Our Classroom
It’s been a busy few days here at Malérargues.
I am co-leading a workshop which runs 10AM-1 and 3PM-5, so I tend to wake up at 8AM, get ready, teach, eat lunch, nap, then teach/take class again. At 5:30 or so I join the others at the outdoor “wifi café” and we chat as we do work and catch up with the world via the internet. Others pass by the table on their way to and from the main office, and there is always time for a sit-down chat. Around 7:30PM the café members (Jennifer, David, Simon, me, and a new French member, Jean François) start gathering materials for supper. Simon brings melon or salad, Jean François brings pasta with tomato and feta cheese, David brings bread, I bring some concoction from my refrigerator. Jay usually donates a bottle or two of wine. We eat, chat, and surf the web until it gets dark. One night David (who brought all his filming equipment from Ireland to France) set up a huge film lamp for our illumination.
Yesterday we took a quick journey to LaSalle to go shopping for last night’s dinner. We sped along in David’s Saab, taking the turns a little too fast and a little too loose for my comfort—it was an Irish car, so the “passenger” seat is facing on-coming traffic. The café members had decided to cook a meal for Ivan, Jay, and Marie Paule. I baked a chicken and made a salad, Simon made his grandmother’s lemon pudding and a zucchini dish sautéed in butter and garlic. Table members donated bottles of wine, quiche, and fresh strawberries.
I was very proud of myself for being able to speak enough French to buy the chicken at the boucherie. But as I unwrapped the poulet from its paper, imagine my surprise to see that it’s little head was still very much attached, it’s eye staring at me white with accusation. “Off with its head!” I cried, and continued the preparation. I threw it away in a trash can about a meter tall. The next morning Simon found the chicken head in the middle of the floor; an obvious plot by the cats.
While the chicken was baking, we had the weekly “salon” in Jay and Marie Paule’s apartment. Last night it was kind of a free-for-all, as nothing had been prepared as a topic.
Then dinner at the outdoor café, lasting until 11 PM, with much consumption of wine. I had vetoed the Kleig light illumination, and there were lovely candles on the table and on the stone wall behind us. We played the “two truths and one lie” game around the table, which included truths about someone getting stabbed, someone stealing a car, someone literally running into Tom Hanks, and someone’s virginity loss at age 12.
Around 10:30, the members of another workshop came down the hill, serenading us with guitar and voice. Only at Malérargues.
Because the Roy Hart Center explores vocal life through singing, there is always a melody on the air. Ian sings at his computer in the office. Stagérs sing with guitars and accordions around their gite supper tables. The acting studios and rehearsal rooms are always alive with sound, some musical, some animal; howling, crying, screaming, peeping, laughing, and giggling fly through the air all day long and into the evening. No wonder the locals think the people here are crazy. It’s all marvelous.
After our dinner party, this morning came way too quickly, but the voice work is always energizing. It is such a marvel to watch Ivan, Marie Paule, and Kaya work together, as they have been performing together for 30 years, and have an internal language with one another. It’s almost as if they can move in tandem.
I am already beginning to mourn my leaving here next week. My life in the “real” world has so many other layers, and the world here feels so much more human and livable.
Tonight a public play reading of my new play, "The Possessions of Mary Lincoln" in the library. Then more time at the wifi café.`
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