What We're Doing...
Some things we've recently done in Paris and recommend (or not)
Hello NWPL Friends,
This last month has been busy. Here are five highlights that I’d like to share with you:
Italy. In early May, Jairo and I took our first trip to Italy that did not include “work.” We traveled with Jairo’s daughter Kena, her husband Raphaël, and (of course) Léo, our grandson. The primary purpose of the trip was to introduce five year old Léo to Casa Cenci, the house-laboratory in the hills of Umbria where Jairo first worked 40 years ago during Jerzy Grotowski’s Theatre of Sources. While Grotowski delivered a series of lectures at La Sapienza, the University of Rome, he and his international team needed a place to conduct research and practical work sessions. Franco Lorenzoni, a student at the university, volunteered his newly acquired house near the small town of Amelia, about 90 minutes outside of Rome, on the train line to Firenze (Florence). Casa Cenci, an old, stone, farmhouse, sits humbly in a majestic, magical valley with fields, forests, caves, streams, and a stunning view of the ancient hilltop town of Amelia.
Over the last 40 years, Franco, now a noted author and specialist in elementary education, created, with his colleagues, a phenomenal work site that hosts school groups, astronomy sessions, and other ecological and educational experiences. Jairo and I conducted countless Performance Ecology work sessions at Cenci since the late 1980’s and several generations of NWPL actors, University of Akron theatre students, and Case Western Reserve/Cleveland Playhouse MFA graduates have performed under Cenci’s starry skies and breathed the fragrant air. Watching Léo discover the joys and mysteries of the Italian countryside (as his mother, Kena, did many years before) and reconnecting with friends over plates of steaming pasta and glasses of robust red wine filled our hearts with that special kind of love that one finds only in Italy.
Speaking of love and conviviality, in the last week, we have hosted several good friends for meals at the apartment on Rue Titon. A long-time friend and associate from our years working with Grotowski sojourns in Paris quite often. She recently returned from Poland where she had to go to renew her passport soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Once in Warsaw, she found herself submerged in the day to day efforts of welcoming and processing refugees. Her multiple language skills and dexterous ability to navigate any bureaucratic situation made her a much sought after contact at the central train station. Stories of refugees arriving with only a small plastic bag of belongings and a precious pet (or three) thrust the reality of Putin’s War back to the forefront of my thoughts. One story, in particular, about an unconventional family unit of four, several members with no current legal status, made me shiver with dread as the cruelty of war and its effects on the daily lives of innocent people reverberated around our comfortable Paris dinner table.
Our second guest this week was Akron’s own JT Buck. JT and I have known each other since he was an undergraduate theatre student at UA in the 1990’s. It’s wonderful to see him now blossoming as an administrator at Karmê Chöling: Shambhala Meditation Center in Vermont. JT has an incisive intellect and a powerful talent as a writer and musician. He collaborated with NWPL on several projects, most notably, the second part of The Devil’s Milk Trilogy, the musical Goosetown. JT wrote the book and lyrics and composed all the music for Goosetown. He also was a co-founder of QuTheatr, Akron’s LGBTQ youth and young adult theatre ensemble. JT will be in Paris for some days and we will be meeting several more times. In fact, we have tickets to see a four hour version of The Odyssey by a Polish theatre company later this month! I’ll let you know how that goes.
Speaking of theatre adaptations, we recently attended Peter Brook’s The Tempest Project at his theatre here in Paris, Les Bouffes du Nord. Brook is often considered the world’s greatest living stage director. At 97 years old, I’m not sure how “present” he is in the actual creation of the mise en scène these days. His fragility is evident in the video featured on the theatre’s website in which he discusses The Tempest Project. However, his name appears as director, along with the name of his long-time associate Marie-Hélène Estienne. I was intrigued by this performance. Although I questioned some of the casting choices and I found the work of several of the actors lacking in any kind of delight or technical mastery, the simplicity of the storytelling and the skilled use of the space allowed the piece to crystallize at several key moments.
