THE ENDING

I’ve royally screwed myself over with this title haven’t I?

Crap. Bluh. Ugh. 

Starting with THE ENDING establishes a number of things:

A) That I am indeed a wanker

B) That you will spend the entirety of this post wondering what THE ENDING is

C) That you will imagine an infinite number of your own wonderful endings to my story. None of which I have managed to think of

D) That you will be disappointed when I fail at reading your mind and write THE WRONG ENDING. Why Floyd why could you not just write what was fabulous in my mind!?

E) That you will inevitably return to just accepting what I established in A).

Perhaps I should have called the title of this post – WORD VOMIT. Then I could have just finished this blog with the coined phrase:  “Crap. Bluh. Ugh.” – quote from earlier.

Focusing on the ending or ‘end game’ could be the death of this blog post as well as my love and skill for comedy. I always approached creative projects with an endgame in mind. Whether it was to create a web series with the humble end game of MAKE ME FAMOUS ALREADY or getting into an improv scene thinking: THE AUDIENCE MUST LOVE ME AND THINK I’M FUNNY BY THE END. But it’s that desire, that insanity that prevents me from getting it or deserving it.

The classic rule for improv is to agree right from the top of the scene. Sounds easy right? Well the desire to be funny can make it impossibly hard.

For example - Last Saturday my friend Jack told me to get in the boat with him and take a trip down the river. I agreed, "Yes of course!" and happily leapt in with life jackets and snacks. We were good enough friends to comfortably talk for hours about relationships, feelings, food and a lack thereof. The end game? Oh I didn't really have one. Maybe just to make it back to land, have fun and not hate each other by the end of the trip.

This is how the scene would naturally play out in real life if I did have a boat or a friend called Jack to talk about feelings and food with. Sadly I don’t so thank god for improv! And no one would pay to see that real life version of the boat scene anyway right? So let’s see my stage version debut instead:

My friend with no name asks me if we should take a boat trip. I tell him NO I hate boats and throw snacks at his face. (Yay I’m different with a strong POV and taking action as my character early in the scene!) We talk about the snacks for a few minutes (I did just throw them after all so they must be integral to the scene.) I say to my friend with no name that we can’t even go on a boat because we don’t have life jackets and I am a safe person. (Oooo conflict is so interesting!!) He pulls out some life jackets and I tell him he’s just holding air. (HAHAHAHA) Crazy right? He is looking pretty funny right now! (LOL) The end game? (THE AUDIENCE MUST LOVE ME AND THINK I’M FUNNY BY THE END.)

Weird right? I just became a monster and threw a million rocks at my scene partner because I wanted to be funny on stage. The end game? My scene partner would now hate me forever. I would be destined to live without a boat and friend called Jack. (We should have named him in the scene *IMPROV ROOKIE ERROR*). Humans are naturally defensive so one of our first reflexes is to say NO.  Making myself unique and different made me feel safer when faced with vulnerability in scenes. My excellent POV in this example of hating boats would make me feel safe on stage because I never had to get on the fucking boat. But that is the point. Improv you have to get on the boat with your friend and work it out from there. The end game cannot be to be funny – it must be to have fun in the boat on stage. Maybe just eat your snacks and talk about something of what it is to be human. You might get more laughs that way and if nothing else you won’t have wasted a whole pack of perfectly delicious invisible snacks.  

Improv teaches you just how badly you want to throw those snacks at your friend and invent invisible problems with the boat, river, life jackets – anything to prevent you from having to be the same or say anything truthful on stage. I actually think saying yes at the top of a scene does something beautiful to your brain. For one you have to leave your ego behind and get on the boat with your friend. And just like in a conversation where we ‘yes and’ each other constantly we build something together that is funny, truthful and without an ending. The fall never has to amount to anything because the audience would happily watch two weirdos on a boat agree forever. 

I think the best part of comedy is jumping and not knowing where you will land. This trip taught me to have fun on stage again because technique is nothing without fantasy in your eyes and the pleasure to be an idiot. At clown school in Paris I would leap and land in shit but my fall was made funnier though Gaulier’s insulting narrations. In Improv I learnt you don’t have to land you just keep getting back on the boat, eating your snacks and following the fun because the end game is ...

