Tonight was our third and final performance of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" at the Ecole Normale Superieure. I played the butler, Mason, and I also recited key stage directions ("didascalies"), in particular descriptions of characters. We have been working on the play since November, but mostly we only rehearsed one night a week. Until last week, when we rehearsed a lot. I have to admit, I was really worried, because Tuesday night was the first time we made it through the entire play without stopping, and we opened on Wednesday! But we carried it off with aplomb, despite a number of technical difficulties.

It was interesting to be a native speaker in what was for the majority of the actors a foreign-language production. I've done a number of plays in French in the U.S., and was the dramaturg for a bilingual Russian-English production at UMass, but I'm really pleased to have had the experience of doing a play in English in France. This may be because people kept coming up to me (most often during the intermission) to tell me how fabulous my British accent was. One woman said, "I could tell you were a native English speaker, but it was more than that. Anglo-Saxons are just born for this acting style."

The end of the evening was a little strange. We all helped with strike, and then people just kind of waved good-bye. But there wasn't much hugging, and there was no post-show revelry at all.

I am also pleased to have learned some French theatre vocabulary. "Souffleur" is the French word for "prompter," and "faire le souffleur" means "to be on book." "Curtain call" is "le salut," and "to take a curtain call" is "saluer." "On vous rappelle," means "they are calling you back," which the audience did every night. Maybe they were just being polite, but I think they really did enjoy the show.