MSU Theatre and Translation Symposium

Last Friday, the MSU Department of Theatre hosted an academic Symposium on Theatre and Translation.  Three MFA students who had taken my graduate seminar on Translation and Adaptation last spring presented research on comparative analysis of translations of plays.  Zev Steinberg's paper focused on the close connection between the language of a speech in Cyrano de Bergerac and choices that might be made by a fight director in choreographing the violence for that scene.  Chris Haug discussed the pitfalls of translating cultural context with regard to Dario Fo's An Accidental Death of an Anarchist.  And Carolyn Conover offered ideas for teaching Strindberg's Miss Julie using translation as an analytical lens. 

Dassia Posner, our keynote speaker, generously discussed connections among the three graduate student papers before offering her own intervention on Vsevelod Meyerhold's cultural re-framing of Carlo Gozzi's The Love of Three Oranges.  Prof. Posner's insightful lecture gave way to a productive conversation about translation in which she drew on her experience working on a "dramaturgical translation" of Chekhov's Three Sisters for Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago.

Prof. Posner's lecture also offered an excellent point of reference for considering our own production of Gozzi's The Serpent Lady.  Our final panel of the day included presentations by the design and production team for the show, including a discussion of the framing device of our chorus of fairies.   

Back to Blogging?

We shall see how long this lasts.  I'm in a place right now where I wanted to revisit my time in Paris. I'm sort of amazed at how much identifying information I included in my posts.  I had taken the blog off of search engines a while back, but I have done some cleanup and editing that may be interesting.  If you see your name in the archives of my blog and want me to remove it, please let me know.

Anyway, I am currently directing my first theatre production since I worked for Caffeine Theatre and I kind of wanted to post my program note online.  I didn't have a place to do it.  It doesn't make sense to use the Caffeine Theatre blog, and our department doesn't have a blog, so I thought I would get my personal blog up and running again.

Here's the program note:

When I was asked to propose a “magical and fantastical” show for this season, I thought of the work of Carlo Gozzi.  As a theatre historian, I knew Gozzi’s plays primarily because of his conflict with the playwright Carlo Goldoni.  While Goldoni favored a more regularized, literary comedy, Gozzi wanted to continue the use of masks and improvisation, telling old stories in old ways.  The Serpent Lady is a commedia dell’arte fairy tale; in many ways this is a play about the magic of theatre. In our production, the story is told by a group of fairies in collaboration with a troupe of actors whose origins in commedia have adapted and changed over time.  Our ensemble draws on a variety of theatrical and literary traditions beyond commedia, including melodrama, Greek tragedy, blason poetry, epic, and myth.  

At its core, The Serpent Lady is a story about how love can conquer not only death, but immortality. Farruscad and Cherestani must place their faith in each other, a lesson that proves more difficult for Farruscad than for Cherestani. Love is initially a force that weakens Farruscad, but he ultimately approaches love in a new way that leads him to greater maturity.Our production is also inevitably about gender, partly because Gozzi is often accused of misogyny.  Casting an ensemble of sixteen women and one man represents an effort to challenge traditional gender roles and to practice resistant reading.

Working with a new translation has allowed us to mine the improvisational spirit of the play, and to bring contemporary humor to a piece that inhabits the world of fairy tales: “Once Upon a Time, in a faraway land...”

Once upon a time, Dan's roommate Jennifer received an unexpected film from Netflix. It was called The Wolves of Kromer and it was kind of fascinating.

In other news, I wrote two pages of my dissertation today. It's the chapter on anthologies. I am enjoying it so far. Writing my dissertation is hard! I just want to watch Cynthia Nixon with Multiple Personality Disorder on Law and Order: SVU.

More wisdom from Carol Channing:

So! One night in Vegas, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz brought Dietrich to the show. I prayed to do her accurately. That was before I found out the last person to know what your victim is like is the victim herself. There were seven boys doing me in Vegas at the time, all acting exactly alike, with not one tiny thing that resembled me, I felt. However, George Burns laughed his head off at them. All I could see on a couple of them was a five o'clock shadow, but how come they all assumed the same weird mannerisms? Then I knew anyone who knows what he himself acts like is totally phony and therefore a bloody bore.

It turns out Marlene Dietrich was very offended by Carol Channing's impersonation of her. But then that ended up being a good career move, because she got so much press out of it.

