what will I ever do for fun?

Forty-odd masters students, scribbling pretentiously in their notebooks. Forty-odd overly analytical minds, ascribing meaning to every unintentional or accidental action on stage. Forty-odd academics-in-training, trying to squish you and your work into the theoretical categories that are their language.

I would hate us.

Luckily, the directors and writers we have chatted with are more forgiving. I don't know why. Sometimes even I cringe at the questions asked. When someone looks an author squarely in the face and says, "Why did you write this? What does it even mean?" I have to swallow hard to surpress nervous laughter and the desire to smack my classmate on the back of the head (did you not just watch it?).

Strangely, those are the questions that spark the most interesting conversations. "What do you think it means?" Paul Pourveur, author of the brilliant Shakespeare is Dead, Get Over It fired back. My same classmate, whose head I would have patted after smacking, articulated a thoughtful response about the fragmentation of modern life and our complex relationship with history. Pourveur corroborated, added an attack on universality, questioned our love affair with the past, discussed how he tried to get that across with his writing.

Voilà interesting conversation.

Other questions, which seem like they should yield fabulous insights, fall flat. How disappointing to find that the placement of the tv screens and doors on the back projection panel “just happened” (what, the screens covered Shakespeare's eyes and ears by accident? You didn't notice when that actor enters through the door that is on Brigitte Bardot's BOOB??) Or that four actors were cast (for a script that is not divided into parts) because that is what the theatre admin agreed to pay for. Or that the projections, screens, titles, and sound effects (which totally dominated the mise en scène) were incorporated just because “I wanted to try using technology on stage.”

Sometimes talking with the directors just leaves us more in the dark. As spectators we embue everything on stage with meaning, as students of performing arts, with intention. The answer to how or why questions is often “euh...intuition, “ or simply, “I don't know, it just happened.”

And then sometimes I find a director passionately defending a concept that we have looked at in class, or, what gives me more pleasure, saying something that metaphorically kicks Meyer and his irritating theory in the pants. Often they are are willing to talk about their influences, the schools of thought and practice they subscribe to, and their thoughts on contemporary theatre.

Often they make us smile:
What does the poster mean? I don't know, I found the picture on the internet and I liked it. You are looking for Shakespeare, or meaning in Shakespeare, and he's there, up your ass.
Or,
Why are the seven male actors in my version of Hamlet in their underwear? We do the most important things in life naked.

I don't ask too many questions (and when I do they are usually of the variety that fall flat) but I listen and am pleased to have the theatre as my classroom and the likes of Philippe Sireuil, Frédéric Dussenne and Jacques Delcuvellerie as teaching assistants.

I do have one reoccurring question that I have yet to find a satisfactory answer to.

If this is what I do for work now, what on earth am I supposed to do for fun?

la moustache

He crosses the corridor from his office into class with the macbook under his arm. He is sporting what we have already identified as the classic Monsieur H look: trendy rectangular frames, deep purple striped shirt, well-fitted dark gray jeans.

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how cool he looks.

All we can look at is the moustache.

Monsieur H is the head of our programme and our primary lecturer. I took a liking to him during the application procedure, when he so promptly and soothingly answered my jittery e-mails. When I came to Brussels in May we chatted about the programme, career options and Montreal. He will most probably advise my thesis.

This semester we have three classes with him: Introduction à la critique, Adaptations, and L'oeuvre dramatique: sa structure et sa représentation. He is articulate, interesting and easy to follow. He deals succinctly with important theorists; illustrates everything he talks about with clips and photos; sends us zipping around Brussels to see shows and chat with actors and directors (two plays this week, two more next week); brings minds from around the world to share their thoughts with us (this year's guest lecturers include Daniela Amoroso from Brazil on dance, Biao from S. Paulo on ethnoscenography, Tueckyoung Kim from Korea on masks, and Shannon Jackson, head of the drama department at Berkeley, with a directing workshop).

For six hours a week, it is clear to us why Monsieur H is so well-liked by students, respected in the field, appreciated in the Brussels scene.

For six hours a week, we stare at the moustache.

Part of the fascination is the moustache itself. It is white, scrupulously groomed, exaggerated not in breadth but in length. It fills in the space under his nose, to his bottom lip.

This is the other part of the fascination: the utter absence of upper lip. I often sit in the first row, from the end of which he likes to gesticulate at the screen behind him as he lectures.

From this vantage point, I am treated to a perfect profile. While he talks about the rhythm of light in Peter Brooke's Hamlet, I think about the melody of the moustache. It wriggles to its own beat, now bristling over an invisibly pursed lip, now lifting with a particularly potent plosive.

It is becoming mythical, the moustache. When we meet former students, we share a laugh about it. When our classmate JK let his facial hair grow, we teased that Monsieur H had been the inspiration. In my mind, the moustache is to Monsieur H what long hair was to Sampson.

He just wouldn't -- couldn't -- be the same without it.

ma place flagey

There are places that keep their secrets to themselves, others that speak to you at first sight. Flagey whispered in my ear on a sunny May afternoon; I told J then that it would be my hangout.

I hadn't yet sipped mint tea at Cafe Belga or waited half an hour in the cold for the best cone of fries in Brussels. It would be months until I noticed the statue of Fernando Pessoa on the corner (ma patrie c'est la langue portugaise) or wandered through the weekend market.

I just knew.

---

It's Thursday, a few minutes past 9. We've been at Belga for three hours already. I have ingested a cappuccino, Le Soir and El Pais.

R is fighting to stay afloat in Meyer's philosophical quick-sand (Le comique et le tragique: penser le théâtre et son histoire). AD conjugates in preparation for tomorrow's French class. AG swigs his way through the extensive menu of Belgian brews.

In the meantime they have dimmed the lights and turned up the jazz.
It's canned today, but on Sunday it'll be live.

This is the sort of thing I jot in my journal, when my brain needs a break from the mind-numbing Meyer.

My very scientific cafe classification rests on criteria like type and volume of music, brand of coffee, foaminess of milk, yumminess of accompanying treat, smokiness, natural light, opening hours, variety of international press, whether the puzzles are normally blank, etc.

Belga doesn't have the best cuppa, but I forgive it because it scores so well in all other categories. Good soundtrack for reading or socializing, biscuits with the hot drinks, non-smoking, plenty of window seats, open until 2 am every day, newspapers in languages I hardly recognize, always with a soduku to be done.

My kind of place.

AD, the newspaper and I at Belga on a Sunday afternoon...
when we could still sit outside.
Photo courtesy of R.