Jesse's visit has kept me very busy. Some highlights have been our theatre-going...

We saw a Guignol play at the Parc Montsouris. It was fun to watch the large group of children in the audience interact with the puppets on stage. Mostly they were trying to help the good characters and create obstacles for the bad character. Well, one kid just constantly wanted balloons popped, and he also flirted with the princess when she came out. The weirdest moment was when all the children started chanting "Tu es moche" ("You're ugly") at the villainous servant.

We also went with P. to see Ionesco's "La Cantatrice Chauve" ("The Bald Soprano") in a production that has been running since 1957. The director was playing Mr. Martin. The maid was awesome. She was probably the youngest person on stage, in her early 60s, and she had a raspy voice and a deadpan delivery that sounded like she had been smoking (and waiting to die?) since the age of 12. The cleverest touch was that after the Maid's poem, Mr. Smith dragged her offstage and came back wiping off an ax. I also loved that they restarted the play with the Martins saying the Smiths' lines. I've never seen a US production do that. But I think maybe you need a curtain for it to work properly.

Then last night we went to the Comedie-Francaise to see "The Misanthrope." It was three hours long, and we realized immediately that the primary reason for this was that the actors had been directed to take lots of pregnant pauses. Afterward, I read the review in Le Monde and agreed with it pretty much completely. Philinte and Celimene were very good. Alceste was a mess. It wasn't really the actor's fault. His stakes were just way too high from the beginning (as were Philinte's in the opening scene), which meant he had nowhere to go but sociopath. I guess if you want Alceste to have serial-killer potential, you can try to make that work, but it kind of ruins the play. Anyway, I was glad to have the experience of seeing something at the Comedie-Francaise, but the production was disappointing.

Jesse is leaving in the morning, and then I have my crazy month of July. I'm staying here this week, then I go to Montpellier for a conference from the 8-15. I may or may not be able to stay in my apartment in Paris from the 15-19. I return to Chicago on the 20th. Then I go to another conference in New Orleans from the 25-29.