there wondering why I spent two years having lavish fun in Paris instead of doing a sensible PGCE to earn me money.

My overall pace has definitely slowed down during my time in France. I know we all moaned about how tiring and what hard work it was, but basically, when the chips are down we were only really working in the afternoons. And 'work' in this case being defined as rolling around on the floor in various different formats.

Now I am back to real life and in my hellish skintness delighted to get a job telephoning GP's to try and get them to do telephone surveys. Ugh! I hate myself. Better though, I'm about to go and do some teaching in Scotland next week,(site specific, street and physical theatre) still needs preparing, oops. Then later in November another project starts and meanwhile my old friend Matt and I have a scheme boiling away.

All of this means work now, not drifting around watching 'My so called life' - boxset heaven.

Anyway. There you go. That's me for now.

Now

2007-07-21T22:56:00.000+01:00

I am floating rudderless at the moment. Back in my parents house again, like a teenager again. Unsure of the future and bit unsure about what happened there in Paris for the past two years.

We are all facebooking each other blurrily. Everyone seems disorientated. I am distracting myself with other nonsense. I can't decide whether or not to borrow, beg and steal the money to go to Vancouver for one of my oldest friends weddings. I can just about get my hands on the cash, but it would leave me without any financial buffer, necessary in London. I do think it is just an avoidance of the bigger what-are-you-going-to-do-with-your-life issues.

On the other hand good things can come out of malable moments in your life, before you stick into your own assumptions and expectations for yourself, none of which are necessarily true.

The Aftermath

2007-07-03T21:36:00.000+01:00

I had decided not to keep going with this after it all ended. But like so many good resolutions I make I can't help but break it a little.

I missed out on a lot of the immediate partying and farewells. I went back to London for a week to see my gorgeous nephew and his equally delightful parents over from Chicago on a short visit on their way to Italy and then Russia. He is already more well traveled than I am.

I got back to Paris on Saturday and have been feeling very drifty and floaty ever since. It's strange to be here but not to be here. I am crowded with fears. About the future mainly. Those nameless, voiceless fears that bundle themselves up into spiders and thunderstorms.

Back in rue du Faubourg St Denis to collect the dvd of the commandes I bumped into a group of 3 of the Spanish contingent of my class and then another Brit. All by chance. Mysterious forces... ? Well actually we were all just collecting our dvds.

Here are some photos of when we were all feeling a bit more cheerful before the it's-all-over-ness lethargy set in.

So long and thanks for all the fish

2007-06-22T05:04:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-13T23:19:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-09T00:52:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-04T18:42:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-02T23:45:00.001+01:00

(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!!!

2007-06-01T09:25:00.000+01:00

Hold on tightly, let go lightly

2007-05-25T22:43:00.000+01:00

We have a big problem. It's a problem we've had for about a week now and we've all been putting off, hoping that it'll go away, but of course it hasn't. We had 50 pieces for the soiree and we need to have about 20 maximum.

We showed 19 pieces this evening and told the profs that we had another 20 for Monday. In fact it's another 30. Then we had the third meeting this week where we all talked about it all alot and no one was able to make any decisions.

It is a bit killing to know that we're going to have to get rid of pieces that work, though we all know which pieces work better than others, it's just that we're not admitting it to ourselves.

This hasn't been helped by the teachers who, Jos espcially, have been very 'nice' about all the stuff we've been presenting. Either we have all finally managed to achieve a good level of work, or they want to pick our confidence levels up after the en-gueling we had last week. That would make sense - to finish their teacher-mentor relationship on a good note before we're released alone into the commands.

It also could be the most important lesson we learn, to really truely look at the work that you're doing and see if it's good or not. I thought lots of the commands last year lacked self-rigour. I hope we can all learn from this experience and do better.

Even though it's mad and busy and I'm very tired, I'm really enjoying it. I'm having a nice soiree.

The art of loosing things

2007-05-24T23:45:00.000+01:00

Why is it always when you are at your most busy and stressed that you loose your doorkeys? A question particularly pertinent this evening. Fortunately my friend W has my spare set. Perhaps is was a freudian desire to stay at school all night and keep working on my pieces. They all certainly need it.
I ended up sitting on a bench outside her house for a very long time talking all the soiree maddness over. Everyone has a different brand of stress. So it's very late now, but I need to unwind a little, so I'm listening to 'Mir ist so wunderbar' and I'm going to read some carol ann duffy poems before I go to sleep to make everything happy... and I'm drinking hot chocolate.

Go and see this film immediately now

2007-05-20T23:44:00.001+01:00

You need to go and see this film immediately. It's the best film I've seen in years. It made me cry even though I was reading french subtitles to a german film. Nuff said.

Any dream will do

2007-05-20T10:46:00.001+01:00

There's an interview in the Observer magazine this morning with Andrew Lloyd Webber who had found new, or rather, more fame on two television programmes which I'm happy to say I've missed, being out of the UK. The first, 'How do you solve a problem like Maria', was basically a televised talent competition for young girls, the prize being a contract to play Maria Von Trapp in 'The Sound of Music' at the Palladium. It was an enormous success and has been succeeded by another version of the same, but this time to find a Joseph for Lloyd W's 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat'.

I grew up in the 80's and as a stagestruck child have to admit to knowing most of the music and lyrics to most LW songs. Set me off and I could probably still sing my way through most of Phantom, Joseph, Jesus Christ Superstar etc. Very shameful.

Or maybe less so now as it seems everyone has decided that it's ok to like him again now he's on TV with Graham Norton and giving out jobs in the west end. There was of course lots of kerfuffle with equity, the British actor's union about this, and I think Trevor Nunn refused to direct the first one. (Tragic loss). But actually auditions are already a circus and as LW points out he'd probably have never have met the winner of Maria without this.

What's interesting as well is that it highlights, and is some ways proves, the public suspicions that acting is not a difficult job and that they could do just as well given the chance. And here they are doing just as well for Norton and LW and then getting a nice job in the west end - that was easy, wasn't it!

But there you are. They did and have and so to some respects it is true. There are so many actors and so many talented non actors out there and everyone quite fancies having a go.

So what then do we have to offer that is different and special?

I'm thinking of this especially in relation to our cabaret autocours. Lots of us did cabaret things badly. At one point Paola asked us if we were acrobats, singers, contortionists etc. No? No. We're actors even though there are people in the class who can do some of those things as well. Is it enough? I don't know.

The arts council is particularly keen to fund street theatre and circus or acrobat type things. And I do understand why. Their physicality is amazing, the effects they can create.

But I do still believe that when we get it right, when our imaginations and our skills as actors are at their best, they are amazing. I don't think we should get angry about these programmes, I think we should just do better and never, ever produce crap theatre. Every crap show kills theatre a little more.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2081836,00.html

A Big Bath of Blood or Goodbye to autocours

2007-05-18T21:06:00.000+01:00

I think no one will thank me for putting on these pictures tonight following a massive slaughter session from the teachers about our attempts at Cabaret. Not unexpected as this was our last autocours and we've had an extremely crap and unmotivated week. Lots of people ill and even absent.
It is amazing that that is the last autocours. No more ok merci in that format. So here's for old time sakes...

Scriptwriters

2007-05-15T21:52:00.000+01:00

I've fallen into the great youtube hole again. janeeye112 and jamiealias have very kindly put the whole of the recent Austen adaptations on youtube in 5-10 minute sections. Perfect for those with short attention spans, like me.

I'm calling this research as I'm in the throws of writing chick lit for a competition in Cosmo and Jane Austen is of course the original and best (discuss) chick lit.

I get very cross with the scriptwriters though, who change the original for the worse. These haven't changed too much of the plot, though they have changed some of it. Why? Do they seriously think they are better than Austen? And then they leave out the best bits. They water down gems of characters into wishy-washy versions of the brilliant originals. For example - horrid Mr Thorpe in Northanger Abbey contiually talking about how fast his horse and cart go, lying out right and ignoring what Catherine says is made bearable. Why? Why? Isabella is far less artificial and amusing than in the book. etc etc. Just a few irritating examples.

And Persuasion, already pointless after the amazing version with Amanda Root and Ciran Hinds a few years ago which was so immaculately scripted and directed and acted. Rupert Penry Jones has the depth of a puddle compared to Ciran Hinds. They change the plot to make it worse. Stupid, stupid.

What is so brilliant about Austen is that she is still relevant now. Anne is left on the shelf, a singleton at 30 with the same fears as Bridget Jones, or some of them.

It's Andrew Davies responsible again. I know everyone else likes him but I DON'T!!

And where is my Mr Tilney, humm?

Oh dear. This is very bad. I am really becoming a sad youtuber. Soon I will be having violent internet discussions with people with odd pseudonyms as to whether the 95 or 05 version of Pride & Predjudice is better and making montages of costume dramas set to cheesy 80's music. Aggh! No more internet. Real life please.

I hate sport

2007-05-14T08:51:00.000+01:00

This is opposing the reallocation of resources to the Olympics of which the
35% reduction of grants for the arts is a part. To submit your name to this
petition click on this link:

('http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/lotteryolympics/');
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/lotteryolympics/

It has already passed the minimum requirement of 200 signatures to get an
official response from Number 10 when the petition closes on 16 September
2007. If it gets to 40,000 signatures it would make it into the top 5 most
popular petitions on the site! Currently, the petition in the number 4 spot
is 'Continue funding for the Royal Air Force Aerobatics Team'. Surely in
the
arts world we are able to gather a similar if, not larger number, of
supporters.

Very popular petitions seem to generate responses from the Prime Minister
prior to the petition closing, so this really is a great way to draw the
attention to our widespread concern and opposition to the proposed 35%
reduction in Grants for the Arts funding.

Do forward this email on to colleagues, friends, and collaborators
encouraging them to add their name to the petition.

And do please sign the petition. You must be a
UK citizen, UK resident, ex-patriate or serving
in HM Forces abroad to sign.There are currently 5,739 signatures.

A load of crap.

2007-05-13T18:47:00.000+01:00

This is my horoscope for tomorrow. Okay. I know they're a load of bollocks, but honestly, it's not exactly encouraging is it? I mean, why bother....

Take care not to overreact today. Your biorhythms are low, and in fact you may be feeling a bit under the weather. There is no point in trying to fool everyone with a cheerful front. They will see through your facade soon enough. You would be best served by spending time on independent activities. That way you can spend long stretches of time in bed, where you were meant to be today.

On the other hand, I could just take it entirely literally and spend all day in bed reading. Ahh. what a lovely thought. But then I would miss out on my lovely lovely school and I don't want to do that.

Out with the old...

2007-05-10T23:01:00.000+01:00

Tony Blair has announced he will stand down as prime minister on 27 June.

He made the announcement in a speech to party activists in his Sedgefield constituency, after earlier briefing the Cabinet on his plans.

He acknowledged his government had not always lived up to high expectations but said he had been "very blessed" to lead "the greatest nation on earth".

He will stay on in Downing Street until the Labour Party elects a new leader - widely expected to be Gordon Brown

And of course at the same time here in France we have welcomed Sarkozy as the new President of the Republic, which is extremely frightening, but not at all unexpected. Every night here in Paris, and all over France there have been pros tests/riots. In Paris they've been based around Bastille. Rather pathetically I've stayed away, not only because I fear physical injury (hence my difficulties with acrobacy) but also because I don't think that an English person should go and protest about how the French make their political decisions.

'Hey you froggies! You picked wrong! Bad decision!' How could I say that after all those years of Thatcher, though in some ways he does make her look tame.

But this is essentially what the French are doing.
'Hey, we choose badly! We picked wrong! And now we're going to have (another) manifestation about it. Yeah!'

And as the British say goodbye to Blair and hello to Brown, and the French hello to Sarko we are getting ready to say goodbye to Lecoq and another wave of students, all eager beaver and full of their own ideas (which are definitely better and more interesting than everyone else's in the group) just like us appear. (Ok, slightly tenuious link to lecoq, I know!)

For a moment these changes seem important and momentous and then they happen and you get used to them and it just becomes another part of your life.

I will be so sad to say goodbye to some friends. The close friends who'll be going back to the other side of the world. I already know from having my brother and sister-in-law and baby nephew (who I may perhaps have mentioned occasionally before now) in Chicago that maintaining a relationship by skype is difficult. And more than that, the friendship is irrevocably changed and will never, can never be the same again, it's so linked to a time and a place. Sometimes it's sadest when a relationship changes so much from what it was it would be better if it ended at the happy time.

And sometimes not. Imagine what fun we'll have if we can manage a reunion 10 years from now? Catching up on 10 years of gossip. 'You married who!!??' 'Her play was a success?!!' etc etc.

10 years on from my last drama school and I think I'm pretty much the only female actor in my class whose still working, or attempting to work. Very scary. It's one profession for men and another for women...

All the more reason to make these last few weeks count before this magic time ends. I'm nostaglic for the present.

Whoops! There goes my trousers!

