Weekly Nicotine Fix

Well, it’s the weekend which means it’s once again time to go out for drinks in the evening and get my weekly dose of second hand smoke. The tobacco industry really should use the French population as “evidence” that smoking is not bad for your health and doesn’t cause cancer at the ridiculous levels that everyone else wants you to believe. The French smoke like it’s their job. It is completely nutter-butter the amount of people that smoke and the amount of cigarettes they smoke. Last night at the café I watched one couple go through three cig’s each in a half hour. I mean given the amount that they smoke shouldn’t the French all be dropping like flies? I worry that once I get back to the States I will have to search places out to get my fix and make my clothes like an ash tray.

Weekends also mean that another Autocour presentation has passed. For those of you to whom I have not explained the training here in detail, one of the four parts of our training and arguably the largest and the most important is our autocours. Each week we are told to break into small groups of a designated size and are given a theme to work on. We are then given a week to create a piece of theatre. No faculty supervision. It’s all the students work. The theme this last week was “The Invisible Man/Woman”. Our theme this next week is “The Imaginary Voyage”. We were told that we start in one world/place and we “voyage” to another world/place at some point. The places can be real or not. The manner of the “voyage” is completely up to us. That’s all we were given. So pretty much anything goes. It’s up to us to give life and meaning to it. I can’t even begin to describe how exciting it is to be creating again in such a prolific and constant manner. This is the way that any theatrical training program should be.

Of course the slightly nerve-racking part of the process is the presentation at the end of the week in front of the entire school (second years are invited to attend) and faculty. The faculty is completely honest in their criticism, which depending upon the truth of the circumstances can range from cruel to uneventful to the ultimate ego trip. If the piece isn’t interesting and moving dramatically they won’t hesitate to stop you and tell you to sit down. If the work is clean and interesting, they’ll let you know it. This week I was planning on our group receiving a bit of a flogging but we seemed to fare ok. I say “seemed” because you must remember that I don’t really understand much coming out of their mouths (20% on words, 40% of full concepts) so I judge most of their response by their body language. I then get everything translated later, but that of course is second hand. They pretty much said everything that I had been worried about for the entirety of the week – which is even more angering and frustrating. Nothing more terrible than sensing that something isn’t right but being completely unaware of/unable to fix it. That being said it wasn’t that harsh. We got the “interesting” label, but were informed that the depth of detail of space and relationship was completely lacking. That won’t happen again. I have decided that this next week’s theme for me is to not be nice in my work. I may not know all that much French but I’ve heard the adjective nice far too much in my critiques to miss it. I’ll keep you updated on the results.

Now that the monologue is over it’s time for some PICTURES!!! Well, at least there were supposed to be some. Right now blogger doesn't seem to be accepting photolinks. Darn blogger. I will try again tomorrow. Let's hope all will be more graphically inclined at the point.