Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir

So last night, thanks to Judy and her fabulous connections, Kari and I had free tickets to the new Théâtre du Soleil production, called Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir. The TdS is a very special group--they sort of live as a cult, almost, and they put on these sweeping fresco-type plays that they write and develop collaboratively. They don't even assign roles until the end; everyone gets together and brainstorms, then the director (Ariane Mnouchkine) figures out who will be doing what later on. This can be quite tricky, as it's such a big group that some of the actors are necessarily left on the sidelines, for example. But everyone has a job, as I will explain. And their shows are usually quite long. This one is 4 hours, and the one I saw in NYC last summer was 7.

In any case, the play is absolutely amazing. There's really no good way to translate the title. Literally I think my best shot is "drifting dreamers," but that doesn't do justice to the multiple layers in fact contained in the title. "Fol espoir," or "crazy hope," is the name of a cabaret east of Paris just before WWI. The owner and employees of this cabaret decide to make a film that involves explores going to Patagonia and getting wrapped up in a dispute between Argentina and Chile over an island. Their boat is called the "fol espoir" as well, and there is a shipwreck, thus making them "les naufragés," (literally, "shipwrecked"). This movie within a play is in fact based on a Jules Verne novel that was published posthumously. Oh, and it's a left-wing propaganda film about greed and social justice.

So anyway, the play functions on multiple levels, particularly because the movie-in-a-play doesn't have a happy ending. The attempt at creating a utopian society on this island in South America is thwarted by the discovery of gold (this story occurs in the late 1800s), the shipwrecked people start competing and killing each other, and the remaining "drifting dreamers" decide to flee when they see what gold has done to them. Man, this is complicated to explain. And then when you add to the fact that the filming of this movie is taking place within the two weeks following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and Europe is careening toward WWI, you get another layer of meaning for the "drifting dreamers" of the "fol espoir" cabaret (in that they're trying to focus on art while the world is falling apart around them). So you sort of have to think of this on three levels--the context of the movie (late 1800s), the context of the play (July 1914), and the context of the performance itself (as in, today). The themes of national identity, social justice, and the role of engaged artistic production (to name a few) apply in all three temporalities, of course. I think I'll stop there on the plot, because there's really no good way to break it apart on paper.

In any case, getting back to the experience of the event, however, the compound-like nature of the group means that you're supposed to get there early and have dinner too. Yes! So this is what many of the actors who aren't selected for the show are stuck doing--cooking and serving the public. I can see how this could create issues, but I wasn't about to complain, the experience was extraordinary. The compound is called "the cartoucherie," and it's located in this huge park just outside Paris on the eastern side (the bois de Vincennes). You have to take the subway and then a special shuttle to get out there. Anyway, on the compound, they actually made the performance space into the "fol espoir" cabaret. So the facade is all done up and everything, the idea is that the public is quite literally entering and dining in the cabaret before the performance. Kari and I are kicking ourselves for not having our cameras, but our minds were so thoroughly blown by the performance that we're seriously considering going back again. Which is saying a lot for a 4 hour show, that we were captivated enough to see it again!

So you enter the cabaret and then go to a big counter for the meal, which offers a few selections--last night there was a salmon and lentil plate or a hearty stew. Homemade, of course. We went for the stew, and then there are of course all sorts of drink options, including hot brewed hibiscus, which is what I tried. It didn't taste like hibiscus tea, but it did taste like flowers. It was served with orange and lime in it, so it had a fruity flavor too. Divine. We pondered having an extra drink before going into the show but decided against it because, well, when it's a 4-hour production you never know what the lines for the bathroom at intermission might be like, haha. And when I went to the bathroom just before the show as a preventative measure, I was sure glad I had decided to forego that extra drink, because that's when I discovered that the bathrooms were Turkish. ohhhhhhhh. Small price to pay for an otherwise extraordinary evening!