This is my last week in Paris and I can’t believe that it’s already time
to head home. Has it really been four months since I landed and was getting
lost getting anywhere? Now I take the Metro without even looking which
direction it’s going. This has been a great semester and I have tried to profit
from my time here. One thing I have enjoyed doing is going to plays and musical
performances.
I took a French theater course and we got to see the plays after reading
them. We saw Le Médecin malgré lui by Moliere, Un fil à la patte by Georges
Feydeau and La Cantatrice chauve by Eugène Ionesco. These plays were funny yet
weird in their own way. Le Médecin was about this doctor who only got his position
after his wife, seeking revenge, told these two men looking for a doctor that
he was one but that they had to beat him to get him to work. The play we saw
took place in Los Angeles in 1990 and for some reason; they thought that people
there wore cowboy boots and hats. With Feydeau’s play, there’s a well-off guy
who was dating a singer but when he came back to end the relationship because
he was getting married to the Baronne’s daughter, he gets stuck in a situation
where the truth about his marriage can’t come out. La Cantatrice chauve is part of the theater of
the absurd so if you know how I feel about Waiting for Godot, you can begin to
understand my opinion about this play. In this play, there are six characters
and their conversations make no sense that in the end, they are saying the
alphabet. We also went to a conference on the history of theater in France,
played by two actors and lasting one hour. All these plays were fantastic and
allowed me to not only learn more about the history of theater in France, but
also see how important it is today. I did learn just how long the applause at the
end of performances take here in France.
Since I love French music, mainly R&B and Hip Hop, I had to try to attend
a few events while I was here. The big one was the Urban Peace 3 concert in
late September. Some of my favorite singers/groups from Sexion D’Assaut to
Stromae to Psy4 De La Rime were performing and there was no way I was going to
leave here without seeing them. Not only did I take the RER for the first time and
wait an hour to get into Stade de France, I had to deal with teenagers who didn't
want to move to let me into my seat. After sorting that mess out, I was finally
able to enjoy a concert by artists I had been listening to before even planning
on spending the semester in Paris. The other musical performance I attended was
“Robin des Bois” and a musical comedy. I am pretty sure that it was about Robin
Hood. One of the reasons I went was that two music artists I really like, Matt
Pokora and Marc Antoine, were performing major roles. A friend of mine also
wanted to go because she was a bigger fan of Matt Pokora than I was. Apparently
Pokora is so talented that when he walked by an old lady during the
performance, she had no shame in grabbing his leg. I am so glad I was able to
see this because the singing sounded great live and the dancing was superb. At
the end, we got to join all the other fans near the stage!
I can definitely say that during my time here I have experienced some of
the French culture through plays and musical performances.
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