"Um" - Truthful confession of an improvised clown

Um.

^^^ Truthful confession: it took me 20 goes to nail this opening sentence. 

Starting a blog post is overrated. In fact beginnings in general are weird to me.

I’ve completed one week of training with the Improv Olympic in Chicago and I feel an invisible pressure to begin this post with how AMAZING IT ALL IS. How enlightened and “learned” I now am!  …But somehow I can’t quite bring myself to do it. All I can blurt out is a one-syllable grunt disguised as a word. Um. My newfound literacy is hard to believe I know.

Post class discussions this week have been a sharing of everyone’s most recent AMAZING improv discovery. Person A’s mind has been blown due to a simple ball exercise leading to insight on human habits; Person B has finally discovered the meaning of life through a status exercise and Person C has… well let’s be honest. Person C is me. Awkwardly grunting and confused in the corner. (Corner may in fact refer to my inner mental corners. I am crazy but not crazy enough to wedge myself into 90-degree edges of the room.)

Most of the time I get on stage, cast myself as a man or evil seductress (Parts I don’t normally get to play in real life). I choose a body part that is slightly weird or steal a mannerism off one of my classmates that I find funny, accentuate it and commit to a character. I make bold statements and try not to ask questions (This is an improv RULE and very hard to master when you are a kiwi who constantly goes up in intonation for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON). I try to care about my scene partner, even if our characters don’t, I follow the fun and if all else fails I commit to a spasm attack of facial expressions. Sometimes people laugh. Then our scene is edited and I get off stage having no idea what has just happened.

And this is my battle. Inherently ditzy with a round face that is easy to laugh at yet somehow still confused, grunting a one-syllable word question. “Um?”

Coming straight from Gaulier’s clown school where everyone is “merde” (French for shit) and told they are “merde” from the get go to an American training where everyone is “ah-mazing!!!” (American for ok) and told they are “ah-mazing!!!” from the get go is a comic experiment in itself.

Here is a Hamster analogy I created to explain the experience:

In Test A: The Hamster is put a on a wheel for weeks and weeks with a tape that tells her she’ll never master the wheel. She never does but she learns to have fun pooing in it.

In Test B: The same Hamster is given the wheel but told she doesn’t have to run in it for she invented the goddamn thing! She is master of the wheel! All her classmates are “Ah-mazing” wheel masters too but no one is pooing in theirs.

Just in case you hadn’t worked it out – I am indeed the pooing hamster.

Moving on from the hamster now… I’ll return to what is closest to my heart. Nothing. *

*With the exception of my squijillion siblings, slapper of a mother, two fathers, friends and people generally.

Truthfully I am incredibly slow to fall head over heels in love with anything or anybody. So it is no surprise I am slow to begin my blog with how Ah-Mazing improv all is. But here is a love paragraph to out balance the cynicism:

I love improv because it lets me be idiot on stage. I love that I can cast myself as more than a non-talking beautiful princess. I love that the art form teaches you to be generous and make your scene partner look good. I also love that it teaches you to “yes and” and listen to people right through to the end of their sentences.  I love that it allows you to break stereotypes. I love how passionate and supportive being on a team can be. I love that what you build with someone else in a scene is always surprising and better than anything you could have built on your own. 

So there - I’m not so cynical after all. 

There are many things I love about improv but I don’t think everything has to be amazing and enlightening all of the time. And I don’t think scenes necessarily have to be funny and fast paced all of the time.

My end game for training in improv is not to be the funniest person on this planet or to be the perfect improviser. Neither is it to do the perfect Harold or learn the perfect method. My end game is to not take myself too seriously and remove ego from my creative process. I am a much better clown, improviser and person when I create something because I thought pooing in the wheel was funny. Not because I thought I was master of the wheel.

