Professor Drabik asked us if we hated her.
The play itself was, in all honesty, very confusing, but thanks to a brief explanation by the awesome Nabila on the 4 train afterwards, everything seemed to fit itself perfectly.
I didn’t pick up the story until the actors started to mimic the characters. The French itself was probably the biggest barrier for most of us in understanding the story, but I liked it in French. I was able to understand the basics and even predict what they were going to say. Haha, Angelika and I were speaking french before we entered the theatre.
On the performance itself: The performance was on the idea of reality vs fiction. When the boy killed himself and the little girl drowned herself, was that all real? All the “characters” disappeared at the end, was this whole thing all just fictional? The show ended kind of abruptly, and I really wasn’t expecting that. I guess the cliff-hanger was the best part of the show- it is left to the viewers discretion to decide whether it was real or not, just like how the director doesn’t know, and had to call of the rehearsal.
To answer Professor Drabik’s question, we definitely don’t hate you. The performance may have gather some negative critiques from the class, but we are not entitled to like everything. If anything, we still appreciate you taking us to these performances that we probably had never heard of, and chances are, might not get the chance to go again! 🙂
~Christopher Chong
P.S. I wished the subtitles were like the ones at the Lincoln Center Met Opera House, because it was kind of hard to follow both the performance and the subtitles.
Chris, I wasn’t so much worried about the play – after all, it is a fascinating invitation to use your imagination and intellect at the same time. And quite a lot of fun, too.
But about the French – that I completely forgot about it, & we all missed it when Anthony was introducing the company as coming from Theatre de la Ville in Paris. Two hours of rapidly moving dialogue in a foreign language – indeed, with very flimsy subtitle arrangement!!
P.S. I’d like you to get hooked on this kind of performances. So please – please – don’t tell me that you’ll never go again…
I promise if I get the chance, that I will go see it. I didn’t think the performance was bad at all, but perhaps if my french was better, I would’ve liked it more. This seems to be the type of stuff where when it is translated into English, it would be a complete disaster. 🙂
The French was wonderful, I agree. That was one of my favorite things about the play because the actors spoke very clearly! It was another French lesson for me.
As to the children that die, I’m not sure that they actually died because there was a play within a play. The actors in the play that we were watching were rehearsing their own play and so I thought that maybe the children died in the play that they were rehearsing rather than in the play that we were watching. (I hope that this makes sense.)
Also, that’s a great picture!
Merci beaucoup, madamoiselle Angelika! Vous parlez Francais tres bien! ;D