I am reading Carol Channing's autobiography. It is hilarious. She offers the best critique of George Bernard Shaw that I have ever read:

You know it has always been said that art should never be didactic, that then it isn't art anymore. But Shaw argued constantly that art should always be didactic. The result in any Shaw play is that Epifania (my part) [in The Millionairess] would say to her suitor, excellently played by John McMartin, lines to the effect of "I love you," and McMartin would say, "I love you, too. Will you marry me?" Epifania would say, "Yes. But first let me discuss income tax." The monologues go on for three pages. Or "I'm leaving you." "Oh, please, don't go." "I won't go until I tell you how I feel about organized religion." This one goes on for four pages.

From Just Lucky I Guess: A Memoir of Sorts. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), p. 176.

Another weird thing about being back in the U.S. is watching American Crime Dramas (CSI, Cold Case, etc.) with the characters actually speaking English. I had gotten used to hearing them speak French while they mouthed the English words. I was talking about the translated titles of these shows the other day. CSI is "Les Experts;" Law and Order: Special Victims Unit is "New York: Unite Special." And they're dubbed. I always talk about learning lots of new vocabulary from seeing "The Usual Suspects" dubbed in French, but I don't remember learning much from the televised crime dramas.

I had a very busy Labor Day weekend filled with out-of-town vistors. P. visited briefly, which was nice. He and Laura and I met up for a drink downtown. It was nice to hang out with them. Friday night I had dinner with Tony, who was visiting from Missouri. And Monday was Jacob's birthday at Old St. Andrew's.

We started rehearsals for Translations this week. I'm excited about it. I am learning a lot more about Irish language, history, and culture. I just checked out three books on the Ordnance Survey, which was England's effort to map all of Ireland, between 1824 and 1842. The play is set in a small town in County Donegal in 1833. (Actually, the name of the town, Baile Beag, means "Small Town" in Irish.)

This weekend was more relaxing. I went over to Laurie and Dave's on Friday night, and then went to a birthday party last night. Today Jen and I picked up some furniture from a friend who just moved into a smaller apartment and was getting rid of some stuff. So now I think out apartment is completely furnished. Hooray!

Well, I have been back in Chicago for about a month. Laura sent me an email today saying that I should update my blog, so I decided to do that.

The ISECS conference was really interesting. Most of the eighteenth-century scholars I met were really nice, and I heard a lot of interesting papers. I went to the beach with a fun group of people on our last day in Montpellier. And I recognized quite a few people on the train ride back to Paris.

When I first arrived back in Chicago, I was overwhelmed by how loud everyone is. People talk on their cell phones about really personal things, and they don't seem to realize or care that everyone can hear them. Other social interactions have been weird, too. I went shopping with Laurie one day and she walked right up to a store employee and asked a question without any kind of greeting first, and that really freaked me out.

Then I went to New Orleans for another conference. It was exhausting.

I am enjoying my new apartment, and my new roommate. Her cats are a little wary of me, but I think we're starting to be friends. Well, maybe not friends, but they seem to have decided that I can be treated civilly.

I kind of feel like I haven't accomplished much since I have been back. I was resting on my laurels with the two conferences, because I did work pretty hard during that time. I guess I will try to keep updating the blog, since I still have friends who are spread out all over. And maybe writing about my activities will make me feel like I'm making progress on my dissertation and job applications.

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.

I have had a very busy couple of weeks. After returning from Zurich, I took a sudden trip to Philadelphia to see my grandfather, who is not doing so well. We had a nice visit, but the trip there and back was sort of awful. I had to connect in Detroit, and it was problematic at both ends. I got into Philadelphia at 1:00 AM, after several hours of delays. But the way back was much worse. My flight to Detroit sat on a runway in Philadelphia for two and a half hours. When we landed in Detroit, I had missed my connection to Paris by four minutes. So had four other people. The airline was unconcerned, and wasn't going to pay for hotel rooms because the delay was due to weather. So I found flights to London and Frankfurt, and asked about those. There were no seats on the Frankfurt flight. They couldn't get me from London to Paris. I decided to just go to London and take the Chunnel, which turned out to be the right decision. They told me my bag would go to Paris, but never told me I had to file a claim when I landed in London. It seemed illogical to me to file a lost luggage report with British Airways, since they had probably never touched my bag. But that's what I eventually did. It's been a week, and I still don't have my bag. If I never get it, I will only really miss my dress shoes. In any case, I will never fly Northwest again, unless my final destination is Detroit.

