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.