Chut! Les Froggies répètent...


Eh oui, en cette journée internationale de la grenouille du 9 mars 2011, le blog est suspendu pour cause de répétitions intensives nécessitant le secret le plus complet.

Pour connaître le fin mot de l'histoire, rendez-vous au Théâtre Pixel les jeudi 16 juin, vendredi 17 juin et samedi 18 juin à 20h.

Théâtre Pixel
18 rue Championnet
75018 Paris
Métros Simplon ou Jules Joffrin

A bientôt!

TT

Monday 17th January 2011's summary

Gladys is in da house!




Warming up


Victoire managed the group : everybody had to follow her movements on the music.

It was a relaxing exercise.



Working on the text

A friend of Anaïs came in the room to play the piano. It was fantastic. She played music before the short scenes and also during them.

The scenes took  place in a pub. There weresome waitresses to serve the customers of the pub.

The first group : William & Florence :

They have to know perfectly their texts and maybe be more confident. ( it is the advice from TT because in my opinion they were perfect !). In their scene, Florence is a killer and she killed someone for William. Indeed, William paid Florence so that she would the victim. That's why Florence and William have to be terrifying. The scene takes place in a public place so they have to be a little bit discreet. Nobody in the pub must understand their dialog.



The second group : Thibaut & Farida

Farida was hurt so for her it was more difficult to play her role.

Farida and Thibault have a romantic date. They don’t know each other. Thibaut is focused on his questions to check Farida's personality. The problem is that Farida has strange answers. However, Thibaut is charmed by Farida and he becomes very enterprising : he touches Farida and he takes off his clothes !! Farida is afraid.

TT advised to know the text better. TT wants Farida and Thibault to know their text very well.

TT has a lot of demands. And she underlines that the actors have to note her advices and comments. Consequently they will be able to remember the advices and be better next time they play.



The third group : Anaïs and, replacing Boubakar and Gloria: William & Maria

Anaïs has to deal with a new mother and father because the original actors didn’t participate in the session. So William was a scatterbrained father, sometimes he was dreaming and he forgot saying some phrases (exactly like the original father played by Boubakar)

Maria was a stressed mother, she was less crazy than the orginal mother.

Anaïs can’t stand the comments of her mother, TT thinks that she has also to know perfectly her text.

The athmosphere the pub was very cool up to that moment. There are candles and some people who share a nice moment with a drink. But suddenly, the music starts and everybody gets up. The song is “Home” from Edward Sharpe …and TT wants that we learn the text. The objective is to sing the verse one after the other and to sing together during the refrain. Moreover we have to create a dance, Victoire manages this dance and the other members have to follow her. It was a groovy moment !!



As everybody is very invested in each role, TT was cool and let us have a break to smoke or to discuss in the room.



The second part of the lesson

We worked on the text and the different scenes of “The mousetrap” from Agatha Christie.

It will be our master piece.

We had to represent the different scenes in 10 pictures.

The play takes place in England.

TT wants us to create pictures to represent the different scenes.

In the first scene, Mollie and Gilles were proud to open their Guest House called “ Monkwell Manor Guest House”. On the radio, we learned that there was a  murder recently in Paddington. Maureen Lyon was killed. This woman and her husband were in charge of 3 orphans. But they didn’t correctly assist these children, they ill-treated them.

The 2nd picture : Christopher Wren arrives, he is the first guest and he seems to be a strange person. Maybe he is schizophrenic.

The 3rd picture : Mrs Boyle and Major Metcalf arrive at the same time because they shared a taxi.

Mrs Boyle has a very bad temper. She was the magistrate who decided to place the 3 orphans. Now she is retired. Major Metcalf is also retired, he was a former soldier. Christopher comes back and chats up with Mollie.

The 4th picture : Miss Casewell arrives, she is nice. Mollie stresses because of the unpleasant Mrs Boyle. Christopher suggests to help Mollie to prepare the dinner.