The culture in America is bittersweet. Whilst on one hand it is very positive and encouraging it is also one of IMMEDIATE SUCCESS.  Be the master of comedy NOW! Lose the weight now! Buy this tablet to lengthen your eyelashes now! Fall in love NOW NOW NOW! I haven’t yet worked out how to find the balance but I refuse to lose the element of comedy that is accidental. Not NOW in capitals.  

To sum up - My first week training in Chicago has been wonderfully confusing and overwhelming. My teacher and fellow improvisers are  brilliant but I refuse to say, “I am amazing” or “it is enlightening” NOW because I’m not here for a ‘get funny quick fix!’ Comedy is a life long journey. Perhaps I feel this way because I am so attuned to abuse in the form of a French drum. Or maybe it’s because I’m skeptical that you can buy instant eyelash-lengthening tablets and Facon (Fake bacon) from supermarkets here.

Anyway - Facon is calling me to go and try it. So that’s all for now.

But more updates on improv, facon taste and magic tablets to come.

CLOWN: Loving the flop and being married to a dentist

Day 1 of clown Philippe told us we must be funny otherwise we are just tragic mimes. After all clowns are paid to make the audience love them.

Clown was born in London. How you ask? Ai ai ai.

A guy - Andrew uuuugh let’s see… Smith was on a horse. This commander was the best in the regiment. He was always on time and professional until one day he was late and fired due to a hangover. That night he went home to his wife, drank whiskey, made love and announced his desire to buy a circus.

On the opening night his 2 assistants Jim and Joe were mocking each other whilst trying on some of the actors costumes back stage. Caught up in the game Jim accidently ran onto the main stage while Andrew was performing a difficult feat of dressage.  Overcome with embarrassment he just stood there. The audience roared with laughter. The laughter redoubled when Joe ran onto stage a few seconds later. They felt they had done something wrong and the audience laughed even more. The 2 idiots left the hall to great applause. Expecting to be fired, Jim and Joe were amazed when Andrew asked them to repeat their entrance at exactly the same point the next night. And so two great clowns had been born. Clowns always turn up at the wrong moment. They are the foster brothers of tarte tartin, penicillin and so on. No one was ever expecting them.

To start the workshop Philippe made us get up one by one and say our name, country and scale ourselves from: not funny - middle funny - funny. Spotting the students who had been at clown school for a while was easy as they all confidently said NOT FUNNY. You’ll soon learn that the greatest compliment Gaulier will EVER give is “Not too shit. Suprizing. We like you a bit. Now get off before I become bored.” Normally it’s something along the lines of “I did not like you. In fact I hated you from the bottom of my heart. Awful. You can’t be more awful. Class, do we buy an ikea gas chamber to put them in now?”

I myself have had my fair share of insults. “Florid your face was ugly like wellington on a boring Sunday afternoon.” Or “When we see this women in yellow do we feel our heterosexuality is fragile? Ai ai ai. My heterosexuality is fragile! I pity the dentist.” My notebook is now full of comic insults and blunt advice. Tragically I completely forgot to write down all my important feelings… How will you cope? We’ll just have to pretend I had a whole bunch of them and that they were really really good. THANK GOD FOR THAT.

If I got nothing else out of training with this mad French clown, it is that I discovered a new way to have fun on stage again – PRETENDING. I found my pleasure in lying truth. Not actually vomiting out my own sad emotions on stage. So if you were ever hoping to see me relive break ups and daddy issues on stage you will be sadly disappointed.  In the words of Gaulier: “People who look for the real truth in the theatre, rather than the not-real truth, are fanatical preachers and true (not pretend) arseholes. The truth kills the joy of imagining.”