On the bright side, I did get to spend a lovely afternoon in London. I went to the exhibit at Shakespeare's Globe, and the price of admission included a tour of the archeological site of the Rose theatre. Our guide had pink hair and a fascinating ideological perspective: Shakespeare's company was better than Henslowe's because it was an artistic collective, rather than a top-down business model.

Laura left last Friday. I miss her. But now Jesse is here visiting. We have been going non-stop since she got here. I have managed to spend some time in the library, though.

I turned in my Paris Program report and got a nice email back from the program administrator, thanking me for my "great" report and saying that it sounded like I had had a wonderful year. Which is true, and it's also a very supportive and encouraging thing to say. Sometimes it is nice to get some encouragement.

I had a cold all last week, so I watched a lot of television, including two pretty fascinating movies. One was a really interesting documentary called "51 Birch Street," about the filmmaker's parents' marriage. The scenes where he interviewed his father were really uncomfortable, because it seemed like his father wasn't really into answering the questions he was asking. But my favorite part was when he talked to this young rabbi about having found his mother's diary and whether or not he should read it. And the rabbi said, "Well, I know I would read it." It was amusing. The other film was "Vixen!" directed by Russell Mayer. It was genius.

This weekend I went to Zurich to visit my friend Angela from high school. We had a really fun time. She has a great group of friends there. She has been there for three years. On Saturday we went to the Christopher Street Day parade, which is what they call the Gay Pride parade. It was smaller than Chicago's, and kind of subdued because the weather was not great. That night we had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant/bar, with a rotating social circle. We stayed for five hours! At the end, paying the bill was interesting. In Switzerland, separate checks are never an issue. The waiter just checked off each item that each person wanted to pay for.

On Sunday we went out to brunch at a restaurant called Iroquois. I had the blueberry pancakes. They were excellent. They probably seemed more excellent than they actually were because I haven't had blueberry pancakes in a very long time. After brunch we went to the Buhrle museum, which was a private collection. The collector enjoyed Impressionism and medieval sculpture. There was some really great stuff there, including van Gogh's reinterpretation of a Millet painting of peasant women. From the museum we went to the Cabaret Voltaire, birthplace of Dada. We had a few drinks there. I ordered a pastis, because I could see the bottle of Ricard. The bartender was oddly impressed with me. (This happened again at another bar. Clearly pastis is not as popular in Switzerland as it is in France. Also, they serve it with less water.)

On Monday Angela had to work, so I showed myself around Zurich. It was very relaxing. I saw two churches. I took the tram to the cemetery where James Joyce is buried. I rode on a boat along the river and across Lake Zurich. It was very hot on the boat. There was an American couple behind me, and we all noticed a naked guy sitting on his paddleboat. Our boat dropped me off right by the China Garden, which was beautiful and serene. Then I went to the Botanical Gardens. In the evening we went to the movies. We saw "Pirates of the Carribbean 3" (in English, with subtitles in both French and German). There was an intermission, which was cool.

And now I'm back in Paris. Last night Laura and I went out on the town with Josh and some of his friends. We had a great time, and I didn't get home until 6 AM.

This morning I put my friends Sarah and Jim into a cab to the airport, since the RER was not running properly because of some electrical problem. They had come in from Terre Haute, Indiana for the week, and their visit was most blogworthy.

Sarah and Jim arrived last Saturday. We did some walking around in the afternoon, at Notre-Dame and the Shakespeare & Company bookstore. Then we had a nice late lunch/early dinner. On Sunday they were planning to go to the Louvre and I thought I wasn’t going with them, but then in the morning I decided I really wanted to go to the Louvre again after all. I was glad I did. We rediscovered the flying monk who breaks some debtors out of prison, and the grisly ax-in-the-head depictions of St. Peter the Martyr and St. Angelo.

On Monday we tried to go to Père Lachaise Cemetery, but there was much consternation around the entrance. It turned out that the cemetery was closed, because the previous day had been windy and rainy and several tombstones had been knocked over. An excitable gentleman wearing a silk-screened Jim Morrison jacket explained this to us. So we made our way to the Eiffel Tower instead, then wandered a bit. We ended up finding some Irish pubs on the Left Bank, as well as a plaque on Rue de l’Odéon explaining that Sylvia Beach published Ulysses in this building (Jim is an Irish literature specialist, and holds a special place in his heart for James Joyce).

