I have now reached my long-term destination in France, the village of Bergerac in the valley of the Dordogne river (hereafter referred to as La Dordogne), and I think I may go into an irregular schedule in writing this blog because I intend to burrow myself into French life, which may not be of great interest to friends and family.
Anyway, I managed to oversleep and in panic gathered all my
things and figuratively ran to the train station in Triel, only to find out
that I was much earlier than I had intended. I was thus able to take the early
commuter train, and arrived in Gare Montparnasse a good hour before the
departure time of my TGV train (TGV – train de grand vitesse or bullet train)
to Bordeaux … Swissh … in less than two hours I was in Bordeaux (the land of
wine and honey), and an hour later a regular “slow” train delivered me at the
train station in Bergerac, after traversing a green landscape of vineyards,
wheat, fruit trees, and of course placid views of La Dordogne.
I quickly found my way to my new lodgings, a very modern
studio open to the sunny inside court of what from the outside looks like a
stern building. My landlady came to meet me here to welcome me to the town, and
to show me the many brand new appliances at my disposal. It is a tiny house in
the best and most modern form, but –there had to be a but—it is a bit
overcrowded with cushions and baskets, so I have had to be very imaginative on
how to stack said cushions out of the way.
Fist thing I had to do was to go shopping for the bare
necessities of life. “Bare necessities” is a euphemism because I seem to have
an endless list of what I need, and only two hands to carry them from the
supermarket that is four blocks away. I did manage to buy a baguette, a bottle
of wine, rice, veggies, and filets of duck, so I had myself a proper
mediterranean dinér to celebrate my first afternoon in Bergerac.
The following morning I went exploring and found out that
there is a Saturday marché in the streets of the old town, where
everyone was shopping for fresh vegetables, fois gras (pretty pricey),
cheese, honey, charcuterie, and the legendary black truffles (even pricier,
with a truffle putting you back a 100 euros). I am not sure I will become a
regular costumer, but I absolutely loved the ambiance and people watching.
I also found that the town was having the first of its
summer festivals (France is famous for their village festivals, so it seems I
arrived in the nick of time), in the form of two days of theater sprinkled
through different venues throughout the town. Since I am intent on becoming a Bergeracoise
I promptly bought my 20 euro bracelet that will let me into any of the events,
and in the course of the day attended two performances. The first one I will
have to discuss with DJ for use at his school, because it is based on running
through a 5 minute “issue” (a guy hitting on a gal at the pub when she was
clearly not interested), and then stopping to ask the audience where did they
see the issue developing, and how could it be mitigated. People chimed in and
after discussion were invited to come and take the place of the actress to
“implement” their mitigation. The guy actor was pretty good and adapted his
performance to the new conditions on the fly, and a new round of comment and
suggestions followed. I think this might be a good way to handle conflict with
teenagers.
The second performance was based on the life of Edmond
Rostand (the author of Cyrano de Bergerac) and his wife Rosamond, who
was also a writer. A more intense script, and at times I had a hard time
understanding Edmond, but both actors did a great job representing the ups and
downs of their relation as Edmond is simultaneously (?) working on Cyrano
and Chantecler and goes from elation to depression, while Rosamond goes
from elated to bitterly disappointed, until eventually Cyrano becomes a
rousing success (but with the twist that Edmond became infatuated with Sarah
Bernard, who I believe played the role of Roxanne in the early representations
of the play). It was a great performance, and I am glad to report that I got a
good 70% of what was being said.
Question: What was the full name of Cyrano?
No comments:
Post a Comment