The risk of silence to help us dream

Bonsoir, or if you read this during the day, bonjour.
Slacked off a little yesterday and didn't bother blogging, I think I've still got enough previous blogs in the tank to justify my sqeaker from Naz.
So, yesterday, Neutral mask, we played with the rhythm of a tree, thats right folks i'm at theatre school and i played a tree.
Ah i feel like i'm home.
the difference here being that we had to have roots, apparently there is as much under the surface as there is above it, crazy, no?
We had to grow, aided by beautiful classic music and when we were at our peak Philippe and others would come round and yank at our branches, if we toppled, we sat.
First group up, timbeeeeeeer everybody.
We trees need wide bases at least this was the lesson learned from the failings of the 1st group.
If a student had a strong enough base to not be pulled over he had to speak a text as if the words were coming up from the roots.
The second part was about impulse.
1 actor stood at the back of the stage, 2 others held theri feet on the floor and the 1 st actor had to walk forward against the force of the other 2, if they didn't work hard enough monsieur gaulier had 2 others hold their arms so they had to struggle with the whole body.
The speech had to come as a result of the impulse to move.
seeing it and doing the exercise my understanding of impulse has started to deepen.

Today the mask work was really good, we played with the rhythm of fats; clotted cream,, butter, sunflower oil.
as normal we began our movement on the floor.
part 2 was to enter as if we were an 80 year old star, Maria Callas, Alec Guinnes, John Gielgud, walk down stage, sit on a chair and say" My name is Mark Winstanley, I am from Manchester, thankyou for joining me her today..."
The lesson here seemed to be about silence. If we rush we leave no space for the audience to dream but in the silences an audience can imagine around us.
As Philippe said, it is a risk for the actor to leave such long silences but as an audience we think Oh-la-la who is this person speaking to us.
So I move forward with hope that one day a paying public willdream around me, that I will give food to their imagination and they can feast on my pleasure and my aura.
Surely it is food for the soul.