2007-05-09T21:36:00.000+01:00

There's something about doing theatre that takes you over. It's one of those 'actory' things you have to beware of saying, but at the same time I think is true. I'd noticed it before coming to Lecoq in relation to playing different characters. Spending weeks or even months trying to be someone else, think like them, move like them and act like them seeps into you. Similar parts of your own personality emerge more strongly and you take on aspects of the character's.

How much worse then, not just one character, but a whole theatrical style. We're doing Burlesque at the moment which is what they call Charlie Chaplin, (Charlo the french call him) Buster Keaton, Marx Brother etc. Lots of prat falls and getting hit but not actually hurt and apologising. I LOVE it. I obviously have a very lowest common denominator sense of humour.

My very kind friend J**** came round to help me fix my bed tonight. I really owe him one! (You see, I can't get out of burlesque - or is that carry on?) We came straight from an evening of rehearsing our own respective cascade sequences and it became 'the bed fixing routine'. Already conversation like 'Oh my bed is broken! How did that happen?' is along those lines. Then all the 'have you got it in yet? Push harder!' dialogue. Stepping on something under the bed and hearing the crunch of breaking glass. Pushing an enormous piece of chipboard into an oil painting (nearly). Manoeuvring huge mattresses and pieces of chipboard around in 16m2. It was absurd. And of course, of course finally fixing it and then stepping backwards and the slat falling out of it's hole. Of course.

And all the way through me issuing a series of 'oppsie daisy!'s and 'whoopsie''s .

Well I thought it was funny. I'm not so sure about J****.

Clowns

2007-05-05T16:11:00.000+01:00

Hour

2007-05-05T14:20:00.000+01:00

I'm typing with nail polish drying on my fingers which is always exciting while waiting for a student to arrive, the last one canceled at the last minute because she got the time wrong!! How appropriate then...

Hour

by Carol Ann Duffy

Love's time's beggar, but even a single hour,
bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich.
We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers
or wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch.

For thousands of seconds we kiss; your hair
like treasure on the ground; the Midas light
turning your limbs to gold. Time slows, for here
we are millonaires, backhanding the night

so nothing dark will end our shining hour,
no jewel hold a candle to the cuckoo spit
hung from the blade of grass at your ear,
no chandelier or spotlight see you better lit

than here. Now. Time hates love, wants love poor,
but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.

Isn't that fantastic. There's just no one holds a candle to her as far as I'm concerned. I'm going to be spending a few hours of my life watching spiderman 3 later today. Very highbrow, but we all need it. Why are we so droopy? J**** says its the end of two hard years. But that's a bit nonsensical. We only work in the afternoons after all and rolling around with a red nose on can't really be described as 'work'.

another thursday night

2007-05-03T21:07:00.000+01:00

I've started an awful lot of entries on this blog by saying how tired we all are, so I think I won't tonight. Instead I'll just let you know that I'm eating cheese and drinking wine and that should just about let you know where I am. We're all having difficulties moving from clown in a 'number' situation to clown in 'la vie quoditian'. It's quite a big jump I think. Tomorrow I think will be interesting. I think we're quite near something good, but perhaps not near enough. Yes quite a long way from near enough. Fingers crossed pleased.

I want some chocolate.

We are about to leave clown and have started doing burlesque in classes with Jos. And it really is his baby. He told us today that he introduced it to the school and that it wasn't taught here before he came here. His eyes light up when he's teaching and he laughs and laughs.

Lecoqian misconceptions

2007-04-28T07:33:00.000+01:00

There are some things that do not seem to translate culturally and so provide difficulites in characterization general understanding between teachers and students. One of the main of these is that lepoard skin is classy, whereas in the UK leopard skin anything is the universal sign of a slapper.
Though to be fair leopard skin has made a bit of a come back recently. One very dear friend in Britain pulled her boyfriend about seven years ago in a leopard skin dress. We like to say she was ahead of her time rather than a slapper.
I don't want to dwell on unhappy memories from first year, but another difference of opinion is certainly what the phrase '100%' means. Remember the 100% animals week, where we actually were 100% animals in the human world?
And another of my bug-bears is the idea, often touted by Krikor, that there are bouffons in Shakespeare. Now, I'm working on the pedagogical basis that bouffons are these strange creatures who look at humans and mock them, essentially not in human form, but perfectly happy to dress up like them. Liz's bouffon had a triangular head. The only thing remotely like that in Shakespeare that I know of is Caliban, and he doesn't really mock humanity. Or Falstaff or Toby Belch I suppose you could say. But they are both fat men. Neither of them have triangular heads though they do have 'bands' that they drink and fart with.
W****** has pointed out to me that I've been doing a lot less blogging than I used to and you may have noticed that when I do it's usually only to recommend something on youtube. I am becoming a dreadful, dreadful addict. Every night I come home and look up something. Sometimes recommendations for school - Spike Jones, Karl Valentin and Denny Willis. And then as you have seen old favourtites - Anne of Green Gables, Willo the wisp and Taxi. And then anything that takes my fancy... I have found myself linking on from one thing to another and have ended up, shame on me, on a completely hillarious sequence of kisses from Jane Austen films set to some awful song by Bryan Adams. Though I have to admit Bryan was my first live pop concert aged about 13. You see how uncool I was. 'Got my first real 6 string... ooo, played it at the five and dime...' And now I'm thinking. Hum, where could I see a bit of that video? Where indeed.
You want to find an old bit of thirtysomething or my so called life. You want to see some hancocks half hour or monty python, you want to see Hancock's egg adverts with Patricia Hayes or the last episode of sex and the city.... ah and it just goes on. Almost anything that you can think of has been downloaded by someone somewhere. Dangerous, very, very dangerous.

I went and saw a clown show last night and had the fortune/misfortune to be sitting next to it's director J**. I had a Belgian running commentary all the way through 'Oh, that wasn't supposed to happen... That was my idea! The planes have got twisted up, he won't be able to do the next bit now. There's supposed to be a huge drop of planes now. It's hasn't happened. You see how he's playing anyway, even though it's all gone wrong?'

Happily autocours went well for me yesterday. Especially happily because I had one of my old teachers from my last drama school watching. She is an ex-Lecoq student too, and never particularly liked me or thought I was talented at drama school. I though I saw her watching Christophe's lesson on Thursday where we were making up poem, but from the mezzanine level above. Then I though, no, no I'm being stupid. I've just got that paranoid feeling that my old teacher who though I was crap is watching me fuck up yet again. And then she came up to me just before the first year's autocours and said hello. Well, at least I'm not a paranoid fantasist. I said, 'oh, I thought I saw you watching yesterday's lesson.' And she said 'yes, clown can be so excruciating can't it'. Lovely. Thanks.
Anyhow our autocours rocked so yah boo sucks to you.

The origins of granny

2007-04-27T10:06:00.000+01:00

I'd always thought I'd nicked it straight from the grandmother in Odon Von Hovath's 'Tales from the Vienna Woods' but on watching the I wonder if there was another earlier influence on my granny character.
How I love you tube.
Willo the Wisp - the potion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFKTeZ-tSGU&mode=related&search=

Clown

2007-04-26T08:22:00.000+01:00

We're all buckling under the worry of not being funny, except the happy few who do manage to make people laugh. And the teachers are giving us an 'only a few weeks left' hard time. They do not need to give me an 'only a few weeks left' hard time. I am well aware that we only have three more weeks of being taught and then the soiree and then the commands, and that clown is almost at an end and I've in no way cracked it.

And paranoidly I feel that everyone has several exciting things lined up and I have nothing. Talking to A**** last night he was very much in the 'I can't wait to get out there line'. I've already been out there and now I want to stay in here for a bit longer. I know how scary out there is, but don't take my word for it. I'm re-reading Peter Brook's 'The Empty Space' which I highly recommend to those of you who haven't (and Phillip Roth's The Plot against America which is also excellent, in fact anything by Roth is pretty much guaranteed to be good).

I first read 'The Empty Space' the last time I was at drama school, so about 10 years ago. I get it a lot better now. Some of it is so apt and precise it makes me laugh out loud.
(on bad theatre)
'Almost every season in most theatre-loving towns, there is one great success that defies these rules; one play that succeeds not despite of but because of dullness. After all, one associates culture and long speeches with the sensation of being bored, so conversely, just the right degree of boringness is a reassuring guarantee of a worthwhile event.'
My friend S**** was telling me this weekend about a play at the Almedia in London that had had rave reviews and she went with a friend and got very bored. Her friend,who is an actress, wouldn't reply and was very shifty when she said this to her and after they left said, 'I can't say anything when we're in a theatre. I always think I might be sitting next to a casting director and I might suddenly have an audition with them the next day and what would they think if they'd heard me bitching about a play they'd cast'.

You see how mad actors are? Brook again:
'In England, it seems suddenly that we have a marvellous new breed of young actors- we feel we are witnessing two lines of men in a factory facing opposite directions: one line shuffles out grey, tired; the other strides forward fresh and vital. We get the impression that one line is better than the other, that the lively line is made of better stock. This is partly ture, but in the end the new shift will be as tired and grey as the old; it is an inevitable result of certain conditions that have not yet changed. the tragedy is that the professional status of actors over the age of thirty is seldom a true reflection of their talents. There are countloess actors who never have the chance to develop their inborn potential to its proper fruition.'

I am one of these old, sad tired actors over the age of 30 who knows that they're not one of the very gifted and a part of me wonders if it's all worth it at all. I mean, if I can't get clown, why even bother?

On the other hand that is very defeatest and I still have two days left so I'm going to go for a swim and buy a new clown costume.

Research

2007-04-18T22:46:00.001+01:00

I'm taking Clown very seriously and doing lots of research on Marx Brothers Films and other serious intellectual works like that. My research has even stretched to bits of 'Taxi' on Youtube.
So for your delight and delectation I present...
What does the yellow light mean? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAjP86tWypQ&mode=related&search=
and Vic Ferrari
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLUXa9jNzIc&mode=related&search=
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p3oF7fVX-s&mode=related&search=
It's wonderful stuff.

One more term

2007-04-08T14:55:00.000+01:00

I cannot tell you what bliss it is to be able to cross the road without being followed by 26 americans. Thank heavens that is over. The plus side is that it makes me fully apreciate and look forward to getting back to school. J'hate, I believe the term is in french.

I filled in my spotlight form today. (I don't look as good in reality as in the photo. Same problem with my passport photo. I foolishly put on make-up and had it taken in black and white so I look quite nice, over pouty, but nice. When I go through the passport checks, espcially on the French side, the people checking always do a double take and look incredulously from the nice photo to the bedraggled reality in front of them and then swipe the passport through a machine to check it really is me.)

£124 for my picture in a book for casting directors to ignore. Ugh. I am really not looking forward to my blissful two years of living in France and doing what I love every day ending, to going back to scurrying around London, skint, trying to juggle 100 things at once- looking for acting work, writing letters, doing my day a week in my co-operative agency, temping and a thousand other hideous, badly- paid temporary jobs. It's like looking down from heaven into hell and knowing the fall is inevitable. I really hope that I'm able to take some perspective on it all, to make some big changes and not just go back to things exactly as they were before. Because Paris is so much cheaper it's possible to have a decent quality of life here. In London as soon as you walk out the door it costs £50, and the door itself won't be cheap.

I just want to stay here forever and work with Monouchkine. (Went and saw Les Iphermeres again yesterday. Still brilliant even after only 5 hours sleep.) I want, I want.... don't you just hate whingy actors.

Peter Brook drank my orange juice

2007-03-27T19:58:00.000+01:00

I am up to my neck in preparations for taking a group of 28 Americans around France, to places I've never visited before, all the while giving amusing and informative commentary. I had been briefed all afternoon and couldn't really be bothered to go to the jolly to meet the new British Ambassador at the British Council, but as I was just around the corner and the nibbles tend to be good I decided not to be pathetic and pop in.

The problem with these things is that you never know anyone, or at least that's always the fear. Actually the Parisian ex-pat community is so small that there's a high chance you'll see someone you know, but walking in past all the men in suits I was very conscious that a) I was all on my own and b) that I was the only person wearing jeans.

Imagine my relief when I saw another person wearing jeans, though admittedly much smarter and newer black jeans that could nearly be proper trousers. But I thought, 'well, if it's ok for Peter Brook to wear jeans, it's ok for me too'.

He was surrounded by a group of people and I didn't really know what to do so I went and stood by the window and looked out at the view onto the stretch leading up to Invalides and the Eiffel Tour. A lady came over and started talking to me and we took me over to the drinks and nibbles table to get a drink. As I was planning to work later with superhuman strength I resisted the free champagne and went for orange juice instead. She worked represented film for the British Council and told me about the things she was organising at the moment on women and film and then in a whirl and I'm not quite sure how, Mr Brook and another man came over and then they both left and I was left all alone talking to Peter Brook!

I think I went rather pink. But we started chatting and I said he'd just directed on of my teachers, Joss Houben, in a play. He said, 'oh yes, Joss, he's a good actor and a good man' which is a lovely thing to say about anyone, and also in this case true. Then somehow we were talking about me and I was telling him about working with autistic teenagers before I came to Lecoq. His eyes went very bright and he seemed very interested and asked what I'd done with them. I gave a general answer and he asked what specific exercise I'd done. My stupid befuddled brain couldn't remember very well. Then he told me about going to a mental hospital in France with his actors where the nurses said, oh you won't be able to do anything with them and he did an exercise with bamboo sticks where they had to raise them up, and of course they did.

