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)

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.

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.

first day of clown school

We give ourselves an hour to get lost on the way to Sceaux. Which we don’t really need but we would have if we’d had to pronounce it in order to find it. Amuse ourselves on the train by reading the station names in an ocker aussie accent. Wander through Sceaux and find our school, who’s only signage is the little bit of lettering above the doorbell: ‘ecole philippe gaulier’ and we climb the five flights of stairs, just a little trepidatious and unsure where the door might be.

We don’t have all the money to pay and when I say that I’ll bring it tomorrow, Michiko says she won’t be there and that I should seal the envelope very strongly because it is dangerous to give it to Philippe.

He is charming and insulting, like a doddery old man but sharp as a tack. He says:

‘You have to be a beautiful idiot.’

‘Come onto the stage like no-one is waiting for you.’

‘You have to be fucking funny. If you’re not funny you’re not a clown.’

We play torture Samuel Says and do two exercises over the 3 hours:

Enter and be funny. Be told you’re a bad clown and get off.

Enter and do a dressage act for the audience as if the audience is your family.

I feel that I can see what people do that works. And what doesn’t work. And I have some sense of what he is asking us to do. But damned if I can do it.

‘You play too much,’ he says to me and, ‘when it is hunting season, I would shoot her in the forest,’ and, ‘we like you better when you leave the stage.’

The questions people ask at the end are: ‘Why do you kick people off stage?’ and ‘What do you mean ‘be an idiot?’’ Both of which are really good questions, and ones it feels like need to be realised rather than explained.

On the train home we are relieved and tired. It's not so aweful being told you are a bad clown. In fact it's kind of fun.

tourist day

Mostly looked at the tourists rather than the sights. The Louvre and the Eiffel tower with queues too long for us to contemplate and we decided to just walk the streets instead.

Wandered directly towards a stunning old set of buildings that had been covered with banners and grafitti and artwork. Rooms and floors of open atelier to scramble through, to stop and laugh and appreciate (merci, merci!) and point out to each other.

It's called the aftersquat - because it was an artist's squat for years and years

So lovely to accidentally find a massive crew of artists doing their thing in a beautiful mess, in the kind of building that would be occupied by the clean and rich in Melbourne, if it even existed.

We’ve been watching the buskers. The girl on the train doing hip hop and dancing with a little portable amp. The guy at the top of montmarte juggling with a goldfish bowl on his head. The kid in a gorilla suit charging people who want a photo with him in front of the Eiffel Tower. Then Luke and Christy dressed themselves up and headed out to do acro on the street with a little polka dotted scarf over a basket instead of a hat.

christy preparing to busk

They busked while I cooked dinner and afterwards we wandered the sunset streets and sat for crepes where the bright red and yellow tables sit on the cobbled footpath.

Today we admitted our fears of going to school and being told we are bad clowns; which by all accounts is what will happen.