The 5st picture : A new guest arrives but he didn’t book a bedroom. He is here by accident, because of the snow outside. He doesn’t want to give a lot of details about himself. He is mysterious. Mollie and Gilles agree to welcome him for the night.

The 6th picture : Mrs Boyle is more and more unpleasant. She criticizes everything. On the contrary, Major Metcalf and Christopher are friendly.

The 7th picture : The police calls the guest house because they want to check something but we don’t what exactly. The only thing we know is that a policeman may arrive to the hotel in the night. When the guests learn the news they worry and they are anxious.

The 8th picture : The policeman arrives and he explains that he is here to protect everybody. The reason of his presence is that the killer of Maureen Lyon lost a paper close to the victim. On this paper, the name of “Monkswell Manor” was written. Besides, there is another detail on the paper: there was a drawing with 3 little mice and a child song, the music was Three Little Mice

The 9th picture : Everbody is anxious and can suspect the other people in the Manor. Some of them are afraid , the other find this story exciting.

Final picture : The policeman wants to use the phone, but Mollie explains that the phone doesn’t work. At that moment, Trotter is really anxious. Maybe the murderer is there, in the house. Everybody gets out of the main room except for Mrs Boyle.
 Mrs Boyle listens to the radio. Suddendly the lights go off. Mollie is afraid. There is a big noise in the room. When Mollie is able to switch on the light, she sees Mrs Boyle lying strangled in front of the sofa.


And that's all for tonight!

2011 is already 2012

As I could guess, TT tried to censor my review, pretending in her last mail that SHE was supposed to do last week's report. Come on, there are some folks around there that clearly heard I was proudly and lazily volunteering last week to write one of the shortest sessions we had.

As everybody knows, there is a war coming, and it started the week before, when Anna announced (Machiavel is back) to the crowd she intends to retire next year. Of course, some of us are not foolish enough to believe her, it's of course the usual way to get the challenger express their ambition beforehand, let them fight together, and when the battlefield is clean, say, "oh, finally, I think I won't go to Australia". Needless to say Claude Guéant is also TT's private adviser.

Of course, that was too tempting for the candidates, and the next week, they were all in the place. Yeah, 14 people, a world premiere! And even everybody almost on time (but who truely believed William was really late?) .

And that was oh my god how funny.
Remember Florence, who used to play the very distinguished woman? As soon as the session started, she used our so necessary peaceful moment of warming-up to clearly enter the competition and pretend to be the next leader, a real hi-jacking I say, demagogy at its best, singing popular songs and seeking the youngest votes with no shame by encouraging the use of mushrooms in theatre. Vote-expanding mushroom, yeah.

Then, TT went on with testing each candidate's motivation and tricks. "Stand up here and watch the others during 30 seconds", and show me your true self, you, ambitious little froggies! This time, Farida was trapped. She looked at the froggies one by one, without shaking, without running from a face to another like the other pathetic candidates did, no, she was saying to the world: I'm strong, I have no fear, look at me in the eyes as I'm looking at you", and she was note shaking a single leap. She clearly won the contest but that's also where she failed. She was so triumphant that she couldn't resist the temptation of revealing how she cheated! People love to love leaders, but hate to look like fool. Until the end of the session, Farida tried by all means to get some popular agreement, but nobody was listening to her anymore. She even discredited herself more than ever when she tried to use the good old marketing of sex and assaulted Thibaut, the poor idiot of the group, in front of the dumbfounded crowd.

Did I mention Thibaut? Who would vote for a guy that is obviously crazy and even use "he" when he's talking about himself? I won't.

Do you remember Edgard Poe's hidden letter? If I were one of the candidates, I would keep an eye open when sleeping upon a blanket of flowers. William clearly announced how he'll get rid of his challengers. How did you think he could play so realisticly the coward poisoner?

Now Gloria is a serious candidate, see how she could move from tears to anger and joy? See also how she tried to intimidate the young Anaïs. Oh, but young Anaïs is maybe young, but she proudly resisted and sent Gloria packing while, hidden behind his newspaper, crafty Boubakar was watching the fight.