Tuesday we got up early and went to Bayeux, from whence we took the bus to the American Cemetery, as I had done with my parents. Only it was windy and rainy, so the experience was completely different. Once back in Bayeux, we headed to the Tapestry museum. That was definitely a highlight. There is an audio-guide that goes along with the tapestry. The French version was hilarious. The guy really moves you through there quickly. My favorite moment was when the soldiers were loading the horses with provisions; the narrator pointed out a large cask and said, “Don’t forget the wine!” Sarah said that the English narrator enjoyed using the phrase “No matter,” as in “They can’t find William? No matter. The fighting continues apace.”

Wednesday was the Musée d’Orsay, followed by outdoor wandering in Montmartre. There was a large group of children at Sacré-Coeur, and their chaperones did not do a good job of getting them to be quiet before entering the church. This angered the security guard immensely. We then made sure to be on our best pious behavior so as not to get yelled at.

The Longest Day was on Thursday, when we got up at 6:00 AM to take the train to Arras and then go on a full-day tour of the Somme battlefields of WWI. Our guide, Brian, met us at the train station in a blue minibus. He was impressed with Jim’s knowledge of military history, and slightly put out by my ability to speak French. I should explain. We went to the Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge. There are tunnels there, which were used for both communication and combat operations. You could only see the tunnels on a guided tour, but the next English tour was not until 1:00. I said that if it was OK to translate, we could go on the French tour and I could translate for Jim and Sarah. And, in spite of having to get used to the guide’s Canadian accent, I understood everything and managed to get much of it across. Sarah said she understood some of the tour because of the guide’s excellent hand gestures, but my translation was helpful. Brian apparently said something like, “I guess you don’t need me.” Anyway, it ended up being a very long day, but definitely educational. And definitely something I would not have done on my own.

Friday we made our second trip to Père Lachaise. This time it was open, but I had forgotten the printout map at home. So we had to estimate based on the posted maps in the cemetery. We found Jim Morrison’s grave in section 6, Molière’s and La Fontaine’s in section 25 (they are buried next to each other), and Oscar Wilde’s in section…89? The section numbers were only a little bit helpful, because they are not laid out in a user-friendly way. Also, we had spent much of the previous day in cemeteries, so we decided to get through there as quickly as possible.

Then we did more walking and wandering, and in the evening Sarah and Jim went out for a romantic dinner while Laura and I went to K.’s going-away party. And this morning was the crazy trip to the RER. We were all glad I went with them up to Denfert-Rochereau, as the complications would have been more difficult to negotiate without me.

All in all, we had a really great visit. I was sad to see them go.

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.

My parents came to visit! They were here for five days, arriving Friday night and leaving on the airport shuttle at 6:15 this morning. We had a really great time.

We went to Notre-Dame and the Eiffel Tower on Saturday, then to the Louvre on Sunday. My mother was suitably impressed with the Louvre. I enjoyed the fact that they are currently running an exhibit called "Counterpoint," which involves contemporary sculptors' responses to older pieces. My favorite was in the French sculpture room, and involved white scupltures of a group of people all holding clocks. I didn't get to see who the artist was, because we were kind of done with the Louvre by the time we got to that point. We moved very efficiently through the Louvre, which was good.

On Monday we traveled to Lisieux and the the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach. Lisieux was the home of Saint Therese of the Little Flower (more officially known as Saint Therese of the Child Jesus). Everyone asked us if we were there on a pilgrimage, to which I kept saying yes. We took the train and got there very early in the morning. We walked to Les Buissonets, Therese's childhood home, which is set up with a fascinating tour. The first woman we met there put on the English recording for us, and kept telling me that I spoke really excellent French, and then she wanted to talk about Jansenism and I said something about Pascal and she was super impressed with me for knowing about Jansenism. Then she sent us upstairs, where there were nuns, who both spoke good English and closed the doors behind us. The nun in the gift shop area also complimented my French, so I told her I had spent a year in Angers as an undergraduate and now I was in Paris for the year. My mother wanted to buy relics, and the nun was horrified that she would speak of buying relics. She told us to go to the Carmelite convent, and they would give us relics there. We had already passed by there, and it's closed for renovations until 2008. But Sister had told us to go to the "accueil," or front desk. So we made our way back, and asked for directions in the Pilgrimage Center. The woman there told me to ring the doorbell at the convent. So that's what we did, and this nice lady asked us if we were on a pilgrimage and gave us relics. Then we went up to the Basilica of Saint Therese, which is enormous and very colorfully decorated. And my parents bought a bunch of stuff in the Basilica gift shop.

