There's a really wonderful service here in Paris, sponsored by the Mayor. Known as the Kiosque Jeune, the service seeks to encourage young people (age 26 and under) to attend cultural events, otherwise above and beyond their budgets, by giving away free tickets. The only catch is that you need to show up in person to receive your tickets, and that there are only a limited number. Strangely, there is even less bureaucracy involved in the process than I would have expected in the States. It is thanks to the Kiosque Jeune that I have been able to attend four plays in Paris, entirely free of charge.
Why am I attending these plays? According to David McCullough's excellent biography, when John Adams arrived in Paris, an acquaintance (no, not Franklin) told him that the best ways to learn French were to either attend the Comedie Francaise, or obtain a mistress. I am a little too young for the latter (although the other night, on my way back to the dormitory, through the red-light district, a man did try to rent me a prostitute), but I think that listening to people speak in colloquial French for one to two hours is probably a good way to accustom my ears to the language. In a similar anecdote, one of my classmate's French host-siblings learned English by watching the Simpsons. It's the same idea, but updated for the 21st century.
In any case, I've been to four plays so far, all of them comedies, but all of them comedies of very different varieties, in entirely different theaters filled (or not) with very different clientele.
Mission Florimont: The first play I attended, and also the best. In the style of Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail, the plot revolved around the misadventures of Florimont, knight of Francois I, sent on a mission to Constantinople. Pursued by the Spanish agents of Charles V (the Holy Roman Emperor), and accompanied by a maiden he rescues (somehow) from bandits, Florimont runs for his life through a gamut of visual gags, double-entendres, and anachronistic farces. There is a cast of only five actors, three of which handle the majority of the roles, which itself becomes a point of humor, such as when one actor "surrounds" the two protagonists by playing an entire squadron of Ottoman guards by himself ("they are too numerous!" Florimont cries out), or when another wears one costume on the right half of his body, and another on the left, and changes between the roles of prosecuting attorney and witness by turning 180 degrees. The play was really hilarious from start to finish, and was nominated in 2010 for the Moliere prize for best comedy. I could understand just about everything, although I couldn't understand the conversation in the Vatican. The theater, the Splendid Saint Martin, was medium-large in size, and fairly full, though not packed.
Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermee: Um, this one was a classic, written in the mid-19th century by the well-known Alfred de Musset, of whom I had until now been entirely ignorant. There are only two characters, a man and his mistress (a marquise) whose husband is dead (this version also had a third actor, who played a mostly-mute accordion-playing doll which sat in the corner of the room). The story is about the petty squabbles of the two; near the end of the play, the man has an epiphany, in which he becomes madly, madly in love with the woman. The style was burlesque, apparently, but the level of French used was too "high" for me. Just to begin with, the title, which means "A door must be opened or closed," is in the subjunctive, which should have tipped me off. The actors wore black leather masks on the upper halves of their faces, pasty-white makeup on the lower halves, and Dickens-era dress, so that not a single speck of human flesh was visible: I think the idea was to show that the characters were lifeless, soulless beings, more like animals than anything else. In any case, I couldn't understand most of what was said in a coherent manner, though the actors were trying very, very hard to put on a good show. The theater was tiny, and the half in which the spectators sat was very empty - no more than a dozen people attended.
Tu m'as sauve la vie: This play reminded me a bit of Pygmalion (My Fair Lady) in its style and sense of humor, although the storyline was far less inspired. The main character, a widower, is an aging Baron who lives with his servants, and is constantly hassled by the Comptesse who lives above him and wants to marry him. When crossing the street, he slips and falls, and his life is apparently saved by the tramp who had, that morning, been asking at his front door for a job, and refused all offers of money. Hence the name of the play, which means "you've saved my life." The characters spoke very quickly (especially the Baron) and wittily, although the funniest line of the play was spoken clearly enough for anyone who knew any French to understand. I had difficulty following the rapid dialogue, and thus following the complicated interactions between all of the characters. The theater was the largest I have been to, maybe the size of the State Theater in Ithaca, and furnished with a balcony: nearly every seat was filled. At the first appearances of the two main actors, the audience applauded: I had the idea that I was watching the play that every person who wanted to be cultured was attending.
Le cercle de joyeux desesperes: The play I have seen most recently, and about which I have the most mixed feelings. Three characters, in their twenties or thirties, are in a collective state of cheerful despair, and want to commit suicide for various reasons (and they all try different means throughout the play). Some of the lines, in conjunction with the visual gags, were totally, totally ridiculous, and I learned a fair amount of words that I shouldn't repeat in front of my professors anytime soon. Most of the humor was the result of the entirely different personalities of the two women -- Lili: cheerful, ditsy, painfully optimistic at times, immature, and lacking all inhibition; Mona: morose, sarcastic, and slightly hysterical from grief. This is not the play to bring your parents to, on account of some of the racy humor -- Pierre, for instance, is obligated (at gunpoint) to remove his pants, in order to prove to Mona that he is not actually her husband, by showing that he does not have a bean-shaped mark around his... you get the picture. I might have understood this play better than any of the others, and I definitely had the best seating yet, only a few rows back from the front of the medium-size, well-filled theater (for the previous play, I sat way, way in the back).
And the best part is yet to come. Tomorrow night, I will attend Moliere's l'Avare!
Love to you all.
~JD
"l'oeil qui regne aujourd'hui se trouve au troisieme rang, apres l'ouie et le toucher, et loin apres ceux-ci. L'oeil qui organise, classe et ordonne n'est pas l'organe de predilection d'un temps qui prefere ecouter" [The eye which reigns supreme today finds itself in third place, after hearing and touch, and far after. The eye which organizes, classifies, and orders is not the organ of choice of a time which prefers to listen] Robert Mandrou, Introduction a la France moderne 1500-1640, p. 76.
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