I got some more good library research done this week. On Monday afternoon, I went to the Bibliotheque-Musee de la Comedie-Francaise. I had called and left a message in the morning, asking for an appointment, but when I showed up I found out that they had not gotten the message and their reading room was full. But they were willing to give me an appointment for Tuesday morning, which I accepted. And then I went to the Arts du Spectacle collection at the Richelieu site and had a really excellent time there. It's my new favorite place in Paris, and I intend to go back all the time.

On Tuesday I went back to the CF and proceeded to annoy them by not sitting in my chair and waiting for the one person whose job is Reader Services to magically appear and ask me what I wanted and read my mind for when I was finished with things. She was really helpful, though. I told her what I was looking for, and she said, "Oh, you need the dossiers for Grandval and Mlle Dumesnil. Just fill out this form and I'll bring them, but I can only give you one actor dossier at a time." I'm glad I saw the dossiers, but there wasn't much in them that was useful to me. There were a lot of personal economic records, especially the eighteenth-century version of pay stubs. Grandval's file had his will, in manuscript, but not much else in the way of correspondence. Dumesnil's file has around twenty letters in her hand. Almost all of them are her excuses for not making the business meeting, which nearly always involves some medical problem described in graphic detail: "I hurt my foot getting out of my carriage last night;" "They're giving me one more enema and then I think they will let me eat again;" "I can't decide whether to let the doctor bleed me or not, but I'm leaning toward being bled;" "I never fully got over the last time I was sick." Those were fun to read. And one of them has the added hilarity of saying something to the effect of "As for assigning, roles, do whatever you want. And make sure you let Mlle de Saint-Far have her way. She hates me for no reason. I don't care what part she plays. I'm not standing in her way. Why does she hate me so much?"

Tonight I watched the newly-released-in-France documentary "Jesus Camp" with L. and P. I really enjoyed it. I found so many of the characters sympathetic and really, really smart. (So there's my liberal elitist bias showing, since I'm predisposed to think that 'those people' are dumb. And it seems to me that the kids are being taught to reject critical thinking by adults in positions of power who have developed good critical thinking skills.) I'm intrigued that I was more offended by the evangelicals' implicit Catholic-bashing than by their overt gay-bashing. I also appreciated the opportunity to see Ted Haggard in action, since I read about his crystal-meth-fueled sexual exploits but had never seen him. I was impressed at how many times he used the word "fabulous," and just generally put off so many signifiers of being a gay man after (and during) his silly claim that the Bible tells us all we need to know about homosexuality. The other thing that was really interesting to me was the symbiotic relationship between these Christian groups and consumerism, what with the co-opting of corporate-branded T-shirts with Christian messages.