Then the nibbles came round and he took a bite and started coughing and coughing. I wasn't quite sure what to do. Usually I'd give someone a good slap on the back, but he looked rather frail and I was afraid that if I did I might kill him and then I'd have killed Peter Brook and the theatrical establishment would be very cross with me. I said, 'something must have gone down the wrong way, as my mum would say' and offered him some of my orange juice, which he took.

He was just about recovered and we were starting chatting again when the man from Porlock arrived in the shape of L****** who I know from a mutual organisation. I said 'L*****, Peter Brook'. L***** obviously had absolutely no idea who he was and started chuntering away to me about something very dull. Peter drifted off and I ended up talking to L***** and someone who worked at Sciences Po who told us all about it for a very long time.

I wasn't really listening. I was chuckling happily away to myself. Who would have thought it eh?

Spring Soiree

2007-03-22T00:34:00.000Z

Anne spelt with an E

2007-03-16T23:40:00.000Z

To the uninitiated 'Anne of Green Gables' is one of the best things, like, ever. All of it - books, TV mini series with Megan Follows and Colleen Dewhurst, spin off series of the other many works of the truly prolific Lucy Maud Montgomery - all very, very good stuff in my opinion. It is only due to Anne of Green Gables that I can confidently spell the word chrysanthemum!

I have discovered (thank you A***, thank you J**) that you can get Anne via you tube in bite size ten minutes portions. These Annelets and of course my old friends tea and radio 4 are helping me ward off soiree stress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2px3wrJqQXs&NR

As all Anne fans will know Anne spells her name with an E. Ideally she would rather be called Cordelia, and who can argue with that, but at the very least please spell Anne with an e. Infinitely more elegant and refined. And it seems the french have a similar pedancy about language.

Chatting to M**** and J******* tonight they were saying how precise the french are about language and finding exactly the right word to explain what you mean. Apparently J******** had to tell M**** to simplify her language last year as she was using a mixture of argot (slang) and very old classical french in order to explain her autocours ideas with necessary, french precision. She said, 'J**** has learned a lot from me'. He was celebrating his birthday tonight. I checked his straight line abilities after about 4 pints and a few shots of JD and he was still straight as an arrow.

So, the french may be swanky with their language, but we Brits can drink fuck-loads and still walk in a straight line.

Oh dear. That's really not something to boast about, is it.

All things in proportion

2007-03-15T08:24:00.000Z

I've been working on a chorus piece for the soiree, a cut of texts taken from Women of Troy, a beautiful version by Kenneth Mcleish and Bagdad Burning. Plus ca change.

We're all stressed. To my shame I burst into tears a couple of times yesterday. Then I came home and read some of her blog and it rather put things in proportion.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com

The Rape of Sabrine...

It takes a lot to get the energy and resolution to blog lately. I guess it’s mainly because just thinking about the state of Iraq leaves me drained and depressed. But I had to write tonight.

As I write this, Oprah is on Channel 4 (one of the MBC channels we get on Nilesat), showing Americans how to get out of debt. Her guest speaker is telling a studio full of American women who seem to have over-shopped that they could probably do with fewer designer products. As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks. In the end she tells the reporter that she can’t talk about it anymore and she covers her eyes with shame.

She might just be the bravest Iraqi woman ever. Everyone knows American forces and Iraqi security forces are raping women (and men), but this is possibly the first woman who publicly comes out and tells about it using her actual name. Hearing her tell her story physically makes my heart ache. Some people will call her a liar. Others (including pro-war Iraqis) will call her a prostitute- shame on you in advance.

I wonder what excuse they used when they took her. It’s most likely she’s one of the thousands of people they round up under the general headline of ‘terrorist suspect’. She might have been one of those subtitles you read on CNN or BBC or Arabiya, “13 insurgents captured by Iraqi security forces.” The men who raped her are those same security forces Bush and Condi are so proud of- you know- the ones the Americans trained. It’s a chapter right out of the book that documents American occupation in Iraq: the chapter that will tell the story of 14-year-old Abeer who was raped, killed and burned with her little sister and parents.

They abducted her from her house in an area in southern Baghdad called Hai Al Amil. No- it wasn’t a gang. It was Iraqi peace keeping or security forces- the ones trained by Americans? You know them. She was brutally gang-raped and is now telling the story. Half her face is covered for security reasons or reasons of privacy. I translated what she said below.

“I told him, ‘I don’t have anything [I did not do anything].’ He said, 'You don’t have anything?’ One of them threw me on the ground and my head hit the tiles. He did what he did- I mean he raped me. The second one came and raped me. The third one also raped me. [Pause- sobbing] I begged them and cried, and one of them covered my mouth. [Unclear, crying] Another one of them came and said, 'Are you finished? We also want our turn.' So they answered, ‘No, an American committee came.’ They took me to the judge.

Anchorwoman: Sabrine Al Janabi said that one of the security forces videotaped/photographed her and threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the rape. Another officer raped her after she saw the investigative judge.

Sabrine continuing:
“One of them, he said… I told him, ‘Please- by your father and mother- let me go.’ He said, ‘No, no- by my mother’s soul I’ll let you go- but on one condition, you give me one single thing.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘[I want] to rape you.’ I told him, ‘No- I can’t.’ So he took me to a room with a weapon… It had a weapon, a Klashnikov, a small bed [Unclear], he sat me on it. So [the officer came] and told him, ‘Leave her to me.’ I swore to him on the Quran, I told him, ‘By the light of the Prophet I don’t do such things…’ He said, ‘You don’t do such things?’ I said, ‘Yes’.

[Crying] He picked up a black hose, like a pipe. He hit me on the thigh. [Crying] I told him, ‘What do you want from me? Do you want me to tell you rape me? But I can’t… I’m not one of those ***** [Prostitutes] I don’t do such things.’ So he said to me, ‘We take what we want and what we don’t want we kill. That’s that.’ [Sobbing] I can’t anymore… please, I can’t finish.”

I look at this woman and I can’t feel anything but rage. What did we gain? I know that looking at her, foreigners will never be able to relate. They’ll feel pity and maybe some anger, but she’s one of us. She’s not a girl in jeans and a t-shirt so there will only be a vague sort of sympathy. Poor third-world countries- that is what their womenfolk tolerate. Just know that we never had to tolerate this before. There was a time when Iraqis were safe in the streets. That time is long gone. We consoled ourselves after the war with the fact that we at least had a modicum of safety in our homes. Homes are sacred, aren’t they? That is gone too.

She’s just one of tens, possibly hundreds, of Iraqi women who are violated in their own homes and in Iraqi prisons. She looks like cousins I have. She looks like friends. She looks like a neighbor I sometimes used to pause to gossip with in the street. Every Iraqi who looks at her will see a cousin, a friend, a sister, a mother, an aunt…

Humanitarian organizations are warning that three Iraqi women are to be executed next month. The women are Wassan Talib, Zainab Fadhil and Liqa Omar Muhammad. They are being accused of 'terrorism', i.e. having ties to the Iraqi resistance. It could mean they are relatives of people suspected of being in the resistance. Or it could mean they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of them gave birth in the prison. I wonder what kind of torture they've endured. Let no one say Iraqi women didn't get at least SOME equality under the American occupation- we are now equally as likely to get executed.

And yet, as the situation continues to deteriorate both for Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq, and for Americans inside Iraq, Americans in America are still debating on the state of the war and occupation- are they winning or losing? Is it better or worse.

Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.

Bujegustei plut que?

2007-03-14T21:21:00.000Z

OH my god we are all so stressed it's unbelievable. Everybody is stressed because they have too much time but can't rehearse because they can't get their groups together because everyone is rehearsing too many things.

To my shame I ended up in tears at about 6 o'clock, first of all in the passageway between the Lem and the school where no one could see me. Then I went to wash my face so no one would know in the toilets where I met J** and S***** who said, 'are you okay?' and I burst into tears again. And then again in the vestaire. And then again in Mauri 7. I am ashamed of myself. It was a beautiful sunset, all my family and friends are well. Why am I crying because my pieces aren't going well? Pathetic.

So for light relief the picture above and this story.

My american friend has another american friend who happened to be in Paris. This person didn't know any french at all. They went into a cafe and sat down. The server came over and friend's friend said
'bu je su boojee ej kesoopsk' because they didn't speak any french.
And the waiter brought them a coffee.

For me the most amazing part of this story is that the waiter brought them a coffee. A parisian waiter! Unbelievable. Maybe it was Tim. Where is Tim? I haven't seen him in ages.

While rehearsing one of my English things we were talking about how we bastardise both the english and french language at the same time. 'Oh no! I've tromped.' Can we metre the public over there?' ' we really need to equlibre the plateau'. 'You got to use your basin more'. 'I keep forgeting to push my plexus'.

There are some words and phrases that just don't seem right in english any more - audience (c'est quoi ca?) Pelvis (ugh! sounds like a very bad pop group from the 80's) Chest - well that just doesn't mean the same as plexus, does it?

Oh yes and

2007-03-14T08:08:00.000Z

I forgot one of the funniest things from last night. N**
'You English are so tiring to work with'.
(This after me saying how wierd it was being in a group last week with so many people from group C last year and how they all seemed to jump back into their group C dynamic.)
'Every time we're about to start running it again you all have to take about five minutes with your little comments and jokes and laughing at them'.
This is completely true. We do do this. I hadn't realised how irritating it was. I think of it as putting people at ease and keeping the work spirit relaxed and happy. In fact, in monday's very stressed rehearsal all those little jokes and gufaws were noticeably absent.
' - and you are the worst! You make little comments and jokes to yourself and then laugh to yourself'.
This too is very true, and I find very funny. I've been thinking about it and chuckling away to myself ever since he said it. You know what they say - first sign of madness.

Le Cerise Blue

2007-03-13T21:42:00.000Z

I've just got home, stupidly. But when you're tired and stressed somehow being even more tired doesn't seem to matter. Drinking in bar of above name, cheese plate and all. My brain isn't working very well now, so probably not a good moment to be writing, but there you go. I should have been reading guide books in preparation for taking a bus load of American teenagers to destinations I haven't been to in France. I'm going to have to do a lot of Lecoq style question inverting... 'well, which mountain do you think Mont Blanc is'. I did this in the summer and followed similar tactics 'it's a garden', 'it's a church' etc. when asked the generic 'what that?' question.

Was in the bar with W****** ,S***** and N**. It was one of the funniest evenings I've had in a long time. We were having the standards, 'what did you do before you came to lecoq' conversation but the answers were way above average.

N** directed a production of 'Hair' with teenagers in jail. I think this was somehow supposed to encourage them to join the Israeli army. Hair is a pacifist musical. (Dear God, that such a term exists!) If I understood correctly Israel has military service, so in order to get out of, 'killing Arabs' my friend pretended to be mad in his interview with the doctor. As he is both intelligent and a good actor he didn't just have a normal conversation with the doctor and then try and jump out the window at the end of the session. Instead he, subtly, told the doctor that he 'always had to get in the shower first and would get very angry if he couldn't' and that he 'had to eat first when in the canteen' or he'd get very angry. It worked a treat. They found him seriously unbalanced - so they sent him to work with children!!

Meanwhile in Vienna S***** was trying to get into the Austrian equivalent of RADA. For her speeches she chose Metosopheles from Faust, Hinkel from Chaplin's film 'The Great Dictator' and, because her friend insisted she do at least one female speech, Medea. S**** is very keen on costume and props. She always has a huge sack of props stashed away and appears the most unlikely of things at a moments notice. Very useful for autocours. She told us that she had carefully planned her speeches so she could change from costume to costume very quickly and that it was most efficient if she started with Hinkel.

So, in she goes. There they are behind the desk. She gets into her Hinkel costume, just as he is in the Great Dictator, suit and little Hitler moustache. She does the speech, which seems to go down well and then goes behind the screen to change into her next costume which is for Medea. By the time she comes out her nerves are getting the better of her and in order to calm herself and keep in control (!!) she improvises and does the speech with a Swiss accent.
'Why Swiss?' I asked.
'Weeeel, the swees accent is veery sloowe, you know?'
Well, I do now. Unfortunately as well as doing Medea very slowly and Swiss she had forgotten to take off her Hitler moustache. Perhaps unsurprisingly the audition panel were in fits of laughter by the time she finished.
'What do you want to do?' they asked her. 'Do you want to play Juliet in Romeo and Juliet?'
'No' she replied.
'You're a clown' they told her.
So she came to learn to be a clown. But before that she worked as a road sweeper with lots of alcoholics. At first they didn't think she could do the job, but when she showed them, convinced them they were delighted.
'We're going to the pub' they'd tell her, at 7am in the morning. Give us a sign if the boss comes. Which as she's so nice she probably would have done.
Phew! Bed. I'm knackered.

