175 – 182

 

Yes, yes, I know I’ve been silent for a while but things have been…hectic…to say the least (blame in part the practice baccalaureate exams my seniors had to take + the fact that I have to grade them).

 

But I did see quite a bit of theatre this week, so let’s just speed through all that. Yes, it’s the return of bullet point thoughts.

 

 

First: La Démangeaison des ailes at Nanterre (not pictured because for some reason the photo won’t transfer from my phone, and I don’t have the energy to figure out why).

• This show just happened to fall on the last day it snowed and of course to enter the theatre we had to go around the back. Meaning, we had to wait outside. There was a point to all this, as the idea was to have the audience enter from backstage, cross through the set (in a way that mimicked the way that other actors would enter on stage) and then find our seats, but I just found it hilarious that of course it was snowing.

 

• There’s no real plot to hash out here, since this thing was more of a mix between theatre, performance art, and art installation (the use of multimedia elements contributed to this last bit the most). Just…a lot of wings and…flapping about.

 

• Oh and there was a dog. An adorable little papillon (or papillon-corgi mix maybe) named Salsa.

 

 

On to the next!

 

• M comme Méliès at the Théâtre National de Chaillot. Yes, a love-letter to cinema in play form. Overall, cute. For a show designed for young audiences, the energy was a bit low for a good part of the beginning, which is a shame since a large part of it was devoted to trying to re-capture the playfulness and whimsy found in Méliès’s films. They did have some fun with mirrors though which was…nice. And it made me remember why I fell in love with Méliès/that time period in general.

 

And now, this.

 

• One thing I’ve never done in my life is walk out of a show. Usually it’s because I figure that I basically paid a decent amount to be there, I might as well get my money’s worth (need I remind anyone how annoyingly expensive theatre tickets can get in the States?). The great thing about living here is that because going to the theatre is actually more or less affordable, any of that sort of guilt has essentially been washed away. And thank goodness because…oh boy.

 

• Those who can read French will note the listed run time as just under 4.5 hours. To be more precise, that’s 4.5 hours without intermission. I mean, there’s definitely a bit of daring in that, but you’d think that if you were going to ask people to sit for over four hours you’d give them something stimulating to distract from the time passing. No. This was like watching molasses run through a river of mud. I left after an hour. Did I feel a little bit of remorse? Maybe. Who knows? Perhaps it got more interesting. But I had work to do, and I wasn’t in the mood to stay up until who knows when finishing it.

 

In other news, I had some other friends in town this week that I got to show around a bit, which was an excellent change from my normal routine. Research-wise, still waiting on word back about the second draft of my prospectus I sent out about a week ago. In other words…feeling in a bit of a rut. But that happens.