Bon. Voila la tragedie Grecque:

I give you now a rule for tragedie Grecque and for all theatre: tragedy, comedy, bon.

The stage is a tray, balancing on the centre point. Someone enters, they go to the centre and the stage is balanced. Bon. Someone else enters, they explore the new environment and the inhabitants must balance them. More and more enter and we have chorus and individual exploring, etc etc, bon. It is exactly the same problem with immigration eh? Bon

Now, we sit round the walls of the room. STUDENTS! You must move the benches as your professeur has asked you - around ze walls of ze room! Allez. Bon.

(we move the benches to create an amphithetre and Philippe finds a track on his ipod - it is a recording of a very famous French man talking about the german occupation of Paris: he speaks beautifully, full of rhetoric and emotion)

Bon, so we take six students - you walk in ze space, proud, like with the neutral mask, and when I call your name, you speak the text ("the death of Hector" from Homer's 'Illiad') But with voice of actor, not "neurgh neurgh nah nah" Bon.

You all sit down immediately. Thank you for this horrible group.

(this is a compliment - at least most of us got to the end of the first sentence, one girl only got two words before BANG!)

Bon, now you sit down here - the horrible little table please! and a chair! and a glass!

Bon, so (A student sits in the chair awaiting instruction - for we the spectators it is like watching a good friend walking slowly to the gallows) So, you speak again about the death of Hektor - but now, you were his friend, and today is the anniversary of his death: every year you come and drink two, three glasses and remember him. There is a girl here in the cafe who you want to go to bed with. Who?...Bon, so you look at Susanna now and then like you want to go to bed with her. Attention...

(He gets to line four)

BANG! Stop! But he is communist no? There was no warmth about your dead friend, it was like you speak to the communist party. Thank you. Alors, Who?

(fuck it, I think, no girls have had a go yet - i learnt the text over the weekend - it's now or never...I stare into my wine glass and think about lovely Hektor and how he died in battle; I try to use the stylistic 'RSC' voice he has requested of me for Greek Tragedy...I get to the penultimate line! It has worked! Wow!)

Bon, next we do another exercise. I need a woman, not total idiot. Ah... (he looks at me - Shit!) Madame Stiff (I get up) She is l'alcoolique, but when she is not full of wine, she is quite intelligent. Bon, remove the table. So, place your leg up on the chair like a seducer (I do, and feel vulnerable, my eyes roll ceilingward and people laugh) You know Mae West, she said, I don't know how it is in English 'you are pleased to see me or is that a gun in your pocket?' Bon, so you say that in the style of Mae West. Attention:

('Is that a gun in your pocket? Or are you just pleased to see me? I say all seductive, husky and slow)

Bon, so now you say the text like this:

(I speak the text: it was wonderful, and fun, and I had the spectators, and Gaullier let me finish the whole text!)

It's much more interesting like ziz non?

(I have to inform you of one piece of information, dear reader, Gaullier always says to students after they have been bad 'you get a zero' sometimes 'a double zero' - but never has the figure been ANYTHING else but ZERO)

Bon madame Stiff. You get a seven.

(Everyone 'oohs')

Oh, happiness is a cigar called Gaullier

The Neutral Mask reaches its end

This was the best pineapple I had ever eaten. Juicy, sharp but sweet, fully cored by the ever-so-friendly greengrocer in Sceaux. All that remains now is the core and the base, which look like a toddler's sword.

Yesterday, for the first time, I was bored in class. GASP! QUEL HORREUR?! BAH NON! Bah oui mes petits amis, je me suis ennui. I was frustrated because for the whole week we had been 'doing' animals: from Penguin to chicken, from tortoise to crocodile, and I was BORED. Philippe just read out a list of animals and we had three minutes to search for/discover/explore/challenge this animal rhythm and from it find a character - only to be told "ah, not so bad" or "totally boring, sit down immediately." It's not enough! Well, I thought, this is not teaching - my niece Abi could be shouting out animals for me to imitate. It's just not enough! Philippe your methods are tired! Where is the expoloration? But oh! Philippe is so clever. He was trying to grind us towards crisis: I fretted all night with my anger and decided the best way to combat the situation was to think 'maybe it's me' and to try and attack the class today, (i'm trying a new mantra - it's something about acting positively, don't ask) to just throw myself into whatever we were doing, so that even if what I did was rubbish, it wouldn't be boring - clearly these thoughts had been provoked in my fellow classmates: the energy in the class today was amazing.

Today Philippe asked us to explore colours from behind the neutral mask: What is Blue? How is Purple? Philippe also wanted to explore which languages of the classroom had the best words for each colour. So, as a group in neutral mask were 'doing' blue, the spectators would call out their respective word for blue to see which matched the rhythm of the masks. 'Bleu' said the Frenchman, 'Azoras' said the Portuguese and we would discuss which word fitted best the colour. Blue is without doubt the portugese 'Azul', yellow is best in italian: 'giallo,' and 'red' we decided was best in English.

