This week's plays & other things

It's Friday afternoon and my theater course of two weeks is over. It was really worthwhile in terms of meeting people and figuring out the festival. Honestly, I can't imagine that I would have gotten as much out of the festival as I have without some guidance, and in many ways this was some pretty high quality guidance. At least three directors of OFF plays came to speak in class and just told us how they came to be here-- the work, the contacts, the good luck, the financing; of course we had the wonderful actress for the first three days who knew everything and in addition, had us imitating chickens, writing two page plays and excercising our jaws besides listening to her stories! The second fellow was much more organized/academic but I did learn a lot from him. What is a PAIN is the french language when everyone is at such different levels-- most of it not great, either. More people joined our course along the way and we were about 10 today. I am making a point of never taking another course for non-native speakers of french!!

Plays this week: The Chess Player by Stephan Zweig---very well done; Les Monologues du Vagin (that's right!) and Nicole Croisille, a great dame of Chanson Francaise was one of the 'readers' -- very good; film for the class 'The Miser' starring Louis de Funes (the french answer to Jerry Lewis) very funny; Rendezvous au Chat Noir-- social politics in Montmartre, songs and satire--- good but hard to understand.

I will be spending the next week touring around and seeing plays before I leave here on Sunday July 29.

A note on the fish dish I mentioned the last time -- I found out from the deli lady that sells me my lunch everyday that the fish is actually 'worked' with olive oil as you would work a mayonnaise. That may explain the flavor. I am eating brown rice from the Camargue region just south of here with salt from the same area; the heirloom tomatoes are positively BODACIOUS! but they have the ordinary ones too; the famous Caviaillon melons are totally in season and are selling for 3 for 2 Euros and ordinary garlic is super crisp and powerful. I'm not buying anything that is organic.

That's all she wrote....for now.