What Are We Doing...
September 2022
Jairo and I recently spent an extended weekend in Italy attending the wedding of our friend, Franco Lorenzoni, to his long-time companion, Roberta. The wedding reception and after-party took place at Cenci Casa-laboratorio, the house/workspace in the hills of Umbria where New World Performance Lab has often conducted Performance Ecology workshops over the past thirty years or so. The weekend was sublime with lots of family, friendship, and fine Italian food and wine. The only hitch was that Jairo got sick and couldn’t fully enjoy the late night singing and dancing beneath the full moon. Now we’re back in Paris where the summer has officially ended with the announcement this morning on the radio that Parisians should begin to wear their petite laine because the weather is about to turn frisquet. In other words, sweater weather has arrived!
Here are a few things that we’ve been doing over the past month or so:
Provins.
We took Léo on a train ride to the medieval town of Provins, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, about an hour and a half outside of Paris. It was a Friday in late August, before the Harvest Festival Weekend, and the town was not very crowded. We ate crêpes, drank apple cider, and were harassed by bees at one of the restaurants on the old town square. Afterwards, we walked the well-preserved stone streets and ramparts and climbed the narrow passageways and stairs of the ancient Cesar Tower, a 12th century prison or keep. The brochures describe it as a dungeon, but I always imagined a dungeon as being underground. The Cesar Tower is more in the style of the Tower of London, I suppose. The ticket seller warned Léo to be on the lookout for the dragon. This bit of information made our visit to the keep even more exciting as we carefully turned each corner and entered each room expecting to be greeted with a fiery roar. Léo concluded that the beast must have been asleep somewhere else.
The highlight of the trip to Provins was the performance,
The Legend of the Knights.
This equestrian, immersive, experience grabbed our five and a half year old grandson and took him on the theatre ride of his life. Léo was completely engaged physically by the spectacle of the horses, the knights, the acrobatics, colorful costumes, and thrilling jousts. When the evil knights arrived on the scene with their dragon (yes, he woke up!), Léo’s eyes got bigger and bigger and his entire body writhed in reaction to the clang of the sword fights and launching of the catapult. It was complete chaos (from this stage director’s point of view), with lances breaking and shields shattering (was that supposed to happen?), but Léo was totally present.
The dramaturgical coup de théatre occurred when the two heroes lay dead on the dusty ground and the evil knights began to celebrate their victory. Léo turned to his abuelo with tears streaming from his eyes. He collapsed into Jairo’s arms in complete devastation, sobbing uncontrollably. We thought we were going to have to leave the show and I prepared our gear for a quick exit, but suddenly a lovely lady on stilts appeared in the stage area and an amplified voice announced that she was the Spirit of the Ramparts and that she had the power to revive our heroes to continue the battle. Léo stopped crying. Two large torches shot flames upwards and the recorded music crescendoed. The two knights, our heroes, slowly got to their feet and, amid much cheering from the crowd, they fought the evil knights into submission. The battle ended with one poor bad guy being chased by two squealing pigs across the entire playing space. The sound of Léo’s genuine laughter, his joy and excitement, his plunge into utter sadness, all made this one of the most complete theatre experiences I have ever had. Yes, Léo, too, I imagine. He will remember it forever, I think. But experiencing it with him, through his reactions, brought me back to the theatre in a primal way. It was like being dunked in a pond of cold water. Very different from the experience we had a few days later at
Le Théatre des Marionettes du Jardin du Luxembourg.
Former student, actor, and good friend Alex Nine visited Paris in late August after a trip to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh and a theatre stop in London to see the latest Punch Drunk immersive theatre performance. Alex was among the first generation of students I taught at The University of Akron and he was in the first four shows I directed there: Moliere’s The Misanthrope (1990), Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1991), Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (1992), and the first rendition of Shaker material, Traditional Voices (1990) for the Cleveland Performance Art Festival.
This group of students and these four productions are etched deeply in my memory. I was young, brash, and passionate—having just finished my apprenticeship with Grotowski—and the students often had no idea what planet I was coming from. But once I was able to gain their trust (some of them, not all of them, to be sure), they went to the limits. Miracles occurred in those rehearsals in those early years and I will forever be grateful to the students who entrusted their talent to my care. I also made a lot of mistakes and today I sometimes cringe when I think of things I said or how I may have inadvertently hurt someone or overlooked a young actor’s creative impulses or possibilities. To steal Harold Clurman’s terminology, those were the fervent years—and I might add they were also ferocious. That’s what makes them precious. Because they could never happen again. I treasure the relationships I still have with many of those former students (you know who you are) and I mourn those who have been lost to time, neglect, or life’s delusions. Alex bookcased his experience with me during those fervent, ferocious years nicely by also being part of NWPL’s Devil’s Milk Trilogy (2015-16). Alex played the role of the pastor (splendidly, I might add) in the second part of the trilogy, Goosetown by J.T. Buck. It was a pleasure to spend some time with him in Paris.
