I should have known from Greek Tragedy that if I really liked something, it was bound to be difficult to achieve. Bouffon is really, really, really, really, really, really difficult. Everytime I think I have understood it and have pinned it down in my head - it changes!
The problem is, I don't think you can specify exactly what the bouffon is - the parameters are totally shifting, and really as a bouffon, you can do or be anything. This is great, I mean, great, but for people trying to learn it is fucking difficult.
I must find pleasure. This is the key to all of Philippe's teaching: find your pleasure. Artur said today "if you have pleasure, you must share it with the audience." he also said to me "you are a bouffon, for sure. So don't worry about it too much." HA! Fat chance. I am English and a born worrier. How to portray all these things at the same time: your bouffon (which is the part of you who finds pleasure to blaspheme), your bouffon performing for the crowd, (always aware that he is walking the dangerous ground) playing with your chorus of bouffon friends AND the parodies on top of that! I feel people are attempting to show pleasure by gurning and gallolloping around like idiots on the stage; but the bouffon is NOT an idiot. At all. He is very shrewd and subtle. Basically, dear reader, I am thinking about this all too much. Stop thinking, just do.
Yesterday I had my first major success in Philippe's Bouffon workshop. Those of us who had learnt the 'Adam & Eve' bouffon text were asked to walk in our couples on the stage, taking pleasure to walk like a rich couple on a Sunday afternoon out on Hampstead Heath. Paul and I walked, Philippe asked us to speak our text, Paul spoke, I spoke, Philippe banged the drum "What are you doing? You speak too much. No pleasure. you speak too fast. not enough" we walked on and the next couples made their attempts.(No-one getting further than four lines) What happened then was that because I thought that was it for us - our turn had failed and was over - Paul and I started having real fun in taking the piss out of this couple. We were poncing around saying hello to the other couples, enjoying our complicite and the game we were playing together. We were having pleasure to blaspheme, and it was genuine pleasure. Philippe (being the clever man he is) saw this and called our names again. Well, we got through the whole text and it was great! At the end Philippe put everyone else in the bin, but he saved us and said "it was good, we love you. What happened? If i went to the theatre with my wife, I could turn to her now and say 'ah, they were good'. What happened?" It is so clear in my head that it worked because Paul and I had a really great pleasure together in this game we had created of parodying these snobby bastards. This is the pleasure: Your pleasure to be onstage, combined with complicite and the joy of playing a game. But when you don't have this, it is impossible to recreate. Well, I suspect this is one of the objectives of the school - to learn how to find this more confidently.
There is so much more to write, but I think this is all I can formulate into (vaguely coherent) sentences for now.
This is me and my friend Alvin as our bouffons.
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