I finally found a place that it is ok for your peers and teacher to say that what just happened on stage was so bad it should have gone down with the Titanic. And instantly I am liberated. I hear he is about to bang his drum and I must change immediately and discover something light and new to survive. The whole class is a game. Who wants to see people without their pleasure on stage? Or more importantly who wants to be the person performing with no pleasure? Gaulier is so much more of a genius than I ever anticipated. He flattens certain clowns to reveal their beauty while for others he stirs and stirs until you finally fire up and threaten him to a fight – and just like that you are beautiful, alive and funny on stage. He teaches people to be beautiful idiots and how to make the audience love you,

To discover ‘where is my clown?’ Gaulier had us turn away from the audience, count to 3 then jump to scare the audience. It was crucial to show your pleasure and be pleased with the job you just did of scaring the audience afterwards. From this simple task Gaulier glimpses the student’s face, their body, their dreams, their foolishness and their shyness (or arrogance) when they reached the age of seven. One student is Tintin. The other is a boy scout. A priest. A Macho. Marilyn Monroe. May West. A star. A Daddy’s girl. Tarzan. Dracula. Actors. King Kong. A baby. Teachers. Lucky Luke. Asterix. Jane. A Buddhist. A girl taking first communion. (Or even on some rare occasions – A Dentist’s Wife.)

Which costume to suggest? Gaulier told us it is the one, which suits the character glimpsed beneath the red nose. It depends on the student’s humour but the costume is not the character. Its only aim is to make the audience say: ‘look at that idiot. They are trying to make us believe they’re Zorro. How stupid! They really are thick. I love them.’

NB: We were not able to negotiate or question his choice on our clown characters. Even if my mother had died at the dentist, I would have had to provide hard evidence.

So far it is difficult to get my head around the rhythm of being a clown as the laugh comes when you don’t expect it. Quite the opposite to being a comic character. As a clown you smash a plate thinking “oh how funny I am, the audience will definitely laugh at broken china!” …and then they don’t. You are confused as to why your master plan didn’t work ??? and then the laughter comes! As a suffering perfectionist it is certainly a mighty feat to learn to love the flops and use them in my quest to being a lovable idiot on stage.

One week to go. Millions more flops.

DOUBLE ZERO

DOUBLE ZERO! I swear to god if he gives me that mark one more time I will buy my own drum and start beating Gaulier with it. Mentally, spiritually, literally! Well actually I won’t … because I’m not an empowered woman these days. No I’m Ian - an awkward NZ bloke who once found love with an admin chic called Janette but has since been less lucky in love. On a bit of a whim (Well let’s face it - Because Janette once told him “you’re a bit funny you know”) Ian quit his job working for a tampon factory in the south island and has ventured to Paris (Etampes) to find his inner beauty and pleasure on stage.

This is my reality. Each day I dress up in oversized jeans, a pink polo shirt, woolen vest, sneakers, a bucket hat and paint on a beard in an attempt to impress my 80 something year old clown master.  It’s certainly a weird and wonderful phase in my life. I had this beautiful moment in the girl’s bathroom where a bunch of us were applying beards, comb over’s, fat stomachs etc. and I thought OH THIS IS TOO GOOD. My life has peaked - A bunch of ladies trying to be dudes. Instead of applying lip-gloss, de wedgifying uncomfortable underwear, fruffing up my hair or reshaping my boob up in my bra (Don’t pretend you don’t do this)… I was painting on a beard and finally celebrating the facial hair I could paint black with mascara.

My second week of characters was a total struggle. In week 1 I had been successful with my character Ian and somewhere over the weekend I started to invent pointless rules. Like “Oh I’m not sure if Ian would be interested in dating that character… or maybe he wouldn’t drink gin like that at a bar… or lean on his left leg casually etc.” WHO bloody entered my mind and told me what Ian was!? God success is a weird thing. The moment you get it – you desperately try to maintain it or replicate it and not discover anything new. But do not fear Gaulier certainly told me where to put my self-sabotage! Back in windy Wellington under a rock with a crab and a stolen pubic hair. So if you’re looking for it – that’s where he put it. 

This school is really like surviving in a jungle. I should mention I’ve never been to a jungle but there are always animal noises, a drum and potential death when it comes to Gaulier. You are thrown onto stage in the dark, he beats his drum several times, the lights come up and you begin. If you are about to die he raises his stick and the class start whistling and making weird animal noises to warn you you’re close to a flop. At this point your choices are to change or die. Typically the actor on stage starts dancing, singing, raising the stakes, returning to things the audience loved… ANYTHING to be loved and given more stage time. What is amazing about this place is that the other students in class desperately try to save you. They mouth at you to be louder or quieter on your feet or more depressed or more still etc. They know what Gaulier hates about you on stage because they hate you for it too. But they are on your side. And so is Philippe.  (Even when he’s telling an Asian boy that what he did on stage was so shit he should call up Malaysian airlines and say “We have one more passenger.”)

