melbourne festivals

Luke and Christy are home in Melbourne from Edinburgh. Edinburgh loved Bubblewrap and all kinds of touring plans are in progress. (2012? 2013? singapore? china? eee!)

In the meantime Nona is parked, big green gypsy truck out of the front of my house. We have late night conversations while we all brush our teeth. Me sitting on a towel on the bathroom floor in my pyjamas, catching up about all the Fringe goings on.

I’m doing It’s Not Circus, It’s Science, with Kate as part of the Northcote Kid’s Festival. I have Monsieur Gaulier in my head all the time. ‘When they are laughing, your clown is close to your body.’ ‘You have to know that you are a bad student but be optimistic that they will love you anyway.’ ‘A clown doesn’t know anything about being a scientist.’

People ask me what I learned in clown school and it’s so daunting to try and explain. And even when I was making the show with Kate I wasn’t sure I knew. But now I’m performing a clown show I know. I gained Gaulier’s eye; a recognition of the moments I am actually clowning. I understand the times that don’t work. ‘That was ‘orrible what you just did.’ A drill in my head to remember what clown is; moment to moment, his voice in my head. It’s taken until day three of performing this show to understand that he can keep coaching me as long as I perform.

Our audience were lovely today. Tiny children, still totally captivated by the show. A crew of boys afterwards coming up to tell me how to make a volcano in a sandpit and what started the universe. Amazing.

Going to see Cut Snake and I heart Jack and No Such Thing as Normal and Porcelain Punch. Yay Melbourne Fringe.

last day of school

Because I didn’t get up on stage yesterday, I came in with a little drag to my feet and a feeling like I wouldn’t get up today. Like it was already in some way over and I would watch and not work so hard on the last day. Part of me already disappointed at myself for having given up.

The exercise today was to tell the story of our biggest flops over the past four weeks.

One guy had a brilliant moment. He has been an unmitigated disaster onstage since he started. He has looked harsh, fake, arrogant, un-playful and been sent off stage at the earliest possible opportunity every single time. So much so that it seems amazing that he stayed.

His moment today was the kind of thing you wouldn’t believe in fiction. He stood up with a gentle smile, self-depreciating, self-aware and lightly, simply told the story of three of his worst disasters. We shouted with laughter and gave him a rolling round of applause as he took off his nose and walked towards his seat. It was like a miracle, and such a relief.

Gaulier was his usual self, insulting and demanding, but the people who got up were given time and pushed to an extent that hasn’t happened before.

Best insult for the day goes to: “He is not a clown, he’s a cousin of Slava and just he is waiting for the snow.”

Clown philosophy moment: “You stay nice in your shoes: you can’t meet your clown.”

It became clear after break that he was accepting people to get up who were at the worse end of the spectrum during the month. I put up my hand to see if I could have a turn, partially hoping for the compliment of being told “not you” and partially so I wasn’t disappointed in myself for not trying.

me, semi-gorilla, waiting to see if I get a turn

He nodded at me last, after saying yes to a little list of others and right until the end I didn’t know if I would get a turn. Fifteen minutes before we finished he found me with his eyes and I got up.

It’s been confusing because he has been making everybody yell. And I can see what works about it. The flushed faces the focussed eyes, the funny involuntary body movements. People are told again and again – “louder louder louder”

But it has been my quiet voice coming in beside my loud voice that has made people laugh the whole time.

So I yell because I think that is the exercise. But the shouting voice doesn’t seem to work. It makes me not notice the audience. I see Amy with her hands over her ears and tell him I don’t want to hurt my audience. He directs me to speak quieter and more deeply. After a bit of playing I find something so deep it almost clenches the back of my throat. People laugh.

He sends me off the stage. “We like her better when she leaves.” The thing that feels bad about him saying this is that it was the lesson of the first day. And I still haven’t really learned it. When he calls me back on I come but too fast (too confident?) and he sends me back again.

Then he tells me I am fantastic.

I stand there, just by the wings looking at his face and he is telling me how good I am. And I have watched him do this with other people, to pull out their vulnerable, sweet, post-compliment smile.

So I don’t believe him.

I don't know what to do. “I don’t trust you.” I say. Because it is better than trying to give him the face he is looking for. The face you can’t fake. No-one laughs. He says something about being put in a hard position if I don’t trust him.

“I thought I should tell the truth.” I say, still in my funny deep voice. They suddenly break with laughter. It's always so strange and amazing when the group bursts with laughter when I'm on stage. I have no idea what it is that makes them laugh.

I spend a bunch of time up there, taking what he gives and trying to give what he asks.

At some point I say, “I’m so confused.” I have given up trying to understand, but I’m right there on the stage giving them my confusion. They laugh again. I don't know why they laugh, but it makes me so happy.

He asks me to sing, softly, the best song I know. I sing the song already in my head, looking directly at him the whole time.

He ducks his head occasionally and begins to mutter little compliments at me, so quietly I can hardly hear them. I am on the edge of tears the whole time and they are love-tears. The tears that come when you are entirely ready to hold and be held. Each time he compliments me I show something on my face. A kind of smile. Happy and embarrassed to be complimented. Not trusting the compliment. I have no idea what the smile looks like. I don’t look away from his eyes.