Then we took the train to Bayeux, and we had time for lunch (but not for the Tapestry) before the 2:40 bus to the American Cemetery. So we found this creperie, and had some very nice crepes. Everyone on the bus was American, but once we got to the cemetery, there were some Europeans (lots of Italians, and quite a few French students). The American Cemetery is building a new "Interpretation Center," and the construction makes it very confusing to find the entrance. But find it we did. The cemetery is very much designed to make Americans feel patriotic pride and a sorrowful sense of loss. I got a little weepy. The most interesting thing to me was that the sea of crosses includes a fairly large number of Stars of David, which you don't really notice in iconic D-Day imagery. (To be fair, I think most of my iconic D-Day imagery comes from the Charlie Brown special about his visit to Normandy, which I believe is entitled "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown...and Don't Come Back!") The whole experience made me wonder if George Bush and his ilk have ever visited that place, and if such a visit would make them understand the gravity of war. But I think they would be more invested in the national pride part of the equation than in gratitude or sorrow for anyone's sacrifice.

On Tuesday we went out to lunch with Laura at Le Zeyer, a restaurant that Laura and I walk by all the time and had never gone into before. (Also, we thought it was called Le Zever, because of the font on top of the awning.) The waiter there said to me, "Votre francais est impeccable" ("Your French is impeccable.") And at that point I decided people were just telling me this in front of my parents to make my parents feel proud of me. (Then again, my parents couldn't understand them...)

Tuesday evening I had rehearsal, and I sent my parents to see "Spider-Man 3" with L. and P. and K. Rehearsal was annoying, but really interesting. I'm playing the butler, and we were doing the scene where I serve tea. It was the first time we had the actual props. Everyone kept correcting me on how I was serving the tea. And at first, I was thinking it was because we hadn't really choreographed the tea service, and maybe we should take some time to do that. But when the one girl with the actual aristocratic last name said "You're going to be a pro at this" for the third or fourth time, I remembered where I was. And it dawned on me that these kids (who attend one of France's Grandes Ecoles) have all had butlers serve them tea, or at least watched butlers serve tea to their parents.

Yesterday we went to Versailles. When we bought our RER tickets, I noticed a sign that said we could buy day passes to Versailles, so I asked the guy about that. It turns out it was cheaper to do that, and we didn't have to stand in line to buy tickets when we got there. The line to get into the palace was almost as long as the ticket line, so we decided to tour the gardens and the "Domain of Marie Antoinette" before we did the castle. Which proved to be a brilliant decision.

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.

On Monday we were invited for lunch and an Easter egg hunt chez Guillaume. The Monday after Easter is a national holiday in France. Katie had told me and Laura that it would be nice if we wore pastel colors, so we did. And we were also supposed to bring our own chocolate eggs for the egg hunt. We got there at 12:30, and almost everyone thought we were going to eat lunch before we had the egg hunt. In addition to me and Laura, the other guests were K, P, Guillaume's friend Agnes, a couple named William and Gaelle, and two Dominican monks who were dressed like they were on their way to Sidetrack for Showtunes on Sunday.

So we all had aperitif and conversation, and eventually Guillaume said, "I have an appointment with the Easter Bunny," and planned to call us when the eggs were hidden in the park. (So I guess in the French tradition the Easter Bells don't fully replace the Easter Bunny. There is still a Bunny, but the chocolate is delivered by bells.) Anyway, we all stood outside the park, and we had brought wine with us. Then we found Guillaume and he announced that the Bunny had told him where the bells had dropped off the chocolate. (Aha! The Bunny and the Bells are in cahoots!) The Easter egg hunt was not about competition; each person had to find one egg or box of candy, and then stop. But once you had found your egg, you were allowed to drink. I was the second person to find an egg, so I got to open the wine bottle.

After the egg hunt, we went back to the apartment and had lunch, which started with a delicious salad, followed by chicken tajine with potatoes. And there were two kinds of tarte for dessert.

Guillaume's apartment is the Bermuda Triangle of spilling, and Sunday was no exception. A full glass of red wine splashed all over Laura and Katie, and Agnes dumped some tajine on my pants. Oh, and a glass was broken on the way back from the park.

