I hate Tuesdays

... at least the coming ones. The next 14 ones, let's be precise. Well, perhaps even the next 16 if I go on vacation around mid-september as I intend to. That is, basically 3 months without performing: this is way too long! Tuesdays without Theater. Tough. I'll have to get used to it, I guess. Since last fall, I've loved meeting friends, every Tuesday night, to work hard together, trying to be as bourish - or as aristocratic - as possible, depending on which character you're supposed to play. To work hard, and to have a lot of fun! Some days I was pretty tired, some others quite excited. But one thing for sure: I always spent fantastic evenings and never 3 hours had gone as fast as during those rehearsals.

The play, i Rusteghi (The Rude Men), was written in 1760 by the famous Italian writer Carlo Goldoni. It is a social satire on the relationships between (rude) men - who wanna marry their kids - and malicious women who'll do their best for arranging a meeting between the fiancés before the wedding. The text is 250 years old but looks surprisingly modern by many aspects. When we decided to go for that play, it wasn't clear at all, let's face it, that we could actually perform it by the end of the year, given our rather limited theatrical experience. Not only we performed it last weekend, but according to the spectators (not all being objective, to be honest, but still) the event proved very successful and entertaining! We all managed to give the best of ourselves, with a lot of enthusiasm. This seemed the least we could do to thank Magali Fouchault, our director, who carried that project very hard, and helped us that much over the past year.

I can hardly tell you the feeling of being backstage, say half an hour before starting, when the murmur of the "crowd" starts to spread (well, that wasn't Avignon festival nor the NYC Lincoln Center, but impressive enough for us). A mixed feeling of fear ("what am I supposed to say in Scenery V of the first Act?") and genuine excitement. I guess that's what we call a positive pressure. And once on stage, well, it's even better! There are so many contradictory little things which you take into account: you must know your text, of course, live your character, react on how the other actors behave. And feel the public. As a physicist, I would call it fantastically and highly unstable, unsteady happening. I find it heady, thrilling. And above all, what is really impressive is that on the following day everything starts again from scratch, the pressure, the excitement and all that. This is actually the only regret I have: we performed only twice! All that work for only two performances. I hope we could still do it a few more times, perhaps next fall who knows. Coz' theater is really addictive. I'm gonna miss it this summer. And during all those Tuesday nights to come.