In the end he says, “This is a good clown for you. So sensitive. Saying things like, “I don’t trust you.” Receiving compliments." He pauses and then: "You had a sensitive family”

I suppose I did.

And of course when you are looking for the childlike, naïve, clown-person in someone, that part of them will probably reflect their own childhood.

As my turn finished the clock hit 6pm and it was time to start saying goodbyes.

friends getting their photo taken before they say goodbye

Goodbye Philippe (kiss on the bristly grey beard)

Goodbye new friends (wandering the night-time streets together in a last-ditch attempt to gather all the love, hugging goodbye outside bars and on metro steps, at one, two, three in the morning)

Goodbye Paris (gazing up at the now-familiar 19^th century skylines as I walk, my gorilla costume strapped to the outside of my pack, down to Pigalle station and on to the Eurostar)

boredom and beauty and the pause

Life lesson for the day:

“If, when you are yourself you are more funny than when you are not yourself, it is better to be yourself no?”

Christy does handstands on the steps to the station on the way to school in the morning.

Gaulier presses play on some hilarious Chinese music at a seriously high level of cheesiness. Judy turns around with an inexplicable look on her face, like she is bursting with something (laughter, tears?) she mimes the words and dances exactly to the music and then dissolves: “My father used to listen to this music”

Judy who turns into pure gold when her father’s music begins to play

Then he tells us the exercise is to perform Beijing Opera 1986 with our friend. Over and over again I sit there watching the desperate panic as people sweat and strain to stay on the stage.

He says of one couple: “She remind me of when I a kid and I got kick out of school by gymnastic teacher. It is good to remember no? But him I didn’t remember anything when he was acting.” It shifts something in my brain, thinking that it is fun to watch a clown because we are reminded of our childhood. Not just because the clown is like a non-specific child.

He says to another guy: “You are idiot and it is good you are idiot, but we have to see the clown who wants to do a good show.” I make a note in my head. To see the clown who wants to do a good show is different to seeing the person who wants to be a good clown.

The thing I learn the most from is when Gaulier stops the exercise and gets people to describe some of the flops that they made over the past few weeks.

I think I never understood about listening to the flop until now. That you make the flop, then you stand for a second in the concentrating attitude of having just finished the activity, then you look out at the audience with all your vulnerability (but not shame) for a painful amount of time, then you lightly acknowledge the flop.

The stillness required, so as not to be protecting yourself by moving, the drawn out length of the pause: these are things I feel like I can craft. The vulnerability and not feeling shame I feel less sure about. It's funny feeling like this is a revelation today when I think I've probably already written these thoughts before. It makes me think I'm going to have realisations again and again after this and they will feel new.

I mean to have a go. I agree with Josie that we will get up together. We stand up a few times but are beat by another pair every turn.

Josie waiting for our turn

I get bored. Desperately and childishly bored. I don’t want to hear him talk and I don’t want to watch the people trying the exercise. I can’t listen and I start to take photos and play with my phone instead.

QC keeps getting Gaulier to give people a second go until Judy, his wife kneels up, face flushing and half yells: "If you give them one more go, I promise I will divorce you!" There is a big laugh and then silence and then QC says "Give them one more go." and the room explodes.

It becomes clear that the turns are over and it is question time. I am bored in the question time too.

So is Joel.

I like to call this picture 'Joel listening to question time'

But then one answer makes me sit up and listen.

Philippe says:

“Clown is a small part of theatre. If you stay clown you are going to limit yourself. You have to discover many theatre possibility and many beauty of theatre - Shakespeare, Chekov, mask before you decide to be clown. If you stay with clown you are going to die. Dying and you don’t know Shakespeare, dying and you don’t know Marlowe, dying and you don’t know Moliere: that is bad. You have to fill yourself with all the beauties of theatre.”

"you yourself are not horrible"

I missed class yesterday because of how I was in Venice and everything.

my balcony in venice

I noticed again today how much Gaulier leaves it up to us to come up with something that works. Occasionally he gives very clear direction but most of the time it’s so open.

A girl, looking for feedback, asks, “What do you want?”

He answers: “Me I don’t want anything – but if you give something I am happy.”

Someone else gets a little more detail: “A clown never do real pissed off, like cancer in your stomach. Do pissed off for the fun, with the pleasure like you have just been kissed.”

The exercise today was to come on stage with a friend and have a really fun time with the audience.

That’s all.

But then we have to remember the layers of everything we have learned so far: have pleasure, be sensitive, listen to the flop, move between major and minor etc etc.

We all forget these basics all the time. He drills us how much we have to work together with our partner: “You have to be with your friend like you are the three musketeers: all for one and one for all.”

I am more afraid to get up than I have been since the course started. Partially because I missed yesterday so I feel a little on the edge of the stream, and partially because this exercise is so open it feels like a void I might fall into.

Eventually Christy and I agree to go up together. Behind the curtain we whisper to each other: "let’s remember to like each other and take turns.”

We head out onto the stage and have a try. There are a few laughs. We do like each other and we do take turns and he lets us run for a while.