Manifestations

2007-03-12T10:49:00.000Z

There were SIXTEEN policemen standing on the corner opposite Mauri 7 on Saturday. SIXTEEN!! All to guard the bastard Sarkozy from people wearing cut out paper masks. Ooo! Scary. (Please, no not the paper! Not the glue! I'll do anything you like but don't put the winne the pooh mask on...)

It seems to me a little excessive.

Examine your diaries please

2007-03-11T20:58:00.000Z

Just so you know the spring Soiree is on Wednesday 21st March for students and Thursday 22nd March for the rest.

Then the final Soiree is, allegedly on Wednesday 30th and Thursday 31st May.

And by a process of elimination the week of the Commands starts Monday 18th June and ends on Thursday 21st June and we get chucked out for perpetuity on 22nd.

Then, hopefully and all going well I will be traveling Europe doing workshops with teenagers from poor areas with a charity ending in Paris some time in October on their version of 'Make Poverty History' day. I'll be working with musicians, puppeteers, photo and film artist and generally nice and interesting people. Keep your fingers crossed it all works out. Hurrah!

Spanish Time

2007-03-10T06:06:00.002Z

As an inherently late person I absolutely cannot complain about the timekeeping of others. I tend to be slightly relieved when other people are late in an, it's not just me kind of way. I am relatively organised.

Perhaps then it's churlish of me to be a little alarmed about having two of our Spanish boys S**** and A**** running the soiree. They've both grown their hair very long and moustaches at the moment and looked like two of the three musketeers as they lounged behind the desk getting propositions for the soiree.

We became an unbridled rabble, chatting loudly, eating and wandering around to have little talks with people on the other side of the room about how many scenes we could seriously work on and which should be jettisoned already. I have already cut my five down to four, and may cut again by the end of the day. You can only sensibly propose a few things or you won't have enough time to do any of them justice. Even if you have time to work on them other people won't.

I'm just a little afraid that under their Mediterranean management relaxation will reach a point where the whole thing will arrive a day or two late.

I am starting a movement early for the next soiree. S**** McG**** for President (or should I call you Rose?). We need her English pink-and-white-efficiency up front.
'Ahem, excuse me everyone. I'm not just sitting up here for my own amusement you know. Could everybody please listen to me? Right. This is what's going to happen...'. The Soiree will be run with clockwork efficiency.

McG**** for President! C'mon everyone, join in with me, McG**** for President! You know it's right.

Soiree Fever Again

2007-03-09T21:56:00.000Z

We've all been scurrying around this week muttering to each other ...'I've got an idea for the Soiree. Do you fancy trying to do a mix of bouffon and mystere cut with a Nick Cave song?' and things like this.

Here I am at home on a Friday night when I could be out drinking at the Australian Embassy with lots of eligible Australian men (and my friends A** and S****) and instead I'm at home trying to cut Titus Andronicus and 'Keep Young and Beautiful' together. Yes, soiree madness is here again.

And why is it always at times like this I think, 'I know, now would be a good time to defrost the fridge!'. Am I completely deranged? No, now is a dreadful time to defrost the fridge. Anyway, I've started now.

It seems the 10eme is going up in the world. Sarkozy the bastard french politician, and probably the next President has rented an office just around the corner from Lecoq. I didn't realise until earlier this week, though I did wonder why for the past several weeks there have been policemen standing outside Chez Jeanette. To be honest, I thought they were doing some not-very-undercover-surveillance of Mauri 7 - the Albanian mafia, or perhaps Tim's drug dealing, but the real reason is much less interesting. Sometimes there are people having manifestations in the street and I'm very tempted to go and join in instead of going to school. I've always wanted to sit down in the middle of the street. Actually that's a complete lie, I've never wanted to sit down in the middle of the street.

My counter has disappeared so I don't know how many people are checking any more. Or how many times my mum is checking. Well, that's what you get from shoddy free stuff from goodness knows what Internet site! That won't teach me!

Time for bed I think. I'm going a little insane.

Tourists

2007-03-04T18:17:00.000Z

I love tourists, especially American ones. Follow a group around any museum or gallery and you're almost assured amusement. Often their comments are more interesting than the exhibits themselves.

Overheard in the Louvre...

disappointed..."But it's just like all the other Mona Lisa's'...

Overheard outside Hotel de Ville...

..."You know, it's not actually a hotel"...

Overheard in the Uffizi.... (my favourite so far)

..."Don't you find it's sinister that the baby is always a boy?"

Please feel free to add your own over hearings.

The tragic chorus performed tragically

2007-03-01T22:09:00.000Z

I'm so tired. I think perhaps because each time we start an improvisation for our chorus text we start by running around the room. Put all those attempts together and you must have something approaching a half marathon.

We still seem so far away from the crystalline clarity and brilliance, vocal and visually, but I've found it a really interesting and engaged work. And I feel I've worked in a harder and more concentrated way than I have all term, and am convinced that this is useful work for the future.

And the future is closer and closer. O***, our lovely friend from first year, is visiting from Engerland this weekend. It's great how much he's done and puts everything in proportion. And then again it doesn't.

Dogs

2007-02-26T20:01:00.000Z

I have been heavy armed into 'upgrading to the new blogger account'. No you can do this if you want or you can just stick to what you're used to. Oh no. YOU ARE BEING UPGRADED TO THE NEW BLOGGER ACCOUNT, WANNA MAKE SOMETHING OF IT?

I think my overly strong irritation to this is probably due to tiredness. It's a long way into term, but a long way until the end. It's lovely what we're doing, but we're all knackered. I started thinking about going to bed at about seven o'clock tonight. In fact I started thinking about going to bed during Susannah's lesson, not that it was a bad lesson. It was rather good actually and will be very helpful in trying to improve our disastrously bad attempt at presenting a piece of Greek Tragedy chorus.

When we finished our autocours on Friday Susannah said, 'well that was very bad. You've made Theatre with a capital T and a director, I mean, a bad director.' We all agreed. It had been quite a spicy week. Too many chefs. Everyone with their very important idea that they have to say. I would love to say that over the weekend we had all seen the error of our ways and decided to shut up a bit more. I'd love to say that but what actually happened was that we didn't get onto our feet until 5.35 leaving us exactly 25 minutes out of 1h30. Impressive.

'But what do dogs have to do with tragedy?' I hear you asking yourself. 'Is this a weird Lecoq version of the chorus on all fours? I know they pretended to be animals in first year. Perhaps it was all leading to a version of Medea presented by ducks? Or cocks?'

All very possible and perhaps the natural progression from bouffon (a word I feel should never be translated from French into English) and mystere. But no. I have been dog-sitting for a little... black dog. When I took her for walks people would ask me how old she was and what breed and I would mumble 'oh well I think she's about... 18months or a year, or perhaps 10 months' leaving them very confused. Why did I not know my dog's age?

It's kind of the same as having a baby in a pushchair. You stop and chat to other dog owners while your dogs sniff each others bottoms and start running round each other and tangling up the leashes as they get more excited. (Allez! Allez Voltaire!)

For dogs the whole pavement is like a wonderful degoustation of lovely smells; leaves, bits of old baguette and chewing gum and tastiest of all - other dogs poo. I strongly suspect that I was the only person in Paris picking up poo, certainly the only person in the 16eme.

When I was about 10 or perhaps a little older my brother and I ran a campaign to be allowed a pet. We decided on subtle, subliminal tactics. We drew pictures of cats and dogs with CAT or DOG written in large, friendly letters underneath them and stuck them up around the house. Though most of them got taken down quite quickly somehow my brother's 'CAT' managed to stay on the bottom of the kitchen door until well after we had both left for university.

All our attempts were greeted with amused and total rebuts. My father does not like animals. They, on the other hand, seem to find him rather fascinating and are very keen to wag at and climb on him. For years he has been squirting washing up liquid at cats of all colour who come and poo in his garden.

I felt more than usually like an ill-done by Victorian heroine and wondered if it were possible to get consumption from lack of canine affection. I also felt worried for my father's sensibilities. Everyone knows that deep down people who don't like animals are cold and probably evil.

After a week with a puppy who is not house-trained I am in complete agreement with him. This is a very sweet tempered little dog - friendly, affectionate, etc. However. Its not just the picking up the foul smelling poo after they've been outside. Or the cleaning up when they've gone inside, (just after you've got back in from a long walk, or just as you've put your shoes on to take them outside for a walk). It's the constant need for attention. It would follow me around constantly. I'd open the toilet door and trip over a little black dog. If I am sitting with my computer on my lap trying to write that means that there is no room for a cat as well. Surely that's clear? If I have shut my bedroom door that means I am trying to read or go to sleep and do not want to be disturbed and no amount of wailing or scratching is going to change my mind. When I have been on a walk and got a little wet do I roll on the sofa? Do I come and stand very near to you and shake myself hard? No. I do not.

It's taken a few years and I feel mean saying it, but Daddy, I understand exactly where you're coming from.

None of that has anything at all to do with Lecoq, I just had to get it out of my system.

Tragedy

2007-02-16T23:18:00.000Z

'Le coeur est un crystal' Krikor told us last week in the first of our lessons on tragedy. Angular- Brilliant-pure?

Across the ceiling of the grand salle a network of elastics has been constructed to form a star of David and then four elasticated cords hung from points of the internal square. When these were pulled on and the four pullers moved round the space above them a series of gemometric patterns tangled and untangled themselves and then eventually, when it was juste enough, people, reacting to the constantly changing shapes. This produced some incredibly powerful improvisations, often not thought out with the head, but instinctive and therefore inventive and often surprising. It worked like a big neutral mask. You could really see when people started pushing or forcing.

On Thursday we did speeches with Paola. Real people's speeches from a podium in the Grand Salle. We saw Hitler, Mussolini and St Juste. All rather scary, powerful.

Otherwise everyone is tired with colds and nasty bugs abounding. But most of all tired. What are we? Week 5 or 6? No wonder. I'm planning to sleep and write all weekend and watch the enormous TV in the enormous flat where I'll be dog-sitting next week.

Goodbye Hes

2007-02-11T22:43:00.000Z

Here's one of my favourite poems for one of my favourtie people who very sadly for all is leaving Paris tomorrow. How we love you. How we'll miss you. Thank heavens for Skype!

Late Fragment

by

Raymond Carver

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Bouffons that got left in the back of the fridge for 546000949302597 years

2007-02-10T00:37:00.000Z

A re-re amendment

2007-02-05T19:39:00.000Z

So it turns out that Jessica Lange DID go to Lecoq after all. I was misinformed. And how do I now know the truth? Because Julie Taymor told me. la la la. Get that for a bit of cool.

In fact it wasn't just in a personal tete-a-tete. I discovered this but in a talk she was giving to the whole school as part of a filmed press launch for 'The Lion King' soon to hit Paris, (and well worth seeing if it's as good as it was in London).

For this talk we had to sign to copies of a form which said we didn't mind this tv company being able to 'exploit our images in perpetuity'. Exploit seems to me to rather an unfortunate choice of words. Or maybe it's a very precise choice of words and there'll be photos of me sitting in the grand salle, nodding, all over Paris next week selling 'Lion King burgers'.

She, Julie not the cat's mother, was very inspiring. She came to Lecoq at 16. 16!! At 16 I was doing my GCSE's and learning to put on eyeliner. What have I been doing with my time that it's taken me this long to get here? She came at 16 and I am here at 31. She had set up her own company in Bali by 22 and was touring with them. Absolutely sickening.

She talked about how it's important the quality of the materials for the masks and costumes she uses and makes are so that the actor or dancer wearing them is infused with it, like inspiration. She talked about seeing shamens in trances in Indonesia and in India and how every costume or mask gives a little of the same.

Listening to her put together everything she'd taken from Lecoq, Indonesia, India and put it all together in her own intelligent, inovative way was inspiring in a very energising way.

It got me thinking again, as Les Ephemeres did, about what's next form me and what theatre and why theatre. I have a great sense of need to make plays that tell stories for women, show their stories. That sounds like hackneyed 70's feminsim, but if I'm still not feeling fulfilled enough as a female theatre goer in 2007, that's why.

There's such a huge back-log of male dominated drama from hundreds of years of female repression. But what bothers me far more is what is being made now. The war dramas and cop dramas with scores of men and then token wives and whores, which is why Les Ephemeres was so refreshing, and I mean really that. Refreshing in the sense that I was thirsty to see something that spoke of women's lives without them being raped or having their hands cut off. I'm sick of being an actress where there are loads more parts for male actors and loads more female actors. QED....

My head is jumping on to June, but not in such a bad way any more. Time to action some thoughts instead of checking my emails.

Mystere

2007-02-02T22:55:00.000Z

When my younger brother and I were little we used to draw maps of fantasy islands in old exercise books .'Miss Herville, Upper 3 Religious Studies' metamorphosized into the strange land of Glodongy. We mapped out the mountains, the prophets lair, castles and drew the strange creatures that inhabited this world with biology textbook arrows pointing to their different parts, (leopards paws, owls beak etc.)

