'when people doesn't love you, you have to change'

now there's a life lesson right there....

Today Monsier Gaulier said:

“When people doesn’t love you, you have to change. Otherwise, never we will love you.”

“When you watch Mime you smile like you are constipated. When you watch Clown you pee in your trousers.”

“When you are acting it is an international catastrophe. We think we are in Japan. We think we are in the north east of Japan with the tsunami and nuclear disaster when you are acting."

“When she arrive like Fidel Castro, like Fidel Castro happy after the Cuban revolution and dancing, did you want to shoot her?”

“If you aren’t happy to be with us, you can’t be idiot. You have to be really happy to be with us to be so, so idiot”

We only did one exercise in class today. Enter, say ‘good good’ and we will tell you if we love you or not.

For all of us to have a go it took 4 hours.

People, desperate to stay on stage, tried all kinds of things and he directed some a little, and played with others (its all a continuum really). Some people got barely a minute before he made them leave. It's amazing to watch people look like they are suffering so much up there, but also seeing how badly they want to be on stage. There were a bunch of good discoveries.

One lesson that got a beautiful example was: if you accidentally drop something, make it look like it was part of the choreography. Keep making it look like you are doing the choreography when you pick it up. It was a moment of gold when he told someone this today: her brilliant and ridiculous efforts to pretend that she wasn’t doing every move purely for the purpose of picking up the object she had dropped.

The other thing that was fabulous today was his use of the drum. Lifting his stick threateningly in the air as though he was about to hit it. And if he hits it you have to leave. Watching people respond in electric panic to the lifting of the stick. Their attempts to do something, anything to save the show.

We had an amazing moment where a guy just began to dance, twist, looking out at the audience, giving everything to us in an absurd, roll on the floor laughing kind of way.

In my go, I was still struggling with the tension between ‘you have to push harder, to show your spirit’ and ‘don’t play so much’ both of which he has said to me. It was not a complete flop, but if the bar is 10, I maybe hit a 2 if I’m lucky. His main direction was, that I had to give more life, more spirit.

People laughed 3 times that I remember. Once when I came on (after he gave me a second chance ‘out of the goodness of my heart’) and I said something like ‘I’m still very confused…’ Another moment where I just threw out my arms wide. And a third time when I said all the audience were ‘very cute, a little bit dead, but very cute.’

(When they laugh, your clown is close to your body, write that in your head, 'when I do this, my clown is close to my body.')

Actually, I don’t know what was actually working in any of those moments. But here is my head and I have written it.

At the end of class today he said:

“Did I like teaching you today? Yes. Do I want to teach you tomorrow? Yes.”

It made Luke a little teary.