When he hits the drum to stop us, he says, “That was absolutely awful, what you did. Horrible.”

We stand, still and small beside each other looking back at him.

“Now.” He says, “Now, like this, we love you.”

I know what he means. Arghhh. I am back here again. Having pushed too hard and not been sensitive with the audience. But…

“But I’m scared that if I am like this I will be boring” I say, with the tears just warm at the back of my throat. Christy reaches for my hand.

“You, you yourself are not horrible." He looks at me over the top of his drum, "You are lovely. But what you just did was horrible.”

After a moment, he gets us to say, “Goodbye everybody” in time with each other without looking. I feel Christy breathe in beside me and we speak with the exact same tone.

People laugh and I feel loved.

Christy and I walk and talk together afterwards and get sweet treats from the bakery. I have a moment of being annoyed with myself for having had to re-learn the lesson about being sensitive. I learned it last week. But that’s how it seems to go. You improve one day, you go backwards the next.

We are pleased with our turn. Pleased that we remembered to like each other and take turns. Pleased with the moment he gave to us at the end. Pleased that we got up.

Luke is quiet and thoughtful on the train, with big soft eyes and his face stiller than usual.

"Not extremely bad. Surprising."

I met Dustin for lunch at a patisserie around the corner from the ecole and it was good. He put his arm across my shoulder for a moment and said, “you’re pretty hard on yourself aren’t you.”

Which was sweet, but I don’t know if it’s true. I think I’m fairly gentle with myself, just also very honest.

patisserie moment

We did a little dance around me trying to establish that I didn’t want reassurance or to be fixed (‘I don’t think you’re broken’ he replied. Correct answer.)

He told me things he has noticed about me and had done on stage: My laugh, where I shake my shoulder a little and my body leans a little crookedly, my tripping-forward-over-myself walk, the way I’m always trying to get the answers right.

It gave me the understanding that maybe I was supposed to get from the exercise: that I am ridiculous and loveable. It gave me a sense that it would be possible to be ‘light with myself’ in the way that Philippe keeps asking us to be. I stopped feeling humiliated. We ran back to school in the rain to find everyone costuming up.

annie blacking her teeth in preparation

Today in Samuel Says, instead of strategically asking for kisses from the people I thought most likely to kiss me, I tried asking the least likely. More people said no and it was still fun for me because my judgement was being validated.

We did a bunch of ‘make a noise’ exercises: make a noise like a pressure cooker in love for the first time, like a baby babbling and then doing a poo, like various absurdly racist things that were actually funny in the group but might not work if I write them here.

When it was my turn, I did the thing he had directed me to do last week, where I do the noise and then speak to myself in an encouraging little voice, ‘bravo ailsa, well done’ It worked. Each time I made the noise people laughed, and each time I congratulated myself people laughed. He said, ‘Not extremely bad. Surprising.’ Which is Gaulier-gold-compliments on a platter.

It’s true that each time I speak to myself in that small congratulatory voice it makes me very happy. Doing the ‘exercise’ doesn’t feel like it would give me pleasure, but watching people laugh at me today made me realise that it was working somehow

‘Your clown is near your body’ as the man says.

Luke also got a, ‘Not extremely bad. Surprising.’ And his irrepressible smile at the compliment was delightful.

Two favourite insults for the day (apart from the deeply wrong one about Oslo which won’t bear translation):

‘Don’t shuffle like a penguin who is sad about his balls’

And to an English girl, ‘Don’t play innocent. There is no Roast-Beef innocent’

QC in his angel dress in the break talking seriously with Christy

In the afternoon we did a fight. Fight like you are putting it on for your family, for the fun. Two fighters and a referee who only knows one thing about being a referee: to say ‘one, two, three.’ Nonetheless the referee is taking their job very seriously and wants to be believed.

I fought Luke.

I wanted to fight him because I knew that I wouldn’t be afraid to hit him.

It was really, really fun for me. Just whacking out at him with flailing, slapping, gorilla-clad arms. Gaulier said we didn’t look enough at the audience and I know he was right. But it was so fun. I don't think I've had that much fun in front of the group since we started. I’d like to do it again, to try looking at the audience as well.

Our referee was brilliant – I noticed her acknowledging the flop – which made some things we did funny, even though they hadn’t been before.

referee extraordinaire

I keep noticing again and again how Philippe is teaching us to listen to the flop. His moment of silence after someone has done something un-funny and then the perfectly timed insult. We laugh as much at the flop as at the awful things he says.

Also his slightly mocking, caressing voice: ‘And here, the intellectual genius,’ as I am about to try the exercise. It is enough to make me proud of myself and to laugh at myself in the same moment. It sets us up to succeed.

We go out into Paris. Again with the big-group-dawdling, useless wander. The conversations that stop twelve people at a street corner or mean that 3 people are so involved that they forget to get off the metro. It’s funny and stupid and we end up dancing in a Brazilian bar just a ten minute walk from our apartment and bed.

a tragic hero

Just back from crying my eyes out over Snape. I knew there was something in him and I fought for him when everyone thought he was bad. I felt justified when I read the book, but in front of the film I just got a whole new understanding of Snape as the real hero. The value of the tragic hero.