More than twenty years later I'm doing almost exactly the same, which is in some ways a little worrying and in others extremely satisfying.

We have left the territory of grotesques and have gone back to our original white bodies but are re-exloring them as strange creatures with a slightly different lilt. They have never been human, but dressed in human clothes, mocking human behaviour and society they became more humanistic. Now they're being stipped back to their inhuman nakedness and added to.

We had a fascinating lesson with Krikor, who is amazing, on thursday. He brought different materials; cardboard; brown paper; sheets of clear, floating plastic; thin wooden sticks and tape. Our brief, as usual, was to change our bodies.

Even with only 15 minutes to work on them people came up with some very exciting propositions, espcially those who did the LEM last year.

(To red herring for a moment, we had a very amusing talk today from two ex-students currently doing a play at Theatre du ront-point. They talked about how their set consisted of one small box placed on the stage and how that they never felt sure about where it should go. 'Where should we put it?' one says to the other. 'We don't know, neither of us did the LEM'.)

Going back to changing our bodies, the most effective were those where you couldn't see any body at all. C**** and S**** nearly had it. The creature created (creature and create - look at how similar those two words are linguistically!!) from stretchy, slightly shinny fabric stretched over a frame of poles moved in two parts and was almost alive until the poles started falling down or the arms lifted too high revealing S**** self-conciously giggling.

L** did one with three different colours. Grey on her head, a block of purple paper in an oblong block that she held in one hand and a smaller blue one in the other. She covered herself entirely with the translucent plastic, so you stopped being aware of her manipulating them and saw the three coloured shapes moving, which did somehow become a creature - until the clear plastic sheet fell off and then we saw L** holding bit of crunched up paper with a grey, netted hat on.

I find all this very exciting theatrically. As though it's something that I really will be able to use in the future in work I create and in my teaching. What I really want is to be able to take it further. Not just stop with what is proposed by the teachers. They give you a taster, but how much more exciting and interesting is where you go with all of this when you leave. My head is already jumping forwards to when I leave in June and what I'm going to do. As the moment although I have some ideas overall, as Krikor would say, 'on sait pas'. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Oh, and just to finish off, a little advertisment. I went and saw one of the most moving, life changing pieces of theatre I've ever seen, espcially (in my opinion) if you're a woman. So if you're in Paris check out 'Les Ephemeres' at the Theatre du Soleil.

Radio 4

2007-01-31T21:26:00.000Z

One of my most guilty pleasures here, somewhat bizarely, is radio. No,not drink or drugs, not even gambling, but lovely, lovely radio 4. I have it on now burbling away about some form of new credit card security, a bit like tomorrows world, but on the radio.

I always feel I should be listening to France Culture instead to improve my french, and of course I should be, but I found Radio 4 very comforting and I'm a little under the weather at the moment.

Anyway, before Xmas there was a very amusing edition of 'Foreign Correspondant' from an Englishwoman living in Paris and by happy chance someone sent me a copy of the transcript.

Enjoy....

Mastering French manners, the hard way

By Caroline Wyatt
BBC News, Paris

The title, "A history of politeness in France", might strike the uncharitable as being a very short book indeed. But Frederic Rouvillois' definitive study of manners through the ages in France weighs in at a crushing 550 pages. It joins Nadine de Rothschild's best-selling bible of politeness in offering advice to those in need of guidance on how to behave in that oxymoron, "polite French society".
For this season of festive meals can be a minefield for those uneducated in French ways. Oh, if only I had read their advice before venturing out to my first Parisian dinner party. I had arrived punctually at the chic Parisian flat on the Left Bank, on the dot of eight o'clock in the evening, as per the invitation, bearing flowers for my hostess.
I wondered why she seemed slightly put out. I realised, when the other guests - politicians, a philosopher, a banker or two and their wives - finally arrived an hour later. The conversation was in rapid-fire French, no allowances made for the only foreigner in the room.
So, to make myself feel more at ease, I reached over to a bottle of wine, to pour myself a second glass. The entire table suddenly fell silent as the wine emerged loudly, and in slow motion, into my glass.
A deep froideur descended as 10 pairs of steely Parisian eyes turned to stare. I smiled weakly and remained quiet for the est of the meal, fleeing as soon as I politely could. Clearly, I had committed an unforgivable faux pas, although what it had been I wasn't sure.
Cardinal sins
It was only this week that I discovered just how many terrible solecisms I'd committed under the strict laws of French etiquette. My lesson came courtesy of Constance Reitzler, director of La Belle Ecole - "the beautiful school" - which aims to give Parisians and foreigners alike that special polish. It teaches the "arts de vivre", that uniquely French concept which encompasses everything from how to appreciate your wine and food, to whether to eat your sorbet or ice-cream with a
spoon or a fork.
It's a fork, for those who want to know. And never spread your foie gras on your toast. Eat it with a fork, and the toast separately.
Constance patiently explained that a lady never, ever grabs the bottle of wine to pour her own drink. She must wait for her host or another man to pour it for her. And more than one aperitif before dinner is considered the sure sign of an alcoholic, or an Englishwoman. We are, after all, a nation renowned in France for 'le binge-drinking'.
And I had compounded the offence by wishing those at the table "bon appetit", before noisily expressing my appreciation of the food. Both, apparently, cardinal sins in the Bible of French etiquette.
"Wishing someone bon appetit is seen as very vulgar in polite circles," Constance explained, as I realised to my horror that I must have wished almost every French person I have ever met at a meal "bon appetit".
So why didn't the BBC send me on this course before I began my job in Paris? And apparently in France it's good manners to keep your elbows ON the table, and your hands visible. The custom dates back centuries, to when noblewomen did so to display their dazzling rings, to show off their husbands' social status. Keeping your hands above the table shows that you're concentrating on your meal. And, I thought unworthily, that you are not using them to get to know the husband next to you rather better than his wife might like. I, of course, had politely kept my elbows off the table, and my hands beneath it while not eating - goodness only knows what all the wives had thought.
But I wondered who was ruder: myself, for not understanding the local customs, or my hosts, for making me feel so ill at ease.
The phrase, "the customer is king", has clearly lost something in translation. Or perhaps the French think it a reference to the Revolution, a chance to cut the customer down to size It's not that the French are necessarily rude - but Parisians certainly can be.

A psychiatrist has coined a term for its effect on Japanese visitors to the city: "Paris Syndrome". Every year, several Japanese tourists have to be repatriated from Paris after falling prey to severe culture shock at the hands of the less than polite Parisians. Waiters who fail to understand their order, taxi drivers who take them to the wrong place and
then charge double.
All this is too much for some to take, as their dream of the city of light crumbles into a nightmare of darkness, creating a sense of rejection and paranoia.
Yet I know exactly how they feel after my encounter at a dress shop last week. I picked up a skirt to try on, and as I took it to the changing room, the shop assistant shouted out across the crowded room: "I wouldn't bother if I were you - it'll never fit!"
The phrase, "the customer is king", has clearly lost something in translation.
Or perhaps the French think it a reference to the Revolution, a chance to cut the customer down to size.

Madame La Guillotine may no longer be available, but a sharp tongue can do the job just as well.
Perhaps Constance can help both sides. As I rose to leave the Belle Ecole, she politely handed me a two-page guide to etiquette, with an expression of sympathy, though whether for my past and future hosts or for myself, I wasn't sure.

I glanced at it. It could have been tailor-made for the oafish, drunken Englishwoman who came to dinner. "Never down your drink in one", and "ne jamais ecraser le buste vers l'assiette" or "don't put your bust in your plate" and "never make noises of satisfaction at the dinner table".

And never, ever say bon appetit.

So now I know. And in spite of that, I'd like everyone across Britain to join me now in wishing all in France a very bon appetit indeed this Christmas.

...So my mum knows what a bouffon looks like....

2007-01-28T15:20:00.000Z

Quelque chose un peu plus abstracte

2007-01-25T22:16:00.000Z

I've done quite well with my new years resolution to spend less time on the internet, hence the silence, less well on the diet hence the cheese and wine tonight at W***'s birthday drink.

We have entered into the mad world of the buffoon and everyone is going a little insane. We spent last week rolling around the grand salle in hot white 'bodies'. We were given the brief to change our body shape, to produce a white body puffed out with foam into some abstract but somehow humanness (otherwise it would be impossible to move in) shape. This week the forms were given clothes.

The idea seems to be, (though I am very lost with all of this) that the buffoons are strange creatures from another world who observe humanity with all their failings and weakness' and worries and find them hilarious. They dress up like the stupid homo sapiens and take the piss without any reservations because they have no social niceness or rules, in fact, they think all those silly rules and routines that we've created are the most amusing thing of all, and don't disguise our animal passions for power, money and lust at all.

So, for the first time our autocours don't have or need a nice, neat beginning, middle and end and we are all in the shit. I was reduced to hysterical laughter quite a few times this evening. I have NEVER, not even in the 'Solitude in the city' week, been at a point on Thursday night when we have had nothing, and I mean nothing, prepared to show.

My only, and very small, consolation is that everyone appears to be in the same boat, though often when people claim to have nothing they then pull out a three act masterpiece the next day. There's a difference between nothing and noooottthiiiinnnng and my group have the latter.

L**** quotes Thierry from last year who apparently used to say of a Friday, beer in hand, when they had nothing to show, 'Ca va, t'inquiet pas... On va faire quelque chose un peu plus abstracte, quoi...'

And God bless him. Anyway that's what I've been saying all week. And may God have mercy on our souls.

The sad, sad world of the blogger

2007-01-11T23:30:00.000Z

I've just wasted about half an hour clicking on the profiles of people who have the same favourite books and films listed. If you click on the book or film it brings up a list of the other people who have also listed that book or film. The result is strange and frightening. Of course I think that people will realise I'm trying to be amusing and ironic when I put my interests as napping and stripey baby clothes, but really to I am just another sad blogger.
Someone listed sighing, breathing and running in the wind as interests and someone else put diet coke.
I think perhaps I should just stop now and start doing something more useful with my time like rearranging my pencils.

Solitude in the City

2007-01-10T23:29:00.000Z

The 176 takes longer each day.
'...And then I said to im
fuck you, I said funkincheek,
funkin right its funkincheek
woz ee liyke, I meane...'

Eek out the time over the
'Standard, get your Standard here'
cryptic.
'Last stop ladies and gentlemen,
Last stop please'.
Funkincheek.

The sky glows yellow with
city night-time never blackness.
The night air still somehow cool
excitement. A peepshow of
lighted windows pass

she kisses his cheek, he turns,
mother tugs the racing car curtains
shut. Hands chop, slug red wine
each bright story told in silence.

The key grates in the lock
forces back and forward.
Upstairs the radio blares and
nearby an unmistakeable
rhythmic thudding...
'and also tonight we'll be talking to..'

Can't be bothered to cook tonight.
I’ll just open a can.
'Last stop ladies and gentlemen,
last stop please'.

The Pub Quiz (or bad losers)

2007-01-10T21:23:00.000Z

I can't believe it's taken me this long to write about the pub quiz. As we are of course all aware it's the cultural activities outside school that are so much more important than what we actually came here to do.

Just around the corners from A***'s by metro St Paul on monday nights (8.30/9pm) the pub quiz takes place, a bastion of all things british in the midst of Paris - cheese and onion or salt and vinegar crisps, beer and proper english tea. (You look behind the bar. There are plastic boxes marked 'french tea', 'proper tea (tetleys)' and 'posh earl grey'.)

At the moment at school we are all pretending to be children between the ages of about 3 and 7 years old. As you can imagine, this is hillarious. It's also lovely to see everyone in brightly coloured, sensible clothes. All our mum's can breathe a sigh of relief to think that our kidneys are all nicely covered with thick tights and wooley jumpers. Joss was talking today about the hierachys in the playground. In fact all the teachers have been talking heirachy all week. - Which child is the leader, which is the informer, which is the sucker-up and which is the competitive.

I had another Lecoq moment of self revelation when I found myself playing une deux trois soleil (grandmothers footsteps to the anglophones among us) to win!

And this is the one problem with the otherwise delightful pub quiz. We always do respectably, but we never win. And I want to WIN. What fun is playing if we don't actually win?

So, a call to arms. Come on everyone. Join us. Together, all 33 of us around a pub table for 4, we can win!!!

And the two stars of my Xmas - Mary Kindy Kaba and Jacob Hioti

2007-01-04T22:22:00.000Z

Cell Phones

Lecoqoscope

2007-01-04T21:57:00.000Z

New year, new resolutions.

Well actually new year, exactly the same resolutions as last year. Loose weight, learn french, finish the novel, get fit, blah, blah blah.

Thanks heavens I can look to the stars for cosmic guidance...

Capricorn (Dec 23-Jan 19)

Still plodding away there, eh, Capricorn? Ah, the little goat has many mountains to climb before it can find it's dream, and this year starts with foam related ones. No, not FAME... FOAM. Prepare to get hot and sweaty this term!