Watching him work with other students is just as insightful as one’s own experience on the course. For some students the struggle is to push less, shut up, be softer on the feet and achieve subtlety before he slaps you. For others it is to give more, speak up, have more fun and fight for your place on stage.  All of us with the same goal: to be loved by the audience and find the pleasure. Each day Gaulier gives our character a new challenge: To escape jail, propose to your love, visit a bar in Vegas, sell a car, report on the weather, host a cooking show, give a political speech, compete in a talent show… you get the idea. The exercises are totally mad and certainly not your standard ‘acting’ curriculum.

 In week 2 and 3 I had various ups and downs with Ian. He told me he loved me when I was depressed, that I had a good fun, found the game with other characters and was suprizing but then on other days that I didn’t give enough, wasn’t loud enough, had a limiting voice, didn’t play with the audience etc. I’ll translate it to his words now: “That was MERDE. HORRIBLE. SHIT. BLUFGHG. Flod. ” The man still can’t say my name but I know he’s just doing it to get a laugh. There is a girl in my class called Imo but he will only call her “E-Moooo”. He plays this gag daily and on Thursday he half said her name “E” – then pushed play on his I-pod and a cow “Moo” played. How long he had been planning that prank I have no idea. But the moral of the story? The old bastard will go to any length for a laugh so watch out.

Despite the torture, the school and method of training is addictive. When he says you were “awful like hair dressers dog shit” it is painful but at the same time liberating. Because this is not a place that you have to pretend something was working when it wasn’t. The man is a master at discovering beautiful moments with his actors by pushing them almost to the point of crisis so that they MUST change and must discover the fun within. One girl in particular had a massive break through because she found the fun in simply shouting at him and losing her shit. Too many double zeros had broken her to the point that she no longer cared and subsequently was fearless and beautiful to watch on stage. Her pleasure came from the crisis. For me my pleasure seems to lie in being an awkward, offbeat, depressed character – GOD KNOWS WHAT THAT SAYS ABOUT ME. Towards the end of the week a few people switched characters for a day and it was so successful. I tried it myself and played a hysterical, mad, laughing professor for an afternoon. It was so much fun and so easy to see what was joyous and beautiful about some one else’s character on stage. And I guess that is the job. To find the beauty in your own character’s costume Every. Single. Day. Re new it and share it with the audience because “PLEASURE IS NOT FOR YOURSELF YOU SELFISH MERDE.” 

Week 1 - Death by drum

What a first week! I have been staying with a beautiful French family who live right in the centre of Paris next to le Jardin du Luxemburg. (The Luxemburg Gardens if you hadn’t worked that out). Their roof looks out over Paris and the Eiffel tour which flashes in a most tacky fashion after 10pm. Every morning Clemence has been my running buddy and done laps with me around the Garden (NB: This is a huge garden – so no small feat). I think I could now tell you more about the statues and plants in that garden than I could any fact learnt in school.

So far my observation of ‘French living’ is that they eat like birds.  Classy birds. For any one meal they eat everything – a walnut, a slither of cheese, a pinch of bread (Sometimes dipped in tea!?) a fig, a small sardine, one piece of chocolate etc. but VERY SLOWLY. I am so not used to this coming from a large family where the mentality is very much: Get in there or go starving. It’s a battle to get a decent portion when you are competing with teenage boys so I have had to attempt to do as the French do and not eat like a starving person running late. No doubt a healthy adjustment to my food habits but whether I will be able to continue this in America is another question…