Shakespeare in French is always a complicated affair for me. So often the French language on stage is “presented” rather than invented in the moment. The strict syntax of the language usually requires that the speaker forms whole thoughts before he/she speaks them. When you begin a sentence, you already know how it’s going to end. If you take away the immediate and visceral aspect of creating the language as you’re speaking, you lose the active quality that makes Shakespeare’s words inherently theatrical. Ariane Mnouchkine was able to overcome this language obstacle in her French adaptations of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Richard II. I saw them at the Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival in 1984. Her reliance on Asian performance techniques for those two performances helped mask any issues with the text. On the other hand, in her more recent rendition of Macbeth, both text and staging remained muddled.
Brook, of course, is the master of bringing Shakespeare’s language alive—in English. His Hamlet, with Adrian Lester, is a brilliant lesson in speaking and staging Shakespeare. In The Tempest Project, I saw the actors struggling to make the same kind of magic happen, but falling flat. Renowned French talk show host, Bernard Pivot (James Lipton’s inspiration for Inside the Actors’ Studio), asked his guests a version of the famous Proust questionnaire. When Pivot asked Brook the final question, “If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?,” Brook responded: “Rehearsals are over.” I hope that he has a chance to finish his Tempest before the rehearsals end.
Speaking of rehearsals ending, Irondale Theatre Ensemble in Brooklyn is premiering their production of Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children this weekend through June 5. I’ve been following the rehearsals of the performance through the newsletter/blog of artistic director Jim Niesen, “What’s on Jim’s Mind.” I enjoy very much how he is able to weave his day to day concerns and artistic activities with a thorough knowledge of theatre history, pop culture, and his own lived experience. I’ve learned a lot reading his letters over the past few years and I wish the company many broken legs as they tackle Brecht’s masterpiece in what sounds like an exciting, immersive version of the play.
Speaking of immersive theatre, how can we end this tragedy we are all currently immersed in called SCOTUS? Actually, I don’t know if it’s a tragedy or a ridiculous farce. But we have to do something. I have a lot of respect for many of my friends who have called for voter turnout in the mid-term elections as the best way to protest what seems to be the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on Roe v. Wade. However, the rebel in me also wants millions to take to the streets and demonstrate. With JT this week, we had a long discussion about the efficacy of protests and the current lamentable state of many of the organizations on the left and their inability to lead. Why can’t the left get its act together? We had 40+ years to get Roe v. Wade enacted into law. What happened? Even when everything is in our favor, we can’t control the message. Our rhetoric turns into babble.
My niece is currently pregnant with twins, my mother’s first great-grandchildren. Right now, it seems my niece’s daughters will be born into a world with less freedoms than their great grandmother—less control over their bodies, their privacy, their choices. That’s frightening. For me, Jerzy Grotowski succinctly sets the challenge in an article which I helped him translate many years ago. The title, “Tu es le fils de quelqu’un,” is meant to remain always in French:
I work, not to make some discourse, but to enlarge the island of freedom which I bear; my obligation is not to make political declarations but to make holes in the wall. The things which were forbidden before me should be permitted after me; the doors which were closed and double-locked should be opened. I must resolve the problem of freedom and of tyranny through practical measures; that means that my activity should leave traces, examples of freedom. It’s a whole other thing to lament about freedom: “Freedom is a good thing. You must fight for freedom” (and it’s often the others who should do the fighting, etc.). It is necessary to accomplish the act; never to give up, but always to go one step further, one step further. That’s it—the question of social activity through culture.
How will each of us pick up the gauntlet Grotowski has thrown down?
PS: On a lighter note: two excellent ways to forget the troubles of the world—temporarily—are the series Heartstoppers on Netflix and the new Downton Abbey film. Both made me a bit giddy—temporarily. Unashamedly sentimental, but well-done and well worth the time investment—if only to feel good about humanity for a fleeting moment. Then back to picking up that damned gauntlet!
Franco Lorenzoni’s books are currently only available in Italian. Here is an example:
The full text of Grotowski’s “Tu es le fils de quelqu’un” can be found in The Grotowski Sourcebook, edited by Richard Schechner and Lisa Wolford (2001).
You can watch fragments of Ariane Mnouchkine’s Theatre du Soleil performances on Vimeo or Youtube.
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