All posts tagged: theatre

13 mars – priorities

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One of the best things about teaching in France are the school holidays. For each 6 weeks of school, we have a 2 week vacation– not too shabby! While I like to take advantage of these breaks to relax, I’d be remiss if I lived in Europe without traveling around as much as I can. After all, who knows how long I’ll even be here! This week I’ve been corresponding with a friend who I haven’t seen in 2 years. She recently graduated and moved to London and I plan to take advantage of being (relatively) close to England to finally visit her! As we coordinate dates, I look at my empty calendar for the month of May. My teaching contract ends April 30. My visa ends May 15. So far, my plan is to  pack up, go to London, and then head back to the United States. I tell her, “I’ll either come the week ending with May 20, or the week after May 20. I haven’t really decided. I haven’t booked tickets from Marseille to London yet. …

theatre disaster

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This morning, a comment from yesterday’s post reminded me of one of my favorite songs from the Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess. So naturally, I turned on the soundtrack and played it on repeat for most of the morning. Then, I started sifting through some of my post-it notes for an idea of what to write about today and found: It’s referring to a concert I went to at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts to see possibly my  favorite performer of all time Audra McDonald. Some of you might know her from the TV show Private Practice, the 1999 movie version of Annie (she played Grace, Mr. Warbucks’s assistant), or Mother Abbess from the NBC Sound of Music Live! program a few years ago. She also regularly sings Yahoo! Answers with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show! But I am much more familiar with her Broadway credits as Sarah from Ragtime, Lizzie from 110 in the Shade, and Bess from the recent revival of Porgy and Bess. Simply put, she is an astounding person …

Postcard from London

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Once upon a time, many moons ago, I went to London. I had originally planned to go way back in February to see a play my friend Natalia directed, but it ended up not working out. Still, I couldn’t leave the continent without visiting the theatre capital of Europe, so I planned a few days’ visit in between moving out of Chambéry and hopping on my flight back to DC. After a 5am wake up call to lug my hundreds of pounds of luggage across cobblestones, onto two different trains, through the airport, and across Paris to catch the Eurostar, I was 100% exhausted, and in a very strange mood…leaving my French home probably forever, saying goodbye to dear friends, and suddenly being thrust back into an English-speaking country (who know how disorienting that would be?!). So I wanted to keep my plans as uncomplicated as possible. The universe must have picked up on some of those karmic vibrations or something, because after being in London for less than one day, it helped my trip become simple in a way …

To TAPIF or not to TAPIF, that is the Question

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Since returning home, I’ve felt more and more like I’ve been living a double life. In my first weeks back home, I was so surprised by the number of times I described myself as having “just graduated” which I suspect is because taking a year to teach English is France feels so unconnected to the rest of my experience learning and creating and teaching theatre, to the point where I feel like it didn’t even happen. I am striving now to find avenues to connect my professional and personal life to my experience in France, so I can feel like it was worth it, like it meant something in the greater scope of my life, but it’s not easy.

City of Masks: Unmasked, or Christmas in Venice

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Ahhh January 25th. The perfect day to talk about December 25th! The holidays can be a tricky time of year when you’re away from home. All of the European assistants I know went home, and some of the Americans as well. But as for me, Home came to France!! My family and sister arrived in Chambéry after a much delayed flight on December 22nd. We walked around the town, got some snacks at the market and they got to meet one of the teachers I work with, which was especially nice since my mom is doing a pen pal exchange with her class! The next day we set off in our rented car for Venice, Italy!!! The drive was long, but as we keep reminding people here, driving 6 hours in the US doesn’t get you all that far, so the fact that we made it through the Alps and across nearly all of northern Italy in that amount of time was actually pretty thrilling. And when I say we went through the Alps, I mean we …