I have completed one whole week at ‘clown school’ with the master himself Philippe Gaulier. Despite my expectations being huge as he has ‘beat up’ the likes of Emma Thompson, Sacha Baren Cohen and Mrs Brown with his insults – he manages to in fact be more brutal in real life. But the training is addictive. Everyone in my class comes from different backgrounds, of all ages and I think we are all having some sort of existential crisis to be here… These are some of the notes I took on the first day of class:

On Monday - Gaulier enters the class wearing red harry potter like glasses, a hat, suit, abundance of grey prickly hear and was equipped with a drum. He bickers with his wife Michiko then explains to us that tomorrow he wants us to be unrecognizable, in full costume otherwise he won’t work with us. He then asks us to split into two groups of roughly even boy: girl, gay: straight and intelligent: vegetable type people in each. After admin we get to the “serious” and play a game of Simon Says. It seems like a typical game although the instructions are difficult to understand through his thick French accent. Then all of a sudden one student accuses another of pushing him. (I am confused as to what is going on) Philippe then punishes the girl with ‘twenty’. (I think he means pushups but quickly discover he means: “beg the class for 20 kisses.”… Oh of course.) The students in the class grant or refuse the request for a kiss often with insults back: “Not today or any day. You deserve to be murdered for your mistake.” Then if you don’t manage to get the number of kisses required Philippe literally bends you over, twists your arm and smacks your back whilst pretending to saw off your head.

After this Philippe get’s all the newcomers to go on stage one by one and introduce themselves to the class with their name and where they are from. He then questions us: “Are you intelligent? Leftwing or right? Are you kind? Are you boring? Etc.” Next up he allows a group of 10 on stage to dance and when the music stops one must step forward to say “Daddy, I am in Etampes and I am in major. But you can’t recognize me because I am playing a character. See I am an actor…” (Well something along that phrase – the performer can do what they like with it). Part way through dancing Philippe stops the music and asks me “Are you racist? Because you are dancing with an Asian you know?” It seems this is his teaching style – pushing it too far and seeing how you react. One by one we went through this exercise and most he stopped mid way through with his drum or blasted the music. If you were trying to be funny, or unbalanced, or not fitting the role of the actor or not finding the pleasure you were punished. (Either with slaps or an imagined disease or road accident.) One girl didn’t even make it to speaking as he called her a slut just for her walk onto stage and beat his drum. Everyone got one try – no exceptions. He would often ask the class after a turn: “Now was that boring? Or fucking boring?” I get more and more tense waiting my turn. Finally it is my go and my Italian dance partner tells me to relax and find the pleasure. I step out: “Vanessa. Well Mum. I am in Etampes. Although they don’t pronounce the ‘s’ here because we are in France. Now you won’t believe this but I am an actor. Are you proud of me yet?” (I then proceed to carry out a set of foolish acts, which I can’t even remember now as I was feeding of the audience’s laughter). But he didn’t stop me… he let me go all the way through then said: “Hmm. We like her. You had much pleasure on stage and not awful actor. Not bad. And I don’t like saying that.” Not bad for a first day but I must go op shopping immediately to find a costume for my character in order to be unrecognizable for class tomorrow!

On the following days we did movement class in the morning and then a performance task in the afternoon. For example: Your character has to get up and sing a song on a talent show, 20-minute improvisation in your house, musical chairs as your character etc. It is a huge achievement just to get through a couple of minutes without him beating his drum for you to get off because you were “boring, fucking awful or destined to be deported to your home country.” Whilst you are on stage he raises his hand in the air and the class whistle if you are getting close to a flop or DOUBLE ZERO, which is the mark he so loves to give out.

There are too many hilarious/brutal quotes to write down and I can’t begin to capture the absurd brilliance of this school but if you have ever wanted to go – GO. Just to experience it.

That’s all for now. Au revoir!

PART 1

I decided to begin this blog for 4 reasons -

(1) I read somewhere that honesty is comedy in a dishonest world. And that if one wishes to call themselves a writer they need to practice honesty - or at least writing. 

(2) My long term memory is appalling and somewhat similar to Dory the fish so this might help me to document my training and remember my adventures abroad.

