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.