Today started fun, stepped up into hilarious and then twisted me up and threw me in front of myself. Ow.

We did couples dancing. Ballet and then African dance. I had more fun than I’ve had in ages, dancing with Christy and then a couple of the others. Looking into each others faces and looking out at the audience and just playing with the music. He said the first time that I was, ‘so subtle’ in his sarcastic voice, meaning I was so far from subtle. Then the second time that I was so boring that he ‘didn’t give a tiny milligram of shit’.

Water off a duck’s back. I know I wasn’t funny. I had fun with my friends dancing. Its ok.

He also used possibly my favourite insult so far, ‘funny…in Australia.’ (that was about someone else)

Then (after 'loo loo break') he got us to change into another person’s costume and mimic them. I dressed as the alter boy at first.

Watching them was something brilliant. To see the girl who has been so terrified and heavy with her feelings (although occasionally beautiful because of how much she shows of herself) step out of it and mimic someone entirely different, so perfectly and hilariously.

There was moment after moment of complete genius as people stood up in each others costumes and did the classic gesture, the one phrase which shone last week, the smile, the dance move. We were shrieking with laughter. People I had never seen suddenly shone today.

some of the half-costumed audience

Dustin wore my gorilla costume did me. And it was awful. At first I thought, ‘he’s just doing generic girl. That’s not me.’ Then I realised that everyone around me was laughing, that big laugh of recognition.

One of the guys, his face flushed with the laughing looked at me and mouthed, ‘that’s you,’ the delight in identification all over him.

So humiliating to realise I look that girly and stupid.

I understand that what he did was completely loveable. The audience adored him (and not just because of the recognition, also because he was shining).

And I think one option for me now is to learn how to have pleasure with that idiot part of myself that Dustin showed. To be light with myself, as Gaulier keeps telling us.

But there’s this struggle first: there is a part of me who does not want to be an idiot. Wants to hold up my hand in people’s face and say, ‘I will not ever look that stupid ever again.’ So I strode down to the train station with that feeling busting inside me. I know I can’t do this clown thing without doing something about that feeling. And today it was to cry. Suzanna walked next to me.

And I did some of my crying. Cried as I walked and on the platform waiting for the train and again on the train. It’s a harsh, defensive, furious little part of myself which doesn’t feel very pleasant to show. People are all so cute and well meaning and full of funny advice and sympathy that I'm not looking for. I wasn't particularly friendly with them

But Christy and Luke both hold me (sometimes only with their eyes) and I feel recognised and respected and loved.

So, I still don’t know how to get past myself.

But it feels like the opposite of awful right now.

And tomorrow I’m going to meet Dustin for lunch and maybe he’ll tell me something about me that he noticed. And maybe he won’t and that will be ok.

me and degas

So I went to the Musee D’Orsay this evening after class, just to prove that Degas and I are the same.

That was a joke because of the photo of Nadine from yesterday.

But when I got there I realised there is actually is something in it. The capturing of performers before they are actually performing. It made me love Degas, me, standing there quietly in front of a dance class of ballerinas.

Me and Degas. Same same, but different.

Stepped out and Paris had settled into a blue-grey dusk and I walked slowly looking up at the evening buildings, pale with neat shadows. Walked between the arms of the Louvre looking up at the details and smiling a bit patronisingly at the tourists and thinking about today.

I am so afraid to be ridiculous.

The exercise today was to put on a show as if we were all seven years old and calling our family to our bedroom to see it. It’s got the potential to be a gorgeously watchable thing. All the clowns playing absurdly, full of timidity and non-sequeteurs and the pleasure to be with the audience.

He said, ‘If you feel we don’t love you its good to not come back. If we love you its good to come back.’

I had the feeling that they didn’t love me. So I didn’t spend much time on the stage but the time I spent was looking out at the audience like shy a child who likes their family. It wasn’t bad, embarrassing; ‘you push to much’ but I also didn’t get to try. I sat down feeling a little muffled and stuck. Like I must be scared to do the next thing.

dinah, as marilyn, posing for me in the break

Part way through the day one girl stopped the show.

She stood out the front after the others sat down and asked him again and again, ‘What must I do?’

He said, ‘For sure not what you are doing now.’

‘But what must I do?’

He told her to put on my costume and asked someone to loosen her hair around her face. She still wasn't funny so he asked for a bottle of tap water and told me to tip it over her head. Which I did. Big pouring runnels of water over her black hair and down the gorilla fur. There was still no funny.

He asked her to walk towards him slowly, which she did until she was so close he could reach for her hand. He took it and kissed it saying, ‘You are so beautiful. You are so beautiful. Look now at your friends.’ She turned just slightly, looking at but only just. A red nose, a gorilla costume and a little girl in tears behind a curtain of black hair.

We all laughed. He kept kissing her hand “You, you, you are beautiful. You are so beautiful when you are ridiculous. Now look at your friends."

We laughed.

"We love you. But not your character, your character is not beautiful. We don’t see you when we see your character.”

And she looked at us and we laughed in that way a parent adoring a crying child will laugh. (I know it. I know it. I’ve been the adult and the child)

“You feel ridiculous and everybody love you.”

