Inside the Walls of Theatre: Aaron Ardisson

This last summer, by means of the Wilson Language Grant, I was awarded the opportunity to immerse myself in French culture and theater. Along with 10 other "experimenters", I spent time in Paris, France and Avignon, France learning much about the unique style present in French drama, without a doubt the most amazing experience of my life! The trip started with a 3 day orientation in Paris, followed by a 16 day home-stay in Avignon, a walled city in Provence, where we saw multiple shows at the OFF Theatre Festival, after which we returned to Paris for another 10 days to attend theater classes in preparation for a performance on the last day.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

On our second full day in Paris we had our first mime class! Our teacher Gero was funny and expressive, naturally, which helped quite a bit with the language barrier, especially present during the first days of the trip. Later that day we had our "Scavenger Hunt" where we were to go out into Paris without our leaders and find out all the wonderful things about the city. My 11 person group decided to split up into 2 separate groups so that we could beat the group we were competing against. The scavenger hunt led us all over the city, from Montmartre to the Louvre we searched for particular bridges, historic ice cream parlors, and touristic staples such as carrousels. The hunt ended under the Arc de Triomphe, where we found out that we had lost to the Cooking Group. Both groups later met up in the Latin Quartier that night for dinner. The day was incredible and really gave me a taste for how much fun the rest of the trip was going to be.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

My host family in Avignon was amazing! By this date I had spent about a week with my brother, Hugo(15), sister, Margeaux (12), Dad, Stephane, and Mom, Nathalie. On this particular Sunday my host-brother and host-dad decided to take me Mountain Biking (or VTT as they call it)! We drove about 45 minutes to another family's house and then set off with them on bikes headed for the mountain. From the seat of a bike the beauty of the French countryside increases exponentially. I felt like I was finally being embraced into the family and culture. That afternoon the other family came back to my family's house for lunch, which just happened to last until 5:30 in the afternoon. I ended up talking theater with the mom and dad of the other family and they were also interested to learn about the validity of stereotypes of Americans. Another incredible day in Provence!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

On this Saturday, one of my last days with my host family, we went to the beach! We packed a picnic for the day and just hung out playing frisbee or swimming in the sea! It was a wonderful day to relax and enjoy the company of each other. On a bad note, my host dad did get sun poisoning and got really sick later that day...

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

After our return to Paris, we had 10 days before our departure. In those 10 days we had 6 hours of theater class everyday with our director Jean Paul in preparation for a performance on the last full day of our "experiment." This Tuesday was our last full day and the day of our performance. We all were very nervous to

perform around lunchtime, since we had never performed a French drama before. We had put in the work, translated the lines, and figured out our characters and we were ready to go. The first scene went well and without problems, but some problems came up in the second scene, we were quick to fix them with some intelligent improvisation and finished the play strong with expressive monologues. After our performance we went back to the hotel and got ready for our last night in Paris. We went to dinner near our hotel and talked about all the adventures of the trip! It was a great way to de-stress and wind down the trip.