Aquarius (Jan 20 - Feb 19)

You're are sparking on all 27 of your creative cylinders at the moment and are fearsome to behold. Just be careful not to trample others in the process, but this should be a great year for you. Prepare to get hot and sweaty this term!

Pisces (Feb 20 - March 20)

Something seems rather fishy. Yes, fishy. Something, somewhere is not quite right and it's up to you to find out what. You have a lot to do, but don't do anything yet. Bide your time and all will become clear over the following weeks. Prepare to get hot and sweaty this term!

Aries (March 21 - April 20)

There you are, floating around dreamily again. Stop it! It's time to come down to earth, smell the coffee and start listening to other people's ideas in autocours. Ok, we all know you're the next Peter Brook or Paola, but just for the moment remember that other people sometime have good ideas too. Prepare to get hot and sweaty this term!

Taurus (April 21 - May 21)

You will meet your match this year whether in love, work or the realm of the spirits. Prepare yourself for a big cosmic punch as the planets collide over Mauri 7 and start raining down men. If you're still smoking stop now before the ban comes in. Prepare to get hot and sweaty this term!

Gemini (May 22 - June 22)

You're being pulled in all directions and are not quite sure which one to go in. Stop take a breath and try and think of yourself for a moment. Rushing headlong into decisions after presure from others won't, ultimately, help you or them. Prepare to get hot and sweaty this term!

Cancer (June 23 - July 23)

Scuttling along happily we've hardly noticed how far you've got, Cancer. Now is your time to take the spotlight and accept the due praise for your actions. Prepare to get hot and sweaty this term!

Leo (July 24 - August 23)

Oh Leo, Leo, Leo. What are we going to do with you, you big bully? Calm down and remember that sometimes other people are right too! Ok, we know it's usually you who wins in the end, but all that confidence can sometimes hurt peoples' feelings. Be careful. No matter how well padded they seem this term you can still cause a dent. Prepare to get hot and sweaty this term!

Virgo (August 24 - September 23)

Phew!! You are hot and sexy at the moment, and it's only going to got hotter in the coming months with the new moon circling your planet. If you want it, or him/her, you can get it. Nothing can stand in your way. Prepare to get hot and sweaty this term!

Libra (September 24 - October 23)

Stop having sex with strangers! That's all I have to say. Just stop it.
Prepare to get hot and sweaty this term!

Scorpio (October - November 22)

This year will be a tricky one for you Scorpio. Sometimes it will feel like you're not getting anywhere, in work, in love, in life. You'll feel like you're just treading water - and often your feelings will be quite right. Just remember though, horoscopes are a load of bollocks. Prepare to get hot and sweaty this term!

Sagittaruis (November 23 - December 22)

Navel gazing again? Thought so. Well, a little gazing at one's belly button can be forgiven from time to time. Just remember though, there is a world out there and perhaps it's a little bit more interesting from time to time than your belly. Prepare to get hot and sweaty this term!

The Christmas Party

2006-12-23T12:06:00.000Z

I was a bit of a sad sod and left very early after only drinking diet coke. But I had a nice time and talked to an interesting mixture of teacher, 1st years and my class.

I had, of course, high hopes of much amusement to be taken from watching Francois chatting up the first year girls in his dashing new cardigan. On the whole he was sadly disappointing, though I did see him talking with one girl from the Lem for quite a long time.

Then I went and saw Casino Royale which was EXTREMELEY enjoyable. Daniel Craig. Yum yum.

Le fin

2006-12-21T23:57:00.000Z

There we are. It's all over. All that work and stress and it's all over. And now it seems completely unimportant, as plays always do when they're over. There was some beautiful work though. I think our class did ourselves proud. And D*** and I made it right to the end, and some people's mum's said it was one of their favourtie scenes. My mother said, 'it didn't quite get there it the end'. She was quite right. That's what I thought too.

Funniest moment of the evening for me. Mine and another set of parents were still sitting in the auditorium when it was practically empty and I saw Fay and Pascal looking at them and whispering. I thought they must be wanting to lock up and were hanging around in order to hurry us up. I made a move towards them to say 'lets go' and as I did Pascal said, 'is that your mother,' I said 'no it's A***'s mother' and she said, 'no, but look at her coat, isn't it beautiful'. Aparently she and Fay were overcome with the coat and were gazing at it in wonder for a long time.

I am so exhausted my eyes are pricking. I can't remember when I last felt this tired. Not since the enquette I think.

Whatmas?

2006-12-20T07:52:00.000Z

Someone told me that it's nearly Xmas! And yes, I see that they're right. For those of you, like me, deeply involved in the get-home-at-past-midnight-start-rehearsing-again-at-10 kind of way who hadn't noticed, I can confirm, it is official xmas on Monday.
Happily I have managed to put in the seasonal order to Amazon, just late enough for it to be unlikely that anyone will have something to unwrap on the actual day.
I've also ordered myself a little present... an accordeon. Ahhh. Very exciting. Can't wait unitl it arrives. How happy my neighbours will be.

3 Days to go...

2006-12-18T23:25:00.000Z

It's after midnight and I've just got back from school. D*** and I are still in the soiree by the skin of our teeth. We presented on Friday and they were very unimpressed so we completely reworked it over the weekend and they said we can have a last chance at the dress tomorrow. So we're meeting tomorrow morning at 10am to work on it. So I'm going to stop doing this and go to sleep and hopefully wake up with lots of good ideas. Happily our film is in, so I'll be in a little bit of it at least.

Counting Down

2006-12-14T21:35:00.000Z

I've installed a thingy that counts how many people have looked at my site. If you go right down to the bottom of the blog on the left hand side - there it is! And very exciting too. Of course as I only installed it on Tuesday it doesn't give a realistic impression of the thousands of people who must be anxiously checking for updates everyday, but at the moment it reads a very satisfying 21. There are 21 people interested in what I have to say. The only thing is that I'm so excited by it I keep checking it myself, which I suppose counts as a hit, so it probably works out as about 10. Still, 10. Not to be sneezed at- there are 1- people who are interested in what I have to say.
My Mum, I suppose she's one of them. In fact I know she's one of them. I only recently gave her the address and wonder now if it may have been a mistake. I got an email today referring to Monday's entry about feeling stressed about the Soiree and checking up that I'm ok. (Yes Mother, I'm fine!)
And my computer obsessed Father. Both of them will have check it a few times. Then perhaps my brothers, at my urging, and maybe my friend W****. Hum. That rather cuts it down to about none.
Anyway, it's very exciting to know how often my friends and family are following my ramblings. La de la.
I'm feeling much more cheerful now. I spent the first few days of the week feeling as though everyone else had been invited to a party and I hadn't as they rushed around importantly unable to schedule enough rehearsals for the 28 different pieces that they were planning to propose.
As it's turned out D**** and I have put our heads together and have come up with an idea that tickles both of us a great deal, and have been working away at it all week. From the bed we work in and around we giggle and watch other groups shout and tear their hair out, and each other's. We've both really invested in it now and will be very disappointed if it doesn't get accepted, so keep your fingers crossed!

The Soiree

2006-12-11T22:49:00.000Z

I'm already stressed and it's only Monday.

On Friday we present our propositions for the Soiree to have them non, c'est pas ca-ed. Then we re-propose again on Monday for another sparky sessions with the teachers. We'll keep presenting and they'll keep cutting all next week. Our first performance for the students on Wednesday night can still be snipped for the Thursday when we show to the public, (ie our friends and family).

At the moment I have a large and realistic fear that I will only feature in this soiree as a scene shifter. I'm trying to feel positive and philosophical about it all but feel more like having a good cry instead. Maybe I'll listen to Radio 4 instead. That always helps.

Separated at birth?

2006-12-10T23:37:00.000Z

Paris, je t'aime

2006-12-10T23:13:00.000Z

The Voyage of the Neutral Mask

2006-12-10T23:12:00.000Z

I wake
Open unblinking eyes
Launch into another
Day. Before me the world
Beckons. I move without thought
Or hesitation, leap into new parts
Of myself.

Like Venus, the sea gave me birth.
Spluttered,
Swam forwards, knowing
And unknowing
But going always
On. Always more strength
In me for another

Step.
I breathe in the mountain
Filling each crevice, every
Soaring reach and
Snow-capped climb. Behind me
Tangling vines fall away
Uncurl shame-faced.

Quick
And deft I
Climb
Feet slip
Fingers
clutch handfuls of
Falling gravel.
The forest shrinks to a memory below
Me
The world a pancake reality.

The pregnant sun lowers herself into
Night and it’s alert silence creeps closer.
I watch.
The plain spreads itself around me.
I watch,
Wait for another day.

The Inner Critic

2006-12-10T23:06:00.000Z

To my shame I once did a course entitled, 'Befriending your inner critic'. I've placed this in the same mental box as puff ball skirts and people I shouldn't have snogged. (Yes everyone, puff ball skirts are still just as bad a fashion idea now as they were the first time around.)

The idea of this course was that we all have a negative internal voice that we must become aware of and fight against. The little voice that says, 'you're crap, you're ugly, you'll never amount to anything and you waste far too much time on the internet. How many times have you checked your nephew's baby blog today? Pheuf! How pathetic!'.

Ideally now, having done this course I am in an enlightened state where I am aware of the IC and able to fight back.

I'm not so sure about fighting back. I find my IC tends to be rather a good judge. After all, I do waste far too much time on the internet.

I've noticed recently that my inner critic has started to talk to me in french. In some ways I'm rather pleased. People often say sagely to me, 'ah yes, I really knew when I'd turned a corner with my french when I started dreaming in french'. Now I'm fairly sure that even after more than a year here my dreams are still thoroughly anglophone, but at least my inner critic is french.

'Mais qu'est-ce que tu fais la? C'est impossible! Ton francais, c'est affreux. Et tu es encore sur l'internet? Quelle heure est-il? As-tu pas un vie, tu passes trop du temps avec son ordinateur. C'est pas ca. Non, non. Et tu jeu pas.'

Hang on, I'm starting to see a theme. I think I have a hunch why the little bastard is french....

Thursdays

2006-12-07T23:11:00.000Z

I don't know what it is about Thursday nights, but for some ridiculous reason more often than not I find myself, at the point of exhaustion after two heavy nights at school wildly trying to be creative, (and failing), bent over my computer and blogging away. Perhaps it's just that my brain is so dead it has nothing else to give, or it's some kind of sick release. Whatever, here I go again.

Tonight I receive inspiration from two quarters. One: the mundane - strawberry jam on white bread. (My five-slices-a-morning father would be proud.) In fact I am involved in a rather unfortunate sugar kick at the moment. As the term goes on my abilty to a) exercise and b) resist the contents on boulangeries deteriorates.

My other muse comes in the form of a very amusing entry on 'mime this' about being tortured in class by Gaulier. (You see what a generous hearted blogger I am, recommending other blogs and praising their contents. How could you even suggest that I wouldn't be the easiest person in the world to work with in autocours? No? - my mouth hardly even knows how to form the word. Honestly. Ask anyone.)

Jennifer says this about le Jeu, the first in the series of month long course you do in the year at Gaulier (and I hope she will excuse me for cut and pasting!)

"Here we try to abandon our 'shitty ideas with their sell-by dates which give rabbit fart pleasure' and learn about the importance of breaking the audience's watches, not their balls. One day I come to class and am asked to save my life after losing a game of musical chairs by snorting like an elephant who hasn't had sex for forty years and who has just burst into a brothel. Another week I am in a cabaret bar singing Ella Fitzgerald whilst intermittently being asked to raise my eyes to the heavens and calmly recite 'Mummy, Daddy, look at me, I am onstage and I am fucking boring'."

So, as we all know, Gaulier used to teach at Lecoq about 30 years ago and then he left having had, or causing, a big row with Lecoq. As a shameful conspiracy theorist, I came up with the idea that the argument came about because when he left, P.G knicked two of the neutral masks.

When we started working with the masks Jin Wu told us that there had been 20 but that two had... and at this point he did miniature arm-flapping, which I took to mean that the masks had got broken and gone off to happy mask heaven. Then a friend at Gaulier said that they had two brown leather masks, one male, one female and that all the rest were white plastic copies of those. Aha! I thought, he knicked them, he stole the masks!! If anyone at Gaulier could let me know if they have Antonio Sartori written inside I would be very happy to know, as that would solve the riddle.

So my theory was that Gaulier had taken two of the masks when he left and that was why they not only didn't speak, but G actually moved to London until after Lecoq died and now doesn't say Lecoq's name to his students, but refers disparidgingly to, 'that other school I used to teach at, I can't remember eet's name. Chicken? Duck?' etc. etc.

My friend who studied at Lecoq 30 years ago disagrees. She says that Lecoq was such a power freak that just leaving the school where he held all his teachers under his control would have been enough to spark off the argument.

So now there are these two schools, very similar, very, very different, both in Paris. They do a similar curriculum - neutral mask, Greek tragedy, clown, buffoon - but in one year rather than two, and split into courses, so you don't have to do all of it if you don't want. Most of our teachers will have been taught and very influenced by Gaulier. Last year, while G was ill, Joss did some moonlighting teaching classes there.