We loved her.

He talked about fear. How he is afraid, terrified for hours before a show, and that he talks to the fear:

“Thank you fear, you are my friend, you hate me to be fascist, you hate me to push to much, thank you fear to be around me. The fear help me to not be a bastard.”

victor, really not scarey. or a bastard

We did an exercise where a bunch of people are on stage and he plays the teacher, telling everyone not to say anymore vulgar, bad words, getting furious with the class and then ‘leaving’ the room. After 45 seconds we were to start to say bad words under our breath to each other and enjoy the pleasure of saying them.

It was so fun. I sat behind the Singaporean boy who taught me a very crude word, which I then bastardised mixing it into an English phrase. The Singaporean girls in the audience laughed so hard, and he turned around with such a flushed face and sparkling grin and high fived me. Then I whispered it gleefully to the rest of the group, explaining the translation

Watching other people do the exercise was almost as fun. The gleeful, naughty, suppressed pleasure is such a delight to see. It felt like a light way to finish the day.

One girl was talking (in a complainy kind of a way) about how much time it takes.

He said, "It takes time, but it is a beautiful time."

I'm so sad that this time is going to end.

i dont want to provoke concerned messages

Blog blog blog. Bored bored bored. Got home late after doing the clown shuffle round the Louvre with the crew.

Practiced being undignified with Christy in the apartment; honesting out all my insecurities and jealousies with helpless giggles and and groans, wrinkle-browed scowls and flapping hands. Christy red-faced and laughing beside me. Her offering me apples, cheese, a music choice and me like a child whining, ‘Nooooo! Nothing can help me!' and then all of us laughing some more.

I am bored and jealous and sick of not knowing what I’m doing. Today wasn’t bad. In fact I got some snippits of niceness and I learned something. But I just can’t quite bear to write down the exercises and copy out the charming insults and write the same blog entry I’ve been writing.

I want to be a brilliant clown and I want my story to be dramatic.

Its not.

But there is definitley some goodness in the world. Tonight Christy grabbed the dead roses from the rubbish and pelted the petals at Luke, yelling ‘ROMANCE!!’ then she said ‘I hate red noses, they can go and get ...’

I was doing three-sixties on the bed laughing.

It makes me wonder what we'll be like in class tomorrow.

Love from,

Your Little Gorilla

Nadine waiting for her go in class today.

I think my hipstamatic makes me a lot like that French painter man with the ballet girls.

to want to be ridiculous

We talk on the train, Luke and Christy and I. Christy says “He gives room for you. He doesn’t give anything but room for you. If it’s not you, get off the stage.”

I’ve been thinking about how to be a clown you have to want to be ridiculous.

I tell Luke and Christy about a memory I have of being teeny tiny. I must have been less than five because it’s before we came to Australia. After reading the story of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet and the Heffalump I had a scary dream that the heffalump was going to come and get me. Chris, my dad, came to be with me and I told him all about the scary heffalump. In the morning, when he didn’t know I was listening, he told the story to a group of grown ups around him. So it was a story about a child who is gorgeous, cute and scared but also actually ridiculous. They all laughed so hard.

And I didn’t want people to laugh at me. It gave me a little sick feeling in my tummy and I didn’t want to be ridiculous.

Dear world. I changed my mind. I'm ready to be ridiculous again.

We talk on the train about being dignified and laugh about our friends who are less dignified and what is so good about spending time with them.

In the changerooms, Josie lends me her hairspray so I can go wild with it.

Here she is as the disgusting cleaning woman.

The exercise today is to come on stage and pretend to be French, say some words and look pleased with ourselves. Say them loudly.

He is giving individual people the direction to be loud, but I had to check if it was for everyone. (including me?) He says. “yes of course.”

So I pull at Danny’s shoulder to ask how I could be loud and subtle at the same time. He says, “Have pleasure.”

So I try. But it is hard. I talk to Philippe about what is hard as I try to do the exercise. I say, ‘it’s not fun enough’ and he says to do the exercise and then say in a small voice to myself ‘bravo, ailsa, well done’. I have a few tries, shifting the words around and as I do people laugh. They laugh in that way where it really feels like they are on my side, which is really nice. Then he changes the text, he wants me to say ‘Bravo. Something is coming,’ but it’s confusing for me. I’m not sure why he has given me that line and it stops being fun. He stops me and moves on.

He gives Luke a chunk of time on stage. He asks him where he lived when he was 8 years old. In Cheltenham, how did they say ‘I’m going to break your face.’? He wants Luke to say that to him. It’s good. Luke is his-self in a sweet way up there. He tells the story about the day he made the school bully fall on his face. He says he doesn’t really like hurting people. It’s embarrassed, honest, truth-telling and we laugh lightly with him. I think about how Luke lived in the world of macho boys and then in the world of being good for all the feminist ladies. Double whammy of not showing yourself.

I took photos in the break.

Here’s Lilly in her butcher outfit. Gold.

Then we did duo. Taking it in turns to be in major.

Enter, see the audience, then change your walk to make it funny. When the music stops, look at the audience, look at your friend and decide who is going to start the show. With pleasure. Then pretend to be French. Listen to the flop, Hand over to your partner for be in major.

