Thursday brought me the high honor of being a fly on the wall during Théâtre de la Ville’s tech rehearsal for Six Characters in Search of an Author, which the company performed at the Power Center this past Friday and Saturday evening. I was granted this exclusive opportunity, as well as the chance to see the play performed on Friday evening, through the Leadership and the Arts class I am currently taking for my job as a Lloyd Hall Scholars Program Student Assistant. I entered the Power Center that Thursday with high expectations; however, my expectations met a more humbling reality as Shannon Fitzsimons, the University Musical Society Campus Engagement Specialist, warned my classmates and I just before entering the theater, “It will be like watching paint dry, but it will be French paint.” I soon discovered a newfound beauty in these cross-cultural similarities not only in the way paint dries, but in theatre.