Saturday Dec 23. Paris.

Today I enjoyed a long walk from my apartment at the north end of the city’s metro lines to Vincennes at the eastern end.  

The Bassin de Villette

I find the ground level of most modern buildings really ugly. Earlier  buildings would have nice looking spaces for stores on the street level, or would just have homes with doors opening at street level. This building for example is quite interesting , but I think ruined by a forbidding, unfriendly street approach.

Here is a neat new one I saw on my walk.

While walking I thought of some of the differences I notice between Paris and Rome. Paris seems to have a greater variety of population - more Africans and Asians for instance.  And fewer visitors/tourists. More people sleeping rough.

Restaurants are a lot more varied here; the Italians stick to their own regional cuisines. The coffee is less strong here, but there is a little bit more liquid in a cup. The bread is way way better, and the croissants never have the cream fillings they rely upon in Italy. Groceries are significantly more expensive. 

In Italy everyone was busy wishing «  Buon Natale », but not here. And there are way fewer churches here, and no Virgin Marys on walls at street corners.  

For me, of course, language is so much easier here and I’m really enjoying the theatre scene. Today was a play at the Theatre du Soleil, located in a nineteenth century munitions factory area, La Cartoucherie, in the middle of the very large Parc de Vincennes. To get to the park you have to go around the Chateau de Vincennes where French royalty would come to hide out if the situation in Paris itself got too threatening.  Louis XIV, the sun king, spent part of his childhood here for safety. Goes to show that even Absolute Monarchy at its height wasn’t always a safe stable situation.

Ariane Mnouchkine established her theatre company in Vincennes in 1970 and did much avant-garde work of significant impact over the years. I saw « Notre vie dans l’art », a play by the American Richard Nelson, translated and directed by Ariane Mnouchkine. The play is simply a look into parts of a day in 1923 when a group of ten actors and their director, Constantin Stanislavski, have come from Russia for a first tour in the United States.  Stanislavski is a huge figure in the theatre world - his method of acting and directing remains hugely influential today. Anyway, in the play you just eavesdrop on conversations - for two and a half hours - as the actors sit around a simple table. That’s it, but it kept everyone’s attention, and it very seldom looked like acting - just people living.

La Cartoucherie

Here is a photo of the audience arriving. People sat on bleachers and the actors sat between the two banks of audience around the table that you can see piled with chairs. You never missed a word even though backs were often turned - these are totally well trained actors with wonderful stage voices.