All in all, we had a very fun day. The picture above is of me and L. and P., waiting outside the park for the egg hunt.

Another fun example of French red tape…

The first day that I went to the Arsenal I filled out three order slips for three plays I wanted to see. They all had the same call number, but with numbers in parentheses at the end: GD-1002 (1), GD-1002 (3), and whatever. So I fill out the forms and punch them in the little machine that stamps the date and time on them (“composter,” just like you have to do with your train ticket), and the guy brings me the books and says, “You know you don’t have to fill out three forms when the numbers are like that. It means they’re in the same volume.” And I was like, “Oh, I thought it might mean that, but I wasn’t sure. Thanks. Next time I won’t fill out three forms.”

Two days later I go in and I want something that’s part of the Reserve collection, which requires an additional purple form that gets folded around your order slips. So I fill out the form and ask for RES 8-BL-3550 (1-5), and I figure that will be fine. A different librarian comes up, and is really annoyed with me: “You can’t do that. You have to fill out an individual form for each item you want.” Me: “But I think they are in the same volume.” Angry librarian: “There is no way to know that until I go and check. You need to fill out four more order slips.” Me: “OK, no problem.” So I grab four more order slips and fill them out. And I fully know that he’s going to come back with one volume and I was right and he was wrong, which ultimately doesn’t matter because in France the bureaucrat is always right, especially if it means that you have to fill out more paperwork that seems unnecessary and/or illogical.

But what actually happens is that the FIRST librarian brings me my one volume (a fascinating collection of dirty plays and poems mixed with philosophical letters by Voltaire and speeches made by Freemasons). And he says, “You know, you don’t have to fill out five forms when the call numbers have numbers in parentheses at the end. You can tell they’re in the same volume.” Oh, those wacky librarians.

In other news, I went to see a ridiculous François Truffaut film called La Peau douce (“Soft Skin,” 1964) at the Cinémathèque this weekend. It is the story of a famous intellectual who meets a flight attendant and begins a passionate affair with her on a lecture trip to Lisbon. And then he totally just keeps having an affair with her, and brings her to the country with him. He really sucks at covering up his affair, so his wife is all suspicious. The ending is just glorious. Katie and I found the entire movie absolutely hilarious, but no one else in the theatre seemed to agree.

I have spent the past two days looking at books at the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal. I am somewhat annoyed with myself that I didn't start doing this sooner. It's lots of fun. It reminds me of when I had a seminar at the Newberry Library. There are penciled in names of authors of dirty plays.

I discovered three new plays this week. They may or may not work their way into my dissertation. One is called La Chauve-Souris de Sentiment, and it's like a stupid dirty joke I learned in seventh grade. You know the one about the guy who decides to get a venereal disease and give it to his girlfriend as revenge for her cheating on him? Well, in this play it's the girlfriend's servant who volunteers to give him the venereal disease. But it's unclear whether she actually has one or not.

Another play is called Les Femmes a la mode, which sadly does not mean "Women with Ice Cream," but rather, "Stylish Women." It's ostensibly an adaptation of the seventeenth-century libertine dialogue L'Ecole des filles. I find it hard to believe that it was ever performed.

Those two plays are in an anthology of libertine plays that was published in 1773. The third play is called Le Danger des liaisons and seems like it would be related to the novel Dangerous Liaisons. There is a character who is similar to Madame de Merteuil, but far less sophisticated. And the young girl is named Cecile, but she's smarter and of better moral stock than Cecile de Volanges. The play was done in 1783, and Laclos' novel was published in 1784, so it may have been an influence. I'll have to ruminate on whether that is a useful argument for my dissertation or not.

V.S. is back in town for a week, to see Ariane Mnouchkine's new show on Sunday. I'm going to call tomorrow to see if they have tickets available for Sunday, because it would be quite an experience to go see the Theatre du Soleil with her.

This weekend I had a visit from Ken, a friend from the Western Massachusetts era of my life. He arrived on Saturday afternoon, which was the first really beautiful afternoon of the spring. Needless to say, every inch of green space in Paris was mobbed. We walked through a couple of small parks where there were some people playing ping-pong on the public outdoor ping-pong tables. Then we arrived at the Jardin du Luxembourg. Having only ever gone to the Jardin du Luxembourg in the winter, I have never seen it crowded. Even in French in Action videos, it's never really crowded. Not like it was on Saturday. Wow. Ben, dis-donc, il y avait du monde!