“If your friend start, you don’t dribble on his balls.” (brilliant Gaulier moment for don’t upstage your partner if it’s their go.)

He was his usual complimentary self: ‘These character, they are not clown. They are just Orphan. Orphan in a special house for orphan after the war in Afghanistan.”

Not about me because I didn’t have a go. (funny little moment of feeling like no-one would want to go with me, such a bad idea to run with that one)

On the train home Christy offered a general invitation to dinner at our apartment and then she went ahead and cooked for 12. We all squished in beautifully and there was a lot of raucous cuteness as Christy knocked out dinner with some help and the Brazilian boys took over the stereo and the guy in the apartment across the street stuck his head out the window to see what was going on.

cute clowns squished up in our apartment

I left them to it and went with some others to see Pina. Which was beautiful, in a slow and stunning way and I wished I had my book to scribble notes in. A procession of such beautiful images. Ready to have my heart broken again and again.

sensitive...

Over the weekend I had a sense of knowing step one of what Philippe wants. The non-smiling me who doesn’t push too much. It feels like I have something to try.

I spent the morning walking the canal, and found my street art friend again.

As I arrived at school I was a whole new level of nervous. I haven’t felt this afraid since we started. Like I had 5 coffees in my system and whisky burning the back of my throat.

The exercise was to come on, stutter and look at the audience like they might think you are so funny that they will give you the nobel prize. Present a show that you don’t know what it is and, “If you are not funny, I will tell you.”

We all laugh. Ruefully. As if there was a chance he would hold back.

I watch a few people try and then get up for my own go. Clutch briefly at a friend in the wings to say how nervous I am. He holds my coat in his hands and smiles at me. Nervous too of course.

So I come on, simply; walking like I usually walk, my face calm and looking out at the audience. There are several friendly eyes out there, bright with little smiles. I look for Gaulier’s eyes, behind the glasses, under a shag of hair. I take time to look at people.

Then I try the exercise.

Nobody laughs.

But I can see them better than I ever have. I feel like they like me.

I keep trying.

He stops me. ‘It was bad but good’ he says. ‘Last week was awful with your boyscout smile. Today you enter with sensitivity.’ Later in another context he says about me, ‘I was happy with her because: good progress.’

I feel like this is praise. But I don’t know what to do next. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him what to do now when he told me to leave the stage. I’m not sure if he really wanted me to leave or if he was playing to see what I would do next. But I left.

So now I know I can be sensitive but I don’t know how to be funny.

Which is maybe a good thing because we are supposed to discover how we are funny by accident. I feel pleased about having figured out what he was trying to tell me. And I feel like I have no clue what to do next.

Like he said of someone else today: ‘You are a charming clown but nobody laugh. It is good to be charming clown but if nobody laugh you won’t get paid so much."

There was a beautiful moment with one of the guys who has been trying stuff but not getting much response for the last week. Gaulier stopped him again and he just collapsed to sitting on the floor, a kind of hopeless resignation in his body. We all laughed and at the sound of it he looked back at us and smiled a sweet confused smile and got another round of laughter for it.

It’s that moment when your real self brings some big vulnerable feeling to the stage. (you aren’t ‘acting’ the feeling). How do you do that when you don’t have Monsieur Gaulier to point it out to you??

Another guy got up to ask a question after the break and it was brilliant. Him in his absurd costume with an A4 notebook attempting quite seriously to frame a question in his fumbling English. We all began to laugh before he had even got out half a sentence. He looked at us, confused and questioning. We laughed at his confusion. He tried again to ask his question and it became clear that the question was about the costume. Which made us all notice his costume again, and laugh again, and he looked confused again which made us laugh some more.

In any other context, to laugh at a fellow student so much would be disrespectful. In this context, our laughter was answering his question.

Gaulier said in answer to another question, “You have to want to be ridiculous. Many, many people want to be clown but few people want to be ridiculous. That is why there are so many horrible clown in Covent Garden.”

The other exercise today was this: A line of seven clowns across the back wall. Walk forward if you feel that the audience likes you. Step back if you feel that they don’t. It’s lovely to watch everyone’s insecure timidity and the joy on the faces of those who figured out how to walk forward.

Luke approached Gaulier after class to ask for help. He said he would help him tomorrow. Got a little hopeful excitement to see what happens when Luke gets some attention.

The gaggle of us walking to the train together. Compliments, questions, silent processing, boisterous play. Post class decompression.

a moment of saturday

It’s Saturday afternoon in Paris. Christy has gone to sit in the Sacre Coeur and write. Luke is sitting by the window, learning French on his i-phone tutor.

I am reflecting.

I feel like Phillipe is loving our clowns into existence.

Like he is being cruel to the old habits to make them shut the f*** up so the clown can be found.

Like this is an incredible act of generosity.

start with something delicate and fragile

Something stunning happened today. It happened towards the end of the class but from the beginning I felt lighter. The insults were back to being funny and the failures weren’t so depressing. Tragic, yes. But there can be a kind of joy in tragedy, which really wasn’t there for me yesterday.

