Les Arlequins

We met Les Arlequins, a local theatre group, when they accepted our invitation to attend an Intro workshop. What resulted from a simple 1 hour exchange was a very special friendship :) Loulou, the Director of the company invited Stephane and me to their next performance (perks of being AOL volunteers)at the Cinema Ermitage...their interpretation of Moliere's "Les Malades Imaginaires". I cannot begin to tell you how impressed I was...the play was interactive, involving a few unsuspecting members of the audience, which made it all the more fun. The acting was vibrant and energetic, with sound effects created by some artists standing right behind the audience. And props for special effects that I cannot give out :))

For information about their next performances please visit http://www.lesarlequins.fr/ For those of you who are in the region, do try and make it to one of their shows..

At the end of the play Loulou introduced Stephane and Art de Vivre, to the audience, with the result that during the break that followed we had to satisfy people's curiosity about what exactly is this "Art de Vivre"??

The play was followed by the screening of the film "Sur les traces de Molieres", which is about a very important part of Moliere's life, where, inspired by the characters he met in his real life, he wrote most of his famous works. The film too was thoroughly enjoyable, sort of a "Shakespeare in Love" only not that boring, and much more fun.


The following saturday, Loulou and his team organised a "Festival des Associations"...basically inviting all associations in Fonty and surrounding areas to showcase their activities. Since there was a last minute cancellation, Loulou contacted us to see if we might be interested in participating. Stephane invited Philippe to do a session of "Laughter Yoga". Ours was the last programme of the evening, and was received with a lot of enthusiasm, as the Municipale Theatre of Fontainebleau, reverberated with "HA HA HO HO HEE HEEs".

On Sunday, June 22nd, Loulou and his friends had a get together at his house, La Belle Etoile. Its called a DIMENTRAM ...or DIManche ENTRe AMis (Sunday with Friends). The idea is to meet in the morning, then go to the local marche' to shop for vegetables etc, and then cook together, and enjoy a long Sunday afternoon lunch. Stephane and I were invited again :) We were the Chef's surprise!!Though I couldn't join them this time, Stephane tells me he had a ball! I could only join them in the last half hour, where the whole team of Arlequins (some 10 of them) joined in whole-heartedly in singing Indian bhajans to the strumming of Stephane's guitar :)

I have also decided to put Urvi in their Theatre workshop for Kids this fall. I figured at 5 I/2 she already does enough drama at home, might as well give her talent some direction :)