Similar too is the acerbic teaching style, though none of our teachers are as rude as Gaulier. There's someone there at the moment who was in my class last year who was incredibly camp, but not gay. I was convinced he was gay. I'm still convinced he's gay, but I've never said so to his face, and I am known for my great lack of tack. In fact I have told other men I think are gay that they are. (Oh, just give it time, I said to Big Max. Opps!)

Gaulier, however has no such reserve. 'You're gay!!' he yells each time N***** gets up to improvise. 'I am not, I am not!' N**** shouts back, flapping his wrists around camply. But, apparently, it has the desired effect and N****, through his anger, is able to escape his misguiding campness, if only for a few seconds.

Beach Volleyball

2006-12-04T22:34:00.000Z

I mentioned several entries ago that a few years ago a misguided group started their Exodus or Hurricane autocours in the neutral mask, with a beach volleyball session. They claimed, as we all claim about our autocours when they are stopped before the end, that it would have got really good if they'd just had the chance to keep going. The next image was genuis, the next scene was fantastic. It was just about to turn a corner. We've all been there.
Imagine then, my delight and horror when, last Friday, watching the first year's hurricane's one group started on a beach with, yes, I kid you not, two people throwing a ball to each other, others playing (sandcastles?!) and some having a nice swim in the sea.
Paola stopped it characteristically quickly.
'What do you think you're doing?' she said. (Or words to that effect). 'The neutral mask doesn't put on suntan lotion! The neutral mask doesn't go on holiday in Maroc!'
Then, to my even greater amazement, she told the group to chose a later point in their piece, when they'd stopped applying lotion and finished off the airport chick-lit, and re-start their piece.
Nevertheless the profs ripped it to sheds at the end, but I think that group have no idea how lucky, or unlucky, they were for that to happen. That's the first time I have ever, ever seen or heard of a second chance being given.
Another of the second years turned to me and said, 'they're going soft! This school is going to the dogs!!' But then he does tend speak with a lot of exclaimation marks.

More pictures

2006-12-03T11:34:00.000Z

An amendment

2006-12-03T10:46:00.000Z

A friend who reads my blog told me indignantly that I had to change a previous entry. 'Susannah is not the one of the profs who is hatchet-faced!'

And she's quite right. Though Susannah did look extremely inimpressed by our attempts at melodrama the first time we met her, as I said then, first impressions are often mistaken, and in this instance so was I.

At the moment we are producing our free-ist and best impros for Susannah. After thursdays class with Paola in dragon mode, we all released with a whoosh in Susannah's and there was some fantastic work.

There are two things that she does specifically to produced this:- one, she doesn't immediately stop an impro if someone does something not juste as Paola would, she lets in run on and often it turns into something really good. Two, she genuinely enjoys what we're doing and I feel that rather than being frustrated by our crapness there is a joy and a pleasure for her in watching us work. A sense of fun and play and amusment. Respect.

So I take it all back. She's not hatchet faced at all. She's lovely.

too BIG

2006-11-30T22:05:00.000Z

I wouldn't have thought it possible.

I though it was impossible.

Presque impossible.

Too big. For anything, at Lecoq to be too big, but yes, today, finally - the moment has arrived. And not just once. Twice, in the same day! Imagine that if you can.

It was invigorating class with Paola, all thunder and lightning. She's bullets man. After yesterdays laughter session with Joss this was a sharp return to the reality of how hopeless we all are. She entered, with her large march like a little, black, Italian raincloud. She knew just how bad we were going to be. Two victims: up they went. Non! Non! C'est pas ca. No, it wasn't ca. Or ca. Or ca. I rather enjoyed my beating. I was only sent off to re-enter about five times, so I had it very lightly. How old are you? She asked. You seem about two.

I found this very amusing as many of my friends have commented on how much my mask resembles my six month old nephew, who is also my screensaver. I think I had him on the brain when I was moulding my mask. They have they same large cheeks and rather gormless expression. Ahh.

And then it came. 'Your mask is too big. Look at these holes under your cheeks.'

Too big. Too big. I felt almost proud.

And then again with Susannah! Not specifically about my mask this time, but that our jeu was too big. Very interesting actually. She was saying it could be big and small at the same time. Or small with a large intensity. Not always the big bodies. Perhaps this is what happens in the week seven curriculum at Lecoq.

(extract from: The 'How to be a terific teacher at Lecoq!' Handbook.)

"Week Seven.

Hopefully by this stage, after a year and a quarter of being told to be bigger the students will have achieved a modicum of largeness. If not there is no hope, but we'll keep taking their money anyway. At this point it is useful to remind the students that they can be small and precise in their largeness. Ideally this should reduce some of the arm flailing."

At least this week we do all know how bad our autocours are. The feedback will be no surprise. I for one will be nodding my head along with the profs as they rip our mayhem to shreds.

Masks

2006-11-27T19:33:00.000Z

Ahh, what bliss! We're doing masks again. After all my fears that it wouldn't work my mask, apparently, does play, so I'm very chuffed and all geared up to make another one. In fact, all in all, it's a good lot. No real horrors.

Poor Joss came into teach us even though he had a bery bad colb. It seemed to have gone right through to his hair which was standing up at unimaginable angles. He still gave a very good teacher. Ahh, if I could be a teacher like him, how happy I would be! Or an actor.

Its such a lovely thing to be able to do, to make a mask. It's one of those things, a bit like quiche, that you think will be really difficult to make, but in fact is very simple.

Mask au lecoq

(serves 1-33 drama students)

Ingredients
1 broadsheet
1 large piece of clay
vaseline
wallpaper paste
tarlatan or craft paper (opptional)
paints
water
elastic

Take one newspaper, shred.
Mix wallpaper paste in a bowl. Leave aside.
Mould a large piece of clay into a face shape. Be careful not to make it too flat or it won't play. Look at it from all angles at you make it and turn it up and down to see where the light falls. When throughly blended cover with vaseline.

Take the bowl of wallpaper paste and the morcels of newspaper. Cover each side of each segment of paper with the paste and then place in layers on your face mould. If you have time you can leave the layers to dry between additions, if not don't worry. If you want to make it tougher you can add a layer of tarltan or craft paper.

Set aside for two days in a warm, dry place and then, carefully remove from the mould.

Paint, not too brightly, usually in skin tones.

Finally, make holes for the eyes and at the side for the elastic to go through. Attach the elastic and volia! One delightful mask, suitable for all occasions.

top with basil and grated parmesan to serve.

What day is it?

2006-11-23T21:56:00.000Z

I keep checking this blog to see if there are any new entries, and of course there aren't because I haven't written them.

We're all a bit week 6ish and trying to make masks. Mine is in the process of going horribly wrong. For some reason it hasn't stuck properly. Did Jacques ever have problems with glue? I don't think so.

And it's been raining. Grrr.

There are many other lecoqbloggers afoot. Check out

http://mimethis.blogspot.com/

and apparently there's a myspace one too, but I don't do myspace. I'm already wasting enough time on the internet as it is.

The first years are doing L'Exode at the moment. I overheard two having a serious conversation that went something like this.
...'but, I think it's a bit more serious, Exodus, than someone just going out for a little walk. I think there's more urgency in them going'.

I think so too.

Apparently a few years ago there was a group who started their with the neutral mask playing a game of volley ball on a beach. Perhaps they were planning to continue with a game of hide and seek in the forest and
grandmothers footsteps up the mountain, but sadly, they never got that far and were okay mercied early on in the game. Literally.

Lecoq - The Quiz

2006-11-20T00:39:00.000Z

Answer the multiple choice questions and then add up the answers to discover which kind of a Lecoq student you are.

1. How many?

a) 5

b) 7

c) 9

2. What size?

a) Small, but perfectly formed

b) Medium

c) Large

3. What is the most effective way to insure a place in the second year?

a) Work hard and come into school to warm up early every day.

b) Sleep with a teacher.

c) Have rich parents.

4. What is the most effective way to become a teacher at Lecoq?

a) Having the right father.

b) Speaking good French.

c) Studying at Ecole Jacques Lecoq.

5. What kind of nut?

a) Hazelnut?

b) Walnut?

c) Nutcase?

6. What kind of work are you most lightly to get when you leave Lecoq?

a) Bar work.

b) Working at the Royal National Theatre.

c) Setting up your own theatre company and doing one night stands at small fringe theatre venues.

7. Is it a good idea to study at Lecoq?

a) Yes

b) No

c) I wish I’d gone to Gaulier instead.

8. Which one of the teachers is most lightly to pull a student at the Christmas party?

a) Paola

b) Christophe

c) Francois

d) Joss

e) Jason

f) Krikor

0-15

Oh dear. You really don’t spend enough time socializing, do you? Don’t you realise the whole point of being at drama school is getting drunk and drinking coffee, not learning about theatre. Plenty of time for that when you’re out of work after you’ve finished. Start gossiping and hanging out in Mauri 7 before it’s too late!

15-30

You seem to have the work-social life balance well tuned. You are a finely honed physical beast with a penchant for black lycra. I bet you get your ideas used in Autocours all the time, don’t you? Grrrr! You go girl!

30-50

You sad, sad person. How much do you know about this school. There is a world outside of rue du faubourg st denis you know. You’re in Paris. For God’s sake, don’t waste two years of your life in Mauri 7, get out there and explore one of the most beautiful city’s in the world. You’ll learn more in an afternoon sketching in a café than in a week of trying to understand Krikor.

1. All 1 point clever dick.
2.a. non, c’est pas ca. b bordel! C. pas mal.
3. a 1 b 2 c 3
4. A 9 b 3 c 5
5. A 0 b 5 c 10
6. A 10 b 0 c 3
7. A 10 b 0 c 3
8. A 1 b 2 c 98 d 0 e 5 f -98

Work and Play

2006-11-18T11:18:00.000Z

lecoqblog

Last Night

2006-11-18T11:15:00.000Z

My vague idea of having an alcohol free weekend has started very badly. I am not very hung over, but I was still in Mauri 7 about 2 o’clock this morning. I had not planned to spend my weekend in the place I spend most of my leisure time during the week, and that is what finally sent me home. But it took a while. It was a very good party.

Emil, Pablo and the beautiful Saira (from last year) were playing with their band, Scandamanics. As usual they were very good, although almost entirely drowned out by smoke and conversation.

Jason and Francois were both there, the latter in very high spirits. Jason’s mood was not quite so inflated, though he seemed quite cheerful too. Francois is rather interesting. Well all the teachers are rather interesting to us purely by virtue of being our teachers. Francois doesn’t teach the second year. (We were introduced yesterday to the hatchet-faced Susannah who is going to be teaching us next, the first time I’ve thought, ‘oh dear‘, when I’ve looked at one of the staff. But I may well be wrong. I was about lots of people from other classes I didn’t know until this year.)

So, although Francois has never taught us, I knew him by sight. But more from seeing him in Mauri 7 than in the school itself. He seemed to have metamorphosised from a scruffy drageur into a frencher looking version of Jason over the summer holidays. Light trousers, pressed shirt, lace-up leather ankle books and neatly coiffured hair. A reformed character, shaking his head in line with the other teachers during Autocours.

However, last night his hair seemed to have re-grown and disarranged itself and his clothes and complexion were once more creased. I overheard one of the first years telling a friend that he was hoping that Francois might be more friendly on Monday morning after tonight. ‘I just got a good few kisses on both cheeks from that man’, he said. Unfortunately for the first year I’m afraid those, like most kisses the French give each other, will turn out to be completely empty and meaningless. Well not completely meaningless. They obviously said a lot about what Lecoq Jnr had been partaking of that evening. I’m sorry to say that I suspect he hadn’t had a proper supper before going out.

Just before I left he was giving the hopeful first year a beer-gelled mohican. I’m afraid that this too will turn out to be completely meaningless in the cold light of Monday morning. So, if that stuff about the third eye contact and not looking at the students directly is true, where do beery hairstyles come in?

C'est Pas Ca

2006-11-16T22:31:00.000Z

Mais c'est pas ca
Le jeu.
Non. Mais non...
C'est pas ca.

Ok, merci.
Vous avez trompez
Le theme,
Le jeu

C'est pas ca.
Qu'est-ce que c'est ca?
Cette, n'importe de...
Quoi?

Ou est l'espace?
Ou est la soupe?
Pourquoi cette,
BORDEL?!

Aieeeee,
Aieeee.
Non.
Merci.

