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.”