During one of Léo’s last vacation days before school started, we met Alex at Le Jardin du Luxembourg on the Rive Gauche (Left Bank) to see the world famous puppet theatre. For years I had heard about the puppet shows in Luxembourg Gardens and I, shamefully, had never attended one. Alex got there early and greeted us with tickets in hand. We excitedly filed into the little theatre space, colorfully painted with scenes from the company’s repertoire of fairy tales—Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, etc. Today’s tale was to be The Three Little Pigs. The show began with a brief explanation of the history of the puppets. Once the actual puppet show began the two front rows of children seemed to be enjoying it. Léo had chosen to sit further back with us and he was skeptical from the beginning. After his experience in Provins, I think it was hard for him to accept the artificiality of the puppet’s storytelling. I, too, was not able to appreciate the performance on any level. I found the puppetry rudimentary, the voices annoying, and the storytelling gratuitous. I was not captivated. Jairo and Léo skedaddled after about 20 minutes to go play with the boats on the lagoon. A much better (and more theatrical) use of time. Alex and I stayed until the bitter end when the wolf and the pigs found some kind of détente. Yes, we didn’t even have the payoff of seeing Putin, oh, I mean, the wolf, get his just deserts!
We made it up to Alex by enjoying a good beer together in a cafe in the beautiful Parisian gardens and with a wonderful visit to the Musée des Arts Forains (Museum of Fairground Arts) the next day. Highly recommended.
Lest you think that Jairo and I have reverted to doing only children’s activities, we have also engaged in several more adult outings recently.
Some Adult Activities
One afternoon during the late August heatwave, Jairo and I made our way to the center of Paris, Les Halles, to check out one of the newer museums, le Bourse de Commerce—Pinault Collection. The Bourse de Commerce is the former “Paris Stock Exchange” Building, which has been stunningly transformed into a contemporary art museum by Japanese architect, Tadao Ando, to house part of François Pinault’s immense collection and provide gallery space for the presentation of temporary exhibits. The space is overwhelming in its beauty and the exhibits we visited were displayed to create the optimal experience for those both new to contemporary art and those more experienced in appreciating its variety of forms and expression. We will definitely return. It was a fun day.
When Akronites Josy Jones and Floco Torres visited Paris (for one night only!) in early September, we decided to take them on one of the boat tours on the Seine. These tours are always ranked high as a tourist experience, and we thought it would be the easiest way for our friends to see the Paris highlights—The Eiffel Tower, Louvre (the building anyway), Pont Neuf, Notre Dame, and others. All from the comfort of a sunset river cruise. We raced to buy umbrellas as we exited the Metro and Paris greeted our friends with a downpour. The rain let up and, as we walked towards the Eiffel Tower, a double rainbow appeared in the sky. The boat trip itself was short (only one hour long), but it gives the new visitor to Paris a glimpse of some of the city’s majesty. Watching the sunset in the City of Light from the River Seine is spectacular. However, I think a walking tour is a better idea on the whole if you have the time.
Jairo and I really enjoyed hosting Josy and Floco. Sipping liqueur late into the night with these two fascinating artists and talking about life and art in Akron, life and art in Paris, and life and art in general, made me feel very secure in the decision to pass one of our torches to Josy when we left the USA. She is an artist with a great deal of integrity and talent. She will be holding an open rehearsal of her latest site-specific work, if a tree falls, in Akron next week. Don’t miss it if you’re in the Akron area. Make your reservations now.
Miscellaneous Items
We saw Brad Pitt’s latest film, The Bullet Train. I thought it was great fun. I also enjoyed reading about Pitt’s fashion statements when he visited Paris this summer for the film’s premiere. I especially enjoyed the skirt he wore during the heatwave. I may get one for next year’s summer wardrobe. What was your favorite summer movie?
There is a list of TV shows that we never watched that gets longer and longer. Finally, after reading that Sir Anthony Hopkins has only recently binged it and that one of my favorite singers, Janis Ian, is just getting around to watching it (with great enthusiasm), Jairo and I have begun the Breaking Bad journey. We are halfway through the second season and enjoying every minute of the acting and the writing. Whether it’s the best TV series ever made, I still can’t say, but it’s very good. Oh, and we never watched The Sopranos either. Did you take the Breaking Bad journey? Have you continued it with Better Call Saul? Is it a good investment of time?
Speaking of Janis Ian, I was sad to hear that she is retiring from singing because of some chronic throat issues. She made the announcement on her Facebook page last week. We saw her in concert several summers ago at Cain Park in Cleveland and I have followed her career since her early hit “Society’s Child” was released in 1966. I was 11 years old and we had just moved from Wisconsin to the suburbs of Chicago. For some reason, I was fascinated by this song. I bought the 45 and played it over and over, eventually buying the album. I think it’s interesting how a song has the power to enter a child’s psyche and help to form one’s social outlook. Is there a song that did that for you? Certainly, “Society’s Child” is one song that made me question who I was, where I came from, and what I believed. I leave you with it now…