Good Cop - Bad Cop

2006-11-15T22:41:00.000Z

At the moment it feels a little as though the profs are playing a little game with us. The 'push them harder, push them harder' game. On the other hand it's dead on half-way through the term, so perhaps we have lost our initial energy and enthusiasm and are being a bit crap and therefore need a shove up the communal arse.
I strongly suspect, though am not completely sure that there is a strategy to the arc of the teachers’ response to our work. Sometimes last year I felt we got an overly good reaction for the Autocours at the end of a section of work because we were all getting depressed and weary and ditto often the response seems to be negative in order to push us to find better work when they feel we are capable of it. This week we are definitely being pushed, I think because we’re about to end a section of work and they want us to really find it.
I have a lot of feelings about this system of teaching. As a teacher myself I have always tried to teach from the good, hopefully allowing confidence to build and the bad to drop away. I think they would say that they don’t talk about good and bad, but when things are truthful and just and when they aren’t. That they don’t want us to fulfil their desires, just to be good - i.e. truthful and entertaining. Certainly we can all see when a group does get it ‘right’ and it works.
I had an interesting conversation with a friend who studied here 30 years ago when Lecoq was still alive and Gaulier still taught there. She had just had an ex-Lecoq teacher staying with her and he’d been telling her about his training to be a teacher. There is a third year for people to train to be teachers, though there haven’t been any in my time here. He was one of the last to be trained by Lecoq himself, he said he must have known he was dying because that year five people were training instead of one or two. Each week someone would be hauled over the coals and humiliated in front of the others. Perhaps unsurprising given the overall teaching methods. And now I think the teachers are much ‘nicer’ to us than Lecoq was. He was, without any doubt, a genius. The pedagogie is extraordinary and must have come from an amazing mind. But also, from what people have said, he was a real manipulator who played people against one another to stay in a position of undisputed fear and power. He taught something about a third eye, or eye contact where you never actually looked at the students in the eye. Or something like that. Weird and scary.
If it's a game of Good Cop - Bad Cop, Paola is definitely the Bad Cop. She keeps telling us that its the second year and that now she's going to really push and provoke us, but in that her behaviour is not noticeably different to last year. Perhaps she is a little more personal and has made more people cry. The thing is, when she says things that make people cry, they tend to be true. I think that there’s a more effective way of giving people information that they’ll be able to take on board. When you get scared and nervous it becomes much more difficult to improvise - you close up. She says that acting is tough and you need to be tough. She certainly is.
Joss then is the Good Cop, though even he is pushing us a bit more this week. And Christophe is the BFG somehow accidentally teaching at Lecoq with the most extraordinary selection of 80’s tracksuits. Sitting next to each other watching Autocours Christophe and Joss seem to match, both dishevelled, hair pointing in all directions, gently shaking their heads at disaster after disaster while Paola rants and rages.

Kissing in Paris

2006-11-10T08:24:00.000Z

The Board of Culture and Tourism
For Paris made a decision.
In the summer months, late spring
And early autumn when the days
Are still warm and the sun
Lengthens and glows along Haussman’s Boulevards
various couples, (pre-selected)
will be paid a modest fee
to kiss on street corners.

Some aspects will be left to their own
Discretion; the length of the kiss,
whether they hold each other close
Or snatch while the air pulls
Them gently apart. Eye contact is
Optional, but preferred.

The couples themselves are carefully chosen.
Not too old, not too young, though
Obviously youth is preferable.
Beauty is tricky.
No one wants to imply
that love is only for the beautiful but,
well, Paris is beautiful and these couples
Should be a subtle reflection
Of it’s timeless charm.

Paris: City of Love. A place
Where anything is possible.
Not only for honeymooners or
Tentative first liaisons, no.
Here you can even find an occasional couple
Past the first flame of passion,
Dignified in their embrace.

As a marketing exercise this
Is hard to fault. In sleek suits,
Smoothly coiffured, they congratulate
themselves on their subtly.
They’re onto a winner.
And sure enough the initial
Statistical reports are enormously satisfying.
Tourism is up and each per capita spend
Has increased by 0.24%.
The French economy will be saved.

And all along the Siene
And in the Jardins Des Luxembourg
and outside cafes
Couples linger and kiss,
For a small fee.

Jessica

2006-11-07T23:57:00.000Z

Okay, so it turns out that Jessica Lange wasn't a student here which is, on reflection, not all that surprising on a closer inspection of her work.
I have never seen Jessica portray any of the classic hallmarks of a Lecoq student - no arms flailing, no talking at the same time as the rest of her company increasing in volume and then suddenly all turning in another direction for yet more wide legged arm-flailing. No, I can believe that Jessica didn't study here.
On the other hand Geoffery Rush, if I remember his performance in that film about the pianist he got the oscar for, does portray some of the traits. Remember the bit on the trampoline? Quite a lot of arm waving if I remember correctly....

Autocours

2006-11-05T22:24:00.000Z

The teaching, or the learning at the school is built around weekly Autocours. The students divide themselves into groups, are given a title and an hour and a half a day to work on it. The products are presented every Friday before all the staff and students in the Grand salle. In the second year it changes slightly, more time to work and less people watching. The first years aren’t allowed to watch the second year’s Autocours, I think because they are in a process of discovering and if they saw a more developed style would perhaps try to copy it. Or possibly just because they’ll be doing the same next year and they don’t want to give it away.
Autocours came about as part of the student revolutions of ‘68, or at least that’s the story I heard. The students at the time said, ‘we want to make our own theatre’ and the result is the weekly slaughter session in the grand salle.
To be fair it must be awful for the teachers to have to sit and watch groups of students coming up with the same thing over and over again and making the same mistakes. Sometimes it seems as though we have all disconnected our brains and imaginations and come up with some of the worst theatre I’ve ever seen. However, they are tough. The teaching style is to not say that things are good, unless people have got them just right, so it tends to feel as though you’re getting a litany of all the things you’ve done wrong. If you get a pas mal or a c’est bien you’re doing really well. But it tends to be ‘non, c’est pas ca’. On the other hand there’s an awful lot of dreadful theatre out there, and in here, so it’s good to try and rid the world of it.
A lot of the problem with creating the autocours is communication with your group. Perhaps 80%. Or even more. Probably more.
I saw one of the first years throw herself into the arms of another girl and weep for a full five minutes last week. The comforter looked very concerned, and I did wonder if she’d had some bad news from home, perhaps a relative ill or dying, or at least being dumped by her boyfriend. At the end of five minutes the other girl asked, gingerly what the matter was, and she uttered the immortal words, ‘my group, we don’t listen to each other!’ at which point she was dumped by her friend who suddenly lost all her sympathy.
There have been some beautiful moments in the creation of Autocours. One of my favourite moments of last year was when we were preparing our ‘Exodus’ which is done in the neutral mask. The neutral mask is epic, big, clean and bold. It doesn’t live in a flat in Paris, it doesn’t make soup. It goes hunting and never gets tired, that sort of thing. Exodus is in the arena of immigration, a disaster occurs and people are forced to leave their homes because of war, flood or famine. One of our group suggested the mask go through a passport check. Hum.
My other two favourite moments are from class. At the end of the year you create characters and come into school in costume. One person came dressed in a white linen suit and straw hat. When Paola asked him his character’s name he replied, ‘Don Corelone’. Paola said, ‘you mean he’s Italian? Be careful, x, I’m Italian. Find another name’. The scary thing was I don’t think he really understood why Don Corelone was not a good choice for a character name.
Playing a scene with one overriding characteristic- happy, clumsy, frightened, proud, etc. They played the scene and another boy was asked what his adjective had been. Blind, he replied. I was very impressed that the teacher managed to control himself while the rest of the class howled with laughter. He put his head down and held his mouth and just stayed that way for a few moments before re-surfacing to explain that that hadn’t been quite what he meant.
At the moment my year are in companies and have been since the first day of term. We divided ourselves up one, by one by choice. A bit like picking football teams at school, but the other way around because the people sitting down chose which group they went to. It’s very interesting to me how then, the groups have a very distinct character.
One group works incredibly fast and incredibly loud. They’re always shouting at each other and looking unhappy and stressed. They love each other and they hate each other. They think they have the best and most interesting ideas and in some ways are right. They’re always trying to do what the other people won’t, or rather not to do what other people will.
Another is the nicey-McNice-nice group. Their work hasn’t yet quite hit the mark, it’s rather soft and pleasant, though there are sometimes good bit in it. When they work they say things like, ‘yes I am agreeing with both of you’ and ‘I love my group’.
Then there’s the long group. Everything they do is very loooong. It starts really well, but then it goes on and on doing the same thing again and again. All they need to do is cut whatever they do in half and they’d probably have it sussed.
And finally there’s the slick group. Slick and sharp. Howya!
In an psychological experiment a group of people who didn’t know each other were asked to group themselves randomly, without talking about it. Amazingly, people group themselves together, unknowingly, according to type. For example, people who had been adopted at birth put themselves in the same group, but without talking or knowing that they had. Rather interesting in terms of the self-selection of these companies.
Phew, that was a long one. Quite enough for tonight I think.

Abandon Hope all ye who enter here!

2006-11-02T21:37:00.000Z

Coming out of either Chez Jeanette or Mauri 7 you find yourself in Rue du Faubourg St Denis. Overshadowing it is a mini arc du triomphe, in absurd contrast to the sleazy hustle-bustle that surrounds the school. There are fruit and vegetable stalls outside shops, dirt and old cardboard boxes lying around, always people slouched against railings, smoking and chatting and around one o'clock and six o'clock groups of multi-coloured students in a dense cluster around the heavy iron door that leads into the passageway and up to the school itself.
Last year the cobbles of the passageway were constantly chewed-up with never-ending, ineffectual building work. You negotiated your way around workmen and past piles of sand and rubble. Now, in time for the 50th Anniversary celebrations that went on this summer and will continue throughout the year, the clean, grey stones are attractively even.
At the end of the passage, after a gasp of a courtyard, you push another door, this time smooth, dark wood and find yourself inside the school itself. The posters advertising theatre in Paris on the pinboard to your immediate left have been cleared away and in their place is a fantastic collage of passport photos of all the second year students that have attended the school. Great fun is to be had finding first yourself and your friends, then the teachers and finally marvelingng at the fashion choices people have been making for the last 50 years.
It's amazing how you can tell what era a photo is from, not just from the haircut and clothes of the protagonist, but the colour of the reproduction, the fuzz and black and white of the early years, the sickly orange of the 60's through to the sharpened variety of now. I've found Paola, Joss, Jin-Wu, Jason and Christophe. I've laughed at my own photo (eek!) and checked out the people from last year I fancied. I've spotted Simon McBurney, Marcello Magni and Lilo Baur but I'm still looking for Geoffery Rush and Jessica Lange.
Then in, past a table with flyers and general info on Paris and quite often a basket of walnuts from Fay's, (Lecoq's widow) garden in the country. Past the desks where Martine and the other wonderful secretaries sit and into the corridor with the changing rooms and toilets leading off it.
Whoosh! And youÂre in the grand salle, the heart of the school. I think it started life as a music hall venue and certainly in one of it's previous incarnations was used for boxing tournaments. There's a fuzzy black and white photo upstairs in the mezzanine level that looks down onto the grand salle of a boxing match. The ring is in the centre of the space, a punch flying, white light blinding out the action and unintelligible, upturned faces all around it, blurred excitement, emotion and action. For me it's everything about the school and that room. I like to think of those matches, old sweat, adrenaline and excitement seeping into the fabric of the building, learning it, aging it ready for the black-lycra clad students to come tumbling in.

Mauri 7

2006-10-29T10:13:00.000Z

More important than a school itself is the place everyone goes to drink in afterwards, and for Lecoq students that place is definitely Mauri 7. In itself it can hardly be described as one of the more appealing cafes in Paris. It's hard to imagine how the iminenent smoking ban will affect it. At the moment in it constantly wreathed in a slimey film of cigarette smoke. Peering deeper into the smoke you'll either see a group of Albanian gangsters huddled round a motley pack of playing cards or one of drama students either still in the regulatory black movement clothes, or more dishevelledly artistic, (oh this old thing...), with a pile of plastic bags and food containers and half drunk coffees littering the table and moaning, 'but my group just won't listen to each other - we all talk at once!'. You can eat your own food in Mauri 7 whereas you have to buy it in Chez Jeanette. Mauri 7 -1 Chez Jeanette - 0.

Historically it was the cafe directly opposite, Chez Jeanette, that got our custom. People do still go there when they want to be quiet and get away from the main drag of students, but basically its Mauri 7 that gets our money. It's cheaper. Mauri 7 - 2 Chez Jeanette - 0.

Jeanette herself is a strange creature. I think the French word is acariatre, which roughly translates as cantakerous. Paola, our tiny, fierce professeur once said you can't open the door but she sighs as though the world is just too tiring and irritating to exist in. Drinking a coffee there you walk the tightrope of Jeanette's mood swings. Whereas across the street the lycra-clad Tim welcome's us with smiles and learned all our names while the teachers were still calling us all Jane. Mauri 7 - 3 Chez Jeanette - 0.

But Jeanette's is more beautiful with it's high ceilings, mirrors, little booths to sit in and its fading wallpaper. And it has the tradition of years of students tussling out problematic autocours and finding a way of creating together and then relaxing together afterwards. It's still the official venue after the second year soirees at the end of each term. Mauri 7- 3 Chez Jeanette - 2.

We have spent the past two Friday nights at Mauri 7. Last Friday for the first party of the term. A chance for the second years to seek out any lightly snogs amongst the first years, generally make them feel welcome and bask in the superiority of being a year on and having made it through the selection process into second year and for the first years to ignore this irritating condescension.