We went into the Saint-Sulpice church, which was very pretty. And we walked along the Seine, then through the Marais. We stopped for an aperitif on the terrace of a cafe near Chatelet, and then we had dinner on the rue du Pot de Fer (Iron Pot Street), near the rue Mouffetard. Our waiter apparently decided that we did not order correctly, and so he brought us the things we should have eaten. And we ate them, and they were delicious. After dinner, we met P. and K. for a drink at Dandy's. There was bonding over enjoyment of board games (I am so not surprised that Ken and Danielle are avid players of those weird European board games like Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride). So much so that we decided to have P. and K. over to play games on Sunday night.

On Sunday morning Ken and I got up and headed for the Louvre. But it was absurdly crowded. So I took him past the Comedie-Francaise and the Opera, and then we got a sandwich and walked along the number 8 Metro to the Musee Carnavalet. The Carnavalet was not crowded at all, and there were some different rooms open than when I went before. I could go back to the Carnavalet once a week, I think. It's a new experience every time, because they open and close rooms like that. At one point Ken stepped on a rug, and got yelled at by the security guard. And you know they could have put in a barrier to make sure no one stepped on the rug, but that's not how the Musee Carnavalet rolls. We also saw their French Revolution collection, which is much more curated than their other collections. And very impressive.

We had dinner at a Corsican restaurant near the Centre Pompidou. I had the Beef Carpaccio, which turned out to be thin slices of raw beef on a green salad with parmesan cheese and a vinaigrette dressing. It was really good. And we drank a nice bold Corsican wine.

Ken had wanted to go to a game store to buy a game, but none were open on Sunday. So we ended up playing Scrabble. We played three games. Katie smoked everyone in the first game, then P. ran away with the second game (on his second or third turn he got 81 points for Plaza on a triple word score with the Z on a triple letter score). The third game was really close, though.

Ken left Monday morning, and I went with P. to Pierre Frantz's seminar on eighteenth-century French theatre on Monday afternoon. "Seminaire" basically means "lecture" in France. This one was pretty great. I'm definitely going to continue to attend. I kind of wish I had started going in the fall.

I found out yesterday that I got a fellowship for the entire 2007-2008 academic year. Kudos for me!

So here is a picture of me with the large beer in Brugge. It was not very easy to drink, and toward the end it made loud glug-glug noises.

I spent the weekend in Belgium, with Julien. Brugge was very nice, but kind of a tourist trap. I had moules-frites (mussels with french fries) and an enormous-looking beer at a restaurant on the Market Square on Friday night. We walked around all day Saturday and saw the churches and architecture, and the Choco-Story Museum. I liked the "History of Chocolate" portion of the Choco-Story Museum. The demonstration of chocolate-making was given in Flemish, and the room was very crowded, so we didn't get much out of that except a tasty sample of chocolate. Afterward we took a long walk to the outskirts of the city to see some windmills, and then followed the river around to some other sites.

On Sunday we went to Ghent, which has a lovely picturesque canal. We ate lunch al fresco, even though it was a little cold. There were a lot of Belgian boy scouts and girl scouts running around, apparently engaged in a scavenger hunt. Sunday activities included two live animal markets, mainly selling birds and rabbits. And there was a neat flea market near one of the churches. I mostly looked at books, of which there were a few in French. There were also two large boxes of porn DVDs lying on the ground. One little girl started going through them and quickly decided she wasn't interested.

Julien had thought we could spend the whole day in Ghent, but there really wasn't very much to do. So I checked out the "Belgique-Luxembourg" Michelin Guide that I had borrowed from my landlord's bookshelf, and we decided to stop in Kortrijk on the way back to Paris. It was a tiny town, with a very interesting tower in its central square. There were some weird plaster sculptures in a park. It had rained, so the plaster was kind of disintegrating. We also saw a bus trying unsuccessfully to make a turn to cross a tiny bridge, and holding up traffic on both sides of the bridge. Then later we thought we saw the police arresting the bus driver.

It was a fun weekend, and a nice break. But I didn't feel like working yesterday, so I read a mystery novel I found downstairs. Well, actually I saw the mystery novel and decided I had to read it, as it's been ages since I read a mystery novel. It was Hard Time, by Sara Paretsky, which meant that it was set in Chicago. One of the first major events that happens to V.I. Warshawski in this novel occurs at the corner of Glenwood and Balmoral, which I used to pass all the time. So that was fun.