Then the dogs got more and more hungry. TT gave them a big bone to see how they pounce on it. The reading of Agatha Christie's play started. TT played with the nerves of the candidates, no cigarettes allowed, asking Badra to read in English, changing the roles every second minute, timing every word that was pronounced, reading all the stage directions, and at the end of the day, when everybody was exhausted, creating an awful cliffhanger without saying WHO would be murdered at the end of the second act (actually the 1st act, but TT likes to change the rules to disturb people).

Will TT's machiavellian plan succeed? Or will Paravicinus steel the trophee? After all, Victoire maybe deserve her beautiful name...

Last summary of 2010!

Gloria is in the house for the last commentary of 2010, finally online (TT's fault...)!


Echauffement


Après l’accueil chaleureux de TT (as usual –thank you Gloria, TT speaking !), on s’est mis en cercle pour se détendre et réchauffer le corps. Grâce à l’exercice très aerobique et vigoureux de Farida, nous avons réchauffé le corps et brûlé des calories en même temps. (Très efficace).

William a pris le relais et il nous a fait travailler la voix. On a mangé et avalé un son, l’a régurgité et donné a notre voisin qui devait l’avaler, régurgiter un autre son et passer a l‘autre personne etc.


Exercice de massage

Puis on s’est mis par deux. Une personne était le masseur et l’autre se faisait

massacrer (sorry masser). La personne qui se fait masser étais assise et avec la musique douce et reposante on s’est mis à se masser l’un l’autre. Apart le fait que c’étais magnifique (can we do this every week please TT-why not ! TT speaking again), ça nous a permis de créer un lien avec notre partenaire et briser les barrières pour mieux jouer notre rôle ensemble.


Reconnaissance de la voix

Puis on a fait un exercice pour reconnaitre la voix. Une personne était assise dans la salle plongée dans le noir, dos au groupe. On s’approchait de la personne un par un et chuchotait quelque chose à l’oreille. La personne assise devait deviner le nom de la personne qui chuchotait dans son oreille.


Improvisation

On a commencé a faire un exercice d’improvisation basé sur les rôles que TT nous a proposé eg. une adolescente: le rôle d’Anaïs, un assassin: le rôle de Florence et une femme séduisante : le rôle de Farida.

Après, TT nous disait le rôle qu’on devait jouer et, individuellement, on devait sortir de la salle et entrer comme le personnage en faisant les gestes, mouvements mais sans paroles. Ça nous a permis de voir les différentes façons desquelles nos rôles respectifs peuvent être joués par différentes personnes.


Le monologue de Jenny et les scènes à deux

Jenny a fait son monologue d’une dame qui était dans un bar en train de discuter avec un mec (William). Elle a beaucoup parlé et à chaque fois qu’il voulait dire quelque chose elle lui coupait la parole et continuait à parler sans arrêt. C’était drôle et très bien joué.

On a aussi continué à travailler les scènes à deux (William/Florence, Thibaut/Farida, Gloria/Anais (et Boubakar, remplacé par William) pour les présenter fin janvier/début février.


Les Masques

TT nous a apporté des masques de commedia dell’arte et nous a expliqué les différents personnages qui vont avec eux. Puis on a chacun choisi un masque et improvisé le personnage.



And that's it for tonight folks!

je suis allé sur wikipedia et...

j'ai trouvé la partition et les paroles de Three blind mice qui nous seront utiles







Texte original
Three blind mice,
See how they run,
They all ran after the farmer's wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,
Did you ever see such a sight in your life,
As three blind mice ?

Traduction française
Trois souris aveugles,
Voyez comment elles courent,
Elles ont toutes couru après la femme du fermier,
Qui leur coupait la queue avec un couteau tranchant,
Avez-vous vu un tel spectacle dans votre vie,
Comme trois souris aveugles ?