Today he told Christy she was awful: ‘that was ‘orrible what you did. Absolutely awful.’ And as soon as he spoke, she had an unstoppable smile and a bright flush on her face. I find her charming to watch when she is out there with her red nose in front of her wide eyes. But I didn’t laugh when I was watching her today until I saw that face as he insulted her. Then I couldnt help laughing, and it wasn’t just because of what he was saying. It was her absolute presence. It was something that we are trying to learn each day but I don’t know how to explain or do yet.

christy, the new zealand peasant clown

Yesterday he had told me not to smile. Which I didn’t write because I was so over it all last night. He said, ‘you smile like a nice girl and I think it is not good for you’ which I acknowledge utterly. There is something precious about being recognised.

So today I tried not smiling. But, still confused between ‘you have to be ridiculous’ and ‘don’t push too much,’ I pushed too much. As soon as I went out there with my lion roar (the exercise today) he said, ‘so subtle’ in his special, sarcastically approving voice. Which I didn’t actually acknowledge by stopping and looking at him and saying ‘oops’ but tried other, smaller things which still got nothing. Until he stopped me. And did that thing about gorillas being protected ‘but I would kill this one anyway.’

But it wasn't bad. It gave me some clarity. I feel like I have two things to hold onto. Don’t smile and don’t push too much. I am ready to be boring for a while to see what happens next.

me: ready to be boring

The really stunning thing today was one of the other students. She has trotted around the stage on her silly heels and been occasionally funny but often just nothing (which it feels like most of us are most of the time) until today. Today he changed her costume (from something revealing and a bit sexy to a big wedding dress) and sat her in a chair and asked her to sing us a lullaby.

‘It is not funny, but it is friendly. A way to show us how you sing a lullaby in your country.’

So she sat and sang. He even took off her nose. And she sang. Quietly. I felt so still as I listened to the two verses and she looked out at us.

She paused and after a moment I realised that her eyes had tears. She sang another line and then stopped and the tears rolled down and hung for a second under her chin. Then she sang again.

She kept singing and crying and looking out at us in her wedding dress with a false eyelash falling from one lid and I was crying on the floor watching her.

Afterwards he spoke.

He said, “We have a mask on the street when we fight because there are so many idiot. So we build a grimace on our face. You built a grimace on your face. It’s not bad or good but it doesn’t help you to show something fantastic.

“Everybody is beautiful. Everybody is beautiful when he show his soul. Everybody is ugly when he hide in conventional. To be clown, first you have to be beautiful – as everybody is. You have to start with something really delicate and fragile and you have to discover how you are funny by chance.

“With your grimace of everyday, you can’t be a clown.”

We had questions at the end and someone asked how we can find a way to take off our mask. He answered, in classic Gaulier style, “You have to go to a very good school.”

So Friday night in Paris. I left Luke and Christy in the apartment with DVD’s and braved the tangle of the metro to meet up with some of the others.

a slightly-scarey, alone-in-paris street-art moment

We met at a stand up comedy night – which was generally great for making us feel good about ourselves – in an attic bar with sloped, exposed beams, up flights and flights of wooden stairs. One of our people got up and we all thought she was by far the best, all of us cute and congratulatory.

We went out for Indian at midnight and I was by turns awkward, intimate and laughing relaxed, making friends over korma and naan.

Bastille day. I'm still looking for the metaphor...

I wouldn't exactly say I stormed anything today.

Luke and Christy and I trained in the park in the morning, tag-teaming acro doubles, doing stretching and handstands. Families out for Bastille day stopped and watched and we didn’t keep doing any one trick for too long, got through heaps and ate lunch happy.

Then in class I had the big hopeless.

The big hopeless is different to the big vulnerable.

The big hopeless thinks: ‘I actually can’t learn this. I can’t learn it. I am just going to turn up for the rest of the weeks and be pathetic; this pathetic and that’s it. I can’t do it. And neither will most people here.’

It's less humiliation than resignation.

I didn’t write down the insults today because I didn’t find them funny. And it wasn’t fun to hear him tell each person how bad they were today. Every other time I have been hanging off the hilarity of the insults. I have been avidly in each moment, watching as people try and then fail and then he insults them.

Today I wanted to put my head in my hands as each disaster unfolded onstage.

And I think this is supposed to happen. I think we are supposed to go here to the hopeless for some reason, but I’m not sure what yet. So I’ll just go back tomorrow and see what comes next.

Tonight about twenty of us went out for drinks and to ‘watch the fireworks’. We travelled absurdly slowly: the dithering of twenty people is a disaster. We barely saw the top of any fireworks from a crowded street. But it was cute. The wandering and chatting and photo-taking and all the little checkings in with each other that happened. The geraniums 3 stories up in the dark and the friendships which kick off as you wait for stragglers together on a street corner and you begin to hear about a person's loves and struggles.

Happy Bastille Day, Paris.

Happy Birthday Nana Pix. Respect.

'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.

like freud says: be happy with your poo.

