Short but Sweet

I just did a Q&A with Jared at a private high school (L'Ecole Privée, I think) and was blown away.

After a stressful opening and a relieving opening reception, I was less than enthusiastic about getting out of bed at 9 to talk to some kids and then go straight to rehearsal and straight into our second show in Bordeaux...but this was worth it.

The class was small, probably 20 students at best, and they were old enough that Caesar was not a struggle for them-- especially a production in English.

Their questions were direct and challenging and their attentive nature to every english word we spoke was warming.  I had seen one or two of them in the audience the night before, standing, cheering and whistling.  Even is they couldn't appreciate the poetry of Shakespeare's English, they understood how hard we had worked and how tired and vulnerable we all were.  We gave two encore bows and they were still clapping when I left for the dressing room.

This was all impressive, but the most impressive thing was the educational system in general.  Their teacher, a professorial gentleman my father's age, spoke perfect English with a slightly British inflection, and pushed his students even further to engage with us in English.  He probed our answers for a lesson plan and was satisfied at the idea that Shakespeare's 'Jules César' was a "recipe for democracy, before its time".  Furthermore, he thanked me and Jared for coming in, shook our hands exuberantly, and explained that there was a new request from the government to begin teaching Philosophy at an earlier age, and that was why he was so pleased to have us speak about Shakespeare and Caesar and JFK and injustice and assassination and the voice of the people and the equality of all humans-- to his class of 17 year olds as they prepared for their exiting exams.

On the tram back to the hotel, we learned that, not only is Theater funded by the gov't, but that they also offer an "intermittent" salary to all professional artists so they can "think about what they would like to create next"...

Christ.

Please let us find such wisdom in the US...