What we are doing...

A few ways we've been spending our time in Paris this month October 2022

October is passing like a bolt of lightning. This fall we entered fully into the routine of daily life in France, including les grèves (strikes), les manifestations (demonstrations), and runaway inflation. The long lines at the gas stations have not yet affected us since we don’t have a car. However, if the strikes at the refineries continue much longer, public transportation will begin to feel the strain. Today, Tuesday, is a mega-strike day. Trains, trucks, buses, schools, libraries, and day-care have all joined together to create a certain amount of chaos and inconvenience for everyone throughout the country. However, public sentiment in France most often supports striking workers with the understanding that if some workers make progress towards better wages and benefits, all workers will share in the victory. So everyone complains, but soldiers on. As the language blog, Glossika, explains it: in France, strikes are considered the national pastime and complaining is the national sport!

Well, I’m not complaining. I’m enjoying every minute of life in France and the challenges only make the rewards taste that much sweeter. I see the Parisians doff their fall sweaters and vests to soak up the sun in our little neighborhood park as they munch on their ham and cheese baguettes and I am happy to be part of la belle vie.

After our first year of intense theatre-going in Paris, we are starting this season a little more conservatively. The “entertainment” budget is a bit overdrawn. We do, however, have a number of events lined up for November and December, including a Cherry Orchard at the Comédie Française, the Odin Teatret’s latest performance, an Argentine dance troupe doing a punk piece called “Fuck Me,” and American chanteuse, Melody Gardot, at the legendary Olympia. Look forward to reports on all of these adventures and more, I’m sure, in the coming months.

You might have noticed that there’s a song theme going on here today. Maybe it’s because I’m currently enrolled in a weekly singing class. I spent a good deal of time vocalizing and leading others in song during the last 37 years and I realized that I sorely missed this part of my work on myself. I signed up for a “soul” singing course at a community center, Les Plateaux Sauvages, about a 30 minute walk from our apartment, just on the other side of Père-Lachaise cemetery. I make sure to salute Jim Morrison and Edith Piaf on my way to class each week. It’s great to be a student again, enter into the respiration and tuning exercises as a participant (not a leader), and learn new techniques and songs. About 16 students make up the class, mostly women, and they’re all very welcoming. Designed for beginners, many of the students enrolled have no formal training. I’m impressed, however, with the professional attitude of each person in the class. There’s no wasting of time. Each of us faces our fears tenaciously and the 90 minute class clips along at a good pace. Our first song is Nina Simone’s version of “Feeling Good.”

The official video for the song (below) made me think of Akron friend and CATAC leader Josy Jones’ exploration of “black joy” in her latest theatre creation, if a tree falls, that was presented in Akron a few weeks ago. I hope a lot of you got a chance to see it.

Some other Akron friends have also been spending time making music lately. Jaiie Dayo-Aliya and his collaborators in Church of Starry Wisdom, released their second studio album, The Black Rose (available on Spotify or on the group’s website). I found the music powerful and uplifting and really enjoyed the gospel aspects of some of the songs and retro-R & B sounds. Good stuff.

NWPL’s lighting designer, Chris Hariasz, has been spending part of his retirement writing some very interesting songs and making videos to accompany them. His latest effort, “Cowboy Ballad,” is a whole lot of fun. He has his own YouTube channel and is uploading videos as he makes them. Check it out and subscribe so that you don’t miss any of these mini-masterpieces!

A few weeks ago, I watched the Apple TV, Oprah Winfrey-produced, documentary about Sidney Poitier, simply called Sidney. The film is exceptionally informative and moving. The man’s ethics and dignity, his unwavering commitment to family and artistic integrity make him a monument to human achievement. When Sidney Poitier died earlier this year, I mentioned on Facebook how much he influenced me as a boy in the late sixties. With his string of hit movies during that period and his Oscar win for Lilies of the Field, Sidney Poitier became a model of manhood for me, a pimply-faced adolescent white boy in the suburbs of Chicago. I learned to be a man from watching Sidney Poitier in To Sir, With Love, In the Heat of the Night, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. What other role models were around back then? Paul Newman and Marlon Brando were from an earlier generation. Warren Beatty? Frankie Avalon? Not much to admire there. Steve McQueen? Too macho. But Sidney Poitier had it all—he was sexy, suave, and smart, socially-concerned and courageous. Yes, I wanted to be like Sidney Poitier.

Two other monuments to human accomplishment died recently: Loretta Lynn and Angela Lansbury. Songs by both of them have been shuffling through my playlists lately and I admire how these two artists, who led long and full lives in very different sectors of show business, each manifested a unique persona and profound nature that touched so many people. Listening to their music and reading about their lives add fuel to recent thoughts I’ve had about privilege versus lack of opportunity and how to reconcile one’s own life of hard work and good fortune with a world that has historically ostracized certain populations, places insurmountable barriers between classes, ethnicities, and religions, and constructs false designations of race and gender.

Hmmm. We’ll come back to all of that later. It seems this newsletter is turning into more of a “musings” than a “what we’re doing.” In any case, all of these thoughts lead me to an interview I’ve read recently that’s been bumping around Instagram and Facebook. Perhaps some of you have already read it? It’s the Jason P. Frank interview with one of the actors from the current Broadway production of 1776, Sarah Porkalob. I’m not sure yet how I feel about the interview. There is a lot to unpack: the actor’s attitude towards the production and artistic staff, the actor’s honesty in declaring their intentions about the production, and the actor’s seeming lack of humility in discussing their own contributions to the production. I only know right now that there is something in this article, an attitude about the work of the theatre artist, coming from both the interviewer and the interviewee, that makes me happy not to be engaged in theatre production right now—in the USA or anywhere. It’s a mine field.

To conclude: yesterday I broke into tears watching the new Bruce Springsteen video of The Commodores’ hit, “Nightshift.” The song, the atmosphere created in the video, and the courage of the artist to try something completely different combine for me into an experience that is quite magnificent, nearly perfect. Thank you, Bruce, for pointing the way. I’ll leave you with it now and be back in about 10 days or so with another newsletter. Please subscribe (if you haven’t yet), share, and let us know some of your thoughts and reactions. I really appreciate this chance to stay connected with so many of you around the world and to forge new connections, as well. Thank you.