(3) My Mum can stalk me. And my family will hopefully leave awful comments about how bad I am at French seeing as they all speak it fluently. I know they're just jealous to not be heading off to euro disney...

(4) I promised my brother Romeo I would take pictures and videos of his laminated friend "Flat Stanley" and upload HIS adventures abroad - ahead of my own. It's for a school project but it's a companion for me none the less. Picture to the right.

Please note THE CODE for this blog: 

*   = means I can't stick to a focused sentence so continued adding unnecessary information below

! = I'm slightly more excited

CAPITALS = My passionate tone/RANT

haha = awkward filler

" " = Made up quote to embellish the story

(blahblah) = Honest translation

So I am about to embark on 4 months of travel! I leave to Paris this evening to train with Philippe Gaulier in Clown and Character for 6 weeks, then off to visit all my friends in London for 2 weeks, New York for 2 and a half and finally I'll end up in Chicago training with Improv Olympic for 5 weeks. 

And so I reflect upon the last time I departed for a big trip to that side of the world...

AH yes: Puffy eyed, 17, lovesick from being separated from my high school boyfriend, made worse by listening to Adele, IN a wheel chair due to a 'sliced toe on an escalator' incident, 2 suitcases, One woolen sock and one jandall on, a violin, a squillion charges and unknown chords, oh and my entire family and ALL THEIR bags and violins.

This time I'm departing older but no more wiser, slightly more immature and self centered  after a year at drama school but my eyes are certainly NOT PUFFY! And I am a lone soldier (With the exception of Flat Stanley). Which means I can eat and sleep as much as I like on the plane. Progress indeed.

I decided to do this trip quite last minute to be honest and it was no doubt an emotional reaction to my decision to drop out of drama school earlier in the year. Plus I had saved some cash for my fees so seemed silly not to spend it all at once. People do this all the time after a divorce or redundancy right? Run off to Paris to busk and become a clown? And do improv in the US? No? Well that's what I'm doing anyway. There is a sort of through line or 'theme' for this trip: train in comedy and come back with no money.

More than anything I love to laugh (Be the centre of attention) so I hope if nothing else this trip allows me to indulge in being the fool I am and make my fellow Parisians, Londoners, New Yorkers, Chicago-eees and blog stalkers laugh.  As I outlined in the reasons above, being honest is certainly something I could afford to practice.  Not because I’m a liar and steal things*(stick to the code and scroll down below) but because I suffer from being a compulsive people pleaser. Symptoms include excessive smiling, yearning for outside validation, cravings for smoothies and an underlying need to please others. By ‘others’ I should clarify that I’m not talking about men I sleep with. I’ve been privy to far too many persuasive feminists and waxing pains to care for that. I mean the world!!And my mother. The irony of her diagnosing me with this condition in the first place is not lost on me. Please note she has also diagnosed me with a serious hormonal condition based on my rare symptoms of: occasional bad skin, leg bruises post, mood swings, lack of appreciation for my parents and hair on my face. I saw a doctor and he diagnosed me with: BEING A HUMAN.Why this woman is not in medicine I will never know.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAgh I still need to close up my suitcase, sort out my tax and practice my violin before heading out the door so I will finish my first post here.

What I'm hoping is that my blog is a chaotic jumble of honesty, made up characters, red noses, poor french, flights, Improv, photos, a laminated companion and a good time.

Ridiculously excited to be staying with a french speaking family in Paris despite my complete lack of french - please forgive my over use of facial expressions in advance. 

To all my friends abroad I cannot wait to see you!! And to my friends and family back home (NZ/AUS) I'll miss you and see you in four months! 

Stay tuned for updates to come at the other end.

*With the exception of once stealing my Mother’s green smoothie which I blamed my brother for. Yes my brother who eats nothing but biscuits, cake and nutella – complete rookie error. But now I’ve gone and said it on the world wide web! I’m sorry mum, I owe you one. … Literally.  I’ll buy you one of those 250ml green smoothie drinks that scream “I’m a bored yoga mum!” for $5.50 when I return. Note: This does not make YOU a yoga mum. You have too many children and not enough time to ever master downwards dog.