Then we formed opposing choruses (please advise on latin conjugation - chorae?) of colour. We played red versus blue, brown against orange, it was fascinating to see the contrast of the different colour rhythms and how the rhythms could be altered yet maintained to communicate a given task. Philippe finished the class ten minutes early, he said we were beautiful. "I don't want to do more now. It is best to leave with this beauty in our heads. If the others go now it might be shitty and I don't want that in my head." Ah, when you speak like zis Phil, I am week in ze nees...

Wow. What a week it has been: This week we continued to play with being different elements and substances through the neutral mask. In the last ten days I have been: Glue, oil (trucker), oil (boiling chip fat), vinegar, hydrochloric acid, glass, steel, elastic, paper, silk and a tree. To say it has been tiring would be an understatement.

Oftentimes Philippe will take you through a microcosm of creation in minutes (no slow exploration in this school) - you start as the element in neutral mask, and if he feels you are grasping the element well he will remove the mask, if you are still coping, he will command you to speak text, and then, if you are finding character from the element he will ask you to do a cabaret number (a song, speech) as that character. One of my favourite elements to expore was Oil - the thick black oil from a trucker's engine: it is thick and slow and lazy but it also has deep impulses which radiate from the centre out to all its volume. It was delicious. With Oil, I found a nice character - she was slumped and perhaps a little retarted, and she sang "I feel pretty" from West Side Story with a very lazy mouth. Everyone laughed and Philippe said afterwards "Bon, so we love your humour."

Vinegar I found very difficult - it is a light fluid, but also acidic - but the next rung on the ladder was Hydrochloric acid, which was madly exciting: It is frantic and thrives on consumption and destruction, so we had a lot of wild movement and energy. Philippe explained that the energy of Hydrochloric acid is an excellent one for Bouffon. When he had a group of good Hydrochlorics he asked them to move upstage whilst looking at the audience and laughing - the energy of all these maniac laughters was like watching a pack of hyena or cackling witches - it was lovely. Philippe then commanded that the group act as chorus and choryphae (the chorus leader who speaks a text, and commands the others) It was a wonderful insight into the menacing joy of the bouffon.

On Friday morning we were doing yoga in our morning movement class with our wonderful new teacher Juan. Juan is a graduate (and favourite) of the school and he has been trying to prepare our voices and bodies for Greek Tragedy which will be our demanding next module. We have been aclimatising ourselves to speaking at full pitch whilst running and jumping and moving etc, in order to strengthen our vocal resevoir. It was a great pleasure for me to move away from the ridiculous handstands and cartwheels and back to lovely voicework, and I trust Juan immensely. He is very passionate about his craft and takes time to work with individual needs. Towards the end of the class, I pulled a muscle in my neck: it didn't feel like a regular pulled muscle, it felt more as if I had 'pulled a bone.' It wasn't that painful, but I just started crying. I couldn't control it - I tried, but each time I managed to stop the tears, they began to well up again. It was bizarre. The pain ran from the base of my skull at the back of my neck, down through the centre of my throat to my voice box. Juan spent twenty minutes after the class stretching out the vertabrae in my neck, trying to shake the tension from the muscles out through my arms and legs - but still the shooting pain was there. I tried to show him where the pain was in my neck and he said "have you ever had an infection?" "Yes," I said "three years ago, and I worked through it and did great damage to my voice." He could feel the emotional block still in the glands of my throat. "If you have a friend here, you should go and cry for maybe two hours - but you must get it out." Bloody hell, I thought, how peculiar and amazing that the body should hold a physical memory of emotion like that. When I damaged my voice in 2004, it was the most terrifying period of my career, and I have carried that emotion around with me in my throat: since then I have thought about protecting my voice continuously and also taken great pains to conceal my worries by rolling them into a tight little ball somewhere between my throat and my sternum. And it's still there! It has grown strong! It is a knotted cyst of tears! Hopefully this is the beginning of my recovery. I think for most people their crisis will come in Philippe's class with how to be beautiful on stage, but for me it is the opposite (and, lest I forget, the reason I came to Paris) I have encountered my first crisis in the body that stands between me and complete expressive liberty. Sorry mummy, but 'fucking hell;' what a week.

Our homework this weekend was to find an animal and study it, to present on monday to the class. Yesterday I went to the Paris zoo to commune with the animals. Firstly, because of the strikes here it took about three hours to get there, which was a pain, and then when we arrived it was pretty depressing - poor conditions for the animals, and it has been so cold in Paris this week that all the creatures seemed really sad. Anyway, I managed to find great affinity with a group of little penguins. They are so fool-hardy and cocky, but really very silly and ungainly. i love them! So for the rest of the day I will be waddling around my little room trying to connect with my inner penguin. Last night I went to the Marais, and I have decided that this is definately my favourite area of Paris. Oh the tiny bookshop/bars and windy streets and even (Lo and behold!) vegetarian bistros! It is beautiful there and it feels like my ideal of Paris that I have carried around for so long.

Bienvenue Guillaume

This has been my face for the last two weeks. I have been 'sans internet' as we say in France, because the inconsiderate prick from whom I had been stealing free internet "Guillaume," went away. Well, hail Caesar, the prodigal son has returned: so here we are.

First a quick recap to get you up to speed: I watched the final of the Rugby World Cup under the Eiffel Tower, drinking a can of beer with about a million other English people - It was horrible, I like neither large numbers of people, Sports, or the English - but the atmosphere was amazing, and the Eiffel tower was lit up beautifully like a christmas tree. The next day I met up with Adam Brace - a friend from home - and I realised how difficult it is to all the time be a stranger, how simply wonderful it was to sit with someone who I knew, and with whom I didn't have to justify myself moment by moment. We finsihed the first module at school last week, some people went home which was sad, some people are still here... And last weekend I went home to London. Ah! What bliss! I saw Ben for two whole days, my lovely parents came up for Sunday Lunch and then I got back to Paris in time for class on Monday and was completely exhausted. Right, boring catch up over.

This week at school has seen the beginning of the second workshop "neutral mask" or in french "neutre masque" - someone phone Berlitz, i'm teaching new insights here. I was really looking forward to neutral mask; "Le Jeu" had been great fun, but it was an introduction to the game of theatre - i didn't feel like it really had me confronting my bad habits and/or weaknesses; entrez le masque. It excited me and terrified me - for the first few days I found it quite difficult to volunteer to go up - I felt like the art of moving behind a mask was one totally alien to me, and I wanted to understand it a little before I waded in. NON TIFFANY! ZERE YOU GO AGAIN: ZINKING FIRST, ZEN ACTING. STOP INTELLECTUALIZING! ZIZ IS WHY YOU ARE IN PARIS! Of course, Gaullier's school is not the place where you slowly learn and study your craft, before honing it infront of an audience. Non: ere, you just get on and do it, and you'll be killed time after boring time until one day Gaullier says "not so bad."

This week we have to find our element. That's right. Our element. Yesterday we explored water, both the still water of a mountain lake, and also the babbling clear water from a spring. Gaullier said I was "not so bad," but that I 'draw' too much - I think he meant that I was trying to portray too much, instead of just being ( I think it comes from the old ballet training, too much shape in the wrists/ankles) He took to refering to me as "the picasso/matisse of the class" which, as Gaullier insults go, left my classmates reeling. Today we had to be fire. Now, I know what some of you are thinking, "Tiff, you are literally the last person I know (apart maybe from the aforementioned Adam Brace / Richard Hurst) to embrace an exercise where your instruction was simply to move as fire...Wouldn't you raise an eyebrow? Dissappear for a cigarette? Mumble something about T S Eliot whilst raising a sarcastic eyebrow?" Yes, but this is WHY i'm here. It was today at 2.13, in a small rehersal room in Sceaux that my inbuilt cynicism started having heart palpitations. My little kitten of cynicism I had nurtured so carefully for twenty-six years: "What the hell are you doing? You're getting up first? You're actually volunteering to go and flail about like some modern interpretive dance act imitating fire? You twat." But I did anyway. "Madame Stiff" (the most enduring epithet, sometimes followed with 'Rosbif' "Ha Ha! Stiff le Rosbif, it's a joke! I like it! BANG!") "Madame Stiff, not so bad. But you use too much your arms - the rest of your body is dead"

My cynicism is laughing now, like a drain, or like Gaullier after he has thought up a joke in situ. "HA HA HA" it says "I fucking told you, throwing yourself about like that, what a twat." But do you know what I did? I did it again. I got up and did it again, and this time I was determined to feel the fire throughout my body. ( I am telling this charming story of me vs my cynicism as if there is to be a triumphant victory of innocence and spirit over cynicism, for any of you out there of a sensitive disposition who are praying nightly for this redemption of my spirit (mummy) - so that the dissappointment not be too overwhelming, i must tell you now this is not the case) I went for it! I was out of control! When he banged his drum (during an exercise it means you must speak text) "The Raven itself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements" Oh I felt like I was on fire. I spoke, and it was like the demons were eating Lady Macbeth from the inside - out. Ooh yeah! This is what it's all about! I am an actor! And then I realised that I had become totally lightheaded and couldn't really understand where I was on the planet, let alone in the room. So i had to lie down very still, and slowly drink some water, while the little voices in my head were quietly gloating.

No-one in class knew of my funny turn. I probably looked like a really pretentious wanker, who felt they had 'spent' themselves to such an incredible extent they needed to rest while the muse left them. Really it made me feel like a whirling dervish, and it made me realise how it is possible to work oneself into quite an extra-physical experience. I couldn't help thinking of churches out near the Mississippi. HA! I voluntarilly wrote the word Mississippi! I wonder if I know how to spell it. Any ammendments gratefully received. A plus tard mes amis, we've still got water and earth to come...