Viva la Bouffon!

So yes, I only wrote one entry for the module on Greek Tragedy, slappeth my wrists Horatio. I do have the excuse that I was moving house during this time - no more the lonely room in the house of bonkers old milky-eyed madam - now I am living in a great flat with my beautiful classmate Susana. The flat is in Place de Clichy, and is a typical Parisian square of flats around a little courtyard. Walking through to my building and up the stairs to my door is like being in a Jeunet et Caro film: it is delicious.

Greek Tragedy happened. Philippe told us to be tall and always accept the fate of the gods proudly on our heads. I got to use my 'RSC voice' (Philippe's words, not mine) and we got to work in detail on duologues. We also had another great teacher Christine Landon-Smith who was a great contrast to Philippe - as she would work with you and explain her pedagogy as she went. I thought Greek Tragedy was pretty great. Then, we started Bouffon.

It's brilliant. It's such a release after Greek Tragedy. Concentrate girls, here comes the history:

In the middle ages the children of God (the church, the rich, beautiful, successful people of society) decided that there were certain people who ruined their pleasant landscape, such as the dwarves, the legless, the blacks, the gays, the hunchbacks; the children of God decided to banish these people to the swamps and the forests because they were unpleasant, putting bells around their necks so that they would always know if they were approaching the beautiful kingdom of the children of God. They pointed the finger of scorn at these miscreants and told them they were children of Satan. The 'others' marched off to the swamp and became the Bouffons. But then arrived the Great Plague, and the children of God were afraid. They decided (in their wisdom) to allow the Bouffons to march through the town for one night, because they thought the Bouffons were disgusting enough to scare even the Plague. So they marched through the town and found great pleasure in their role as the children of Satan. The Bouffon learnt to parody the bastards amongst the children of God and learnt very precisely how to parody them to their faces so that the bastards would be laughing and laughing and laughing, but then Oh No! He is talking about ME! I am a bastard! and he either dies of a heart attack or goes home and kills himself.

This is the art of the Bouffon: to parody those who pointed the finger of scorn, those who condemned the Bouffons to the swamp (for swamp, you can read Ghetto, concentration camp...) and to illustrate that the 'children of God' can be disgusting, bastard sons of Satan.

The Bouffon is not a clown, because the Bouffon is very clever. He walks always on dangerous ground,(and relishes this) because if he is too obvious in his parodies of the bastards then the bastard sons of God will just shoot him. The clown is idiot and just wants to be loved by the audience, the bouffon wants to kill the bastard with his performance.

This week Philippe has been showing us some of the different Bouffons: the dwarf, the hunchback, the fat-stomached. He ties us up in clothes to deform our bodies, and blackens our faces and teeth. Then we started to parody - yesterday we looked at the priest and today I parodied a paedophile teacher - it is so much fun, and not so far from my comfort zone as I had imagined. It is enormously pleasurable - and this is key, because the Bouffon enjoys being a Bouffon. When the bastard points the finger and says "Urgh! You are a poof! A Bender!" the accussed man can either say "oh no! Child of God! I am one of you, let me be gay but be counted amongst the children of God" or, he can say "poof eh? Bender eh? Interesting. Yes, I probably am. I will join those in the swamp and laugh at what a stupid bastard you really are. Ha ha! And one day I will hold the mirror of truth so close to your ugly face that you will want to kill yourself when you realise your own ugliness!"

Ha ha! I love it!

This week we have to find our inner Bouffon - a Bouffon we enjoy playing, maybe the gay, the hunchback or the dwarf. Then , over the weekend we have to find three bastards to parody. I, as yet, have no answers for these tasks. One thing is for sure, this business is complicated - to be the actor, playing the bouffon, parodying the bastard, but subtly - There are so many layers! And we are satirising religion and society at the same as time as flailing around as a funny dwarf. It is complicated, and I feel the weight of a great tradition bearing down on me.

We have a new Improvisation teacher called Aithur, he works with a company in England called Spymonkey. He did an exercise with us today to help us find our pleasure to mock and be nasty. We were put in pairs, then one person had to insult the other - the more personal the better - and then the mocked had to parody the insulter. I was with Alvin, a lovely actor from Singapore who I really love, and the prospect of insulting him and being mean was just horrible, but, I thought, it is an exercise and it is valuable experience. I insulted his trousers, his hair and his glasses (all the while deep inside, feeling terrible) and then he, the lucky bastard, insulted me in Mandarin! I don't know what he said! HA! Having said that, it was great fodder for me, because when I came to parody him, I got to be the angry Chinese man- speaking nonsense Mandarin and gesturing a lot. It's all just good complicated fun.