Monsieur Gaulier listed his four steps to being a clown:

1. Be a beautiful human beaing

2. Be ridiculous

3. Be happy to be ridiculous

4. Sell your ridiculousness to your audience

“You have to be happy to show your crappy performance to the audience. You have to be like a small child with a poo. Monsieur Freud, he wrote a book about it. He was not a clown, Monsieur Freud, but he was very intelligent. In his book he said small child, they do a poo and then they are so happy to present their poo to their parents. You have to be like a small child who is so, so happy to present their poo to their family.”

We were the closest thing to late to class. Caught the train that arrived at Sceaux at 1:58 (class at 2pm) and did a pathetic and yet heart-pounding, stumbling jog from the station to school, jumbling our backpacks on our backs. Who knows what the evil genius master clown does to you when you are late…

luckily I got into my amazing gorilla costume in time for class

(ps sorry for the lame photo. Its the best that could be done. yes that is a 3 euro barbie in my hand)

Two exercises:

1. Pull a horrible face (grimace) while looking at the audience to check if they are going to give you a big prize for what you have done. (The king of Sweden – giving you thousands of dollars)
2. Make the noise of a Harley Davidson and choose someone to wink at as though you are suggesting the two of you will go off for some sexy time after class.

Again, most people were told they were very bad, in one horrible, obscene, absurd way or another. Possibly more so than yesterday? It definitely felt like part of the exercise was being told that we were doing it wrong. But in some way it felt less devastating than yesterday (there were tears and hugs and defensive, furious faces yesterday.)

I chose someone different to be attracted to and it was fun. Pretty much no-one in the audience was laughing, so actually I probably didn’t do the exercise particularly well. But the person I chose laughed most of the time, looking at me in a twinkly, crinkle-faced way, which made everything ok. And when Gaulier asked if he liked me (or did he want to kill me even though Gorillas, they are protected, no?) He said he liked me. Thanks be. What a glorious relief that was.

He chose some people to direct a little. For a few he drilled the timing of:

1. Concentrate seriously on the exercise
2. Take a breath/several seconds once you are finished the excercise and keep concentrating
3. Drop the concentration and be the clown who has pleasure in what they have done.

Each time he did that, directing people down to the second, they were gorgeous, loveable, hilarious. It’s delightful to watch.

And the formula seems so simple but when I’m up on stage I am at a loss.

Still, my dad emailed me today to tell me I was intelligent. So that’s a relief.

what to do when you aren't a funny gorilla

Quotes of the day:

‘You do not show enough pleasure. We think you are a French philosopher thinking about the war in Serbia’

‘We want to see your legs. Many people are ridiculous when they show their legs. Especially here around the knees. The legs are really having the power to make us laugh.’

'She look like spaghetti overcook 5 hours in the pressure cooker.’

‘When you enter you are carried by the pleasure to meet the audience …even if you are scared.’

Costumes today: the tiny, dusty changerooms with their crooked-sloped ceilings are crowded with clowns showing off their new outfits. All the half dressed folk, somewhere between day-wear and the crazy thing he has asked them to be. Marilyn Munroe with a red nose, the choir-boy all pale cheeked and naïve-looking, a biker girl decked out in leather and a boxer complete with gloves and shiny short-shorts.

I wriggle my way through the crowd to don my gorilla suit and am appropriately admiring of the absurdities going on around me.

The first exercise today was to slowly walk towards the audience with the feeling that we had just bought our new costume and we were a little insecure, but that someone might just tell us how beautiful it was.

Then he told us if our costume was good or not.

It looked like he wanted to get a very clear picture straight away of what the person was trying to dress up as. He wanted us to look as though we had gone to some effort to create our look. Luke and Christy and I managed this.

Phew.

The second exercise was to come out, one at a time and to find something charming to say that would make the audience love us.

I had an extended time on stage where I struggled to do what he was asking. He had told me to speak louder on another day, and I had a hunch that he wanted me to dress as a gorilla because the laugh I had had previously was when I was trying to say I was intelligent. So I was loud and intelligent.

Hunch wrong.

He told me to shut up and that I wasn’t funny and that Australians are not funny.

He asked Alexandra onto the stage next to me and got her to do a monkey noise. She was totally hilarious, wide eyed and serious. She just kept making gorilla noises and looking out into the audience, turning her face just a little shakily from person to person. And it kept being funny.

Then he said I should try again.

I wasn’t funny.

He sent her off stage and said I should remember her and try again.

Disaster.

Then, thank god, he directed me. Telling me to pull it right back. Do tiny noises and after each one, to say ‘oh, I am not a very good gorilla today.’ And suddenly it was funny. I could hear the laughter and I understood that in that moment I was charming. As I trotted to the exit, despondent at what a bad gorilla I was, they laughed and laughed and I didn't want to leave the stage.

Thinking it over I feel a little bit like he was telling me not to be so arrogant. It was the lesson of the first day - 'You have to feel like a bad student.'

Watching the other folk doing the exercise, it became clearer to me what he was asking. I think he wanted us to come on, in no way performing the character, find a place to stand and then pretend for a moment to be the costume character. The whole time still taking pleasure in the audience, like a small child playing that character for someone they love.

So grateful to come home to this little flat with Luke and Christy and cook together and make hot drinks for each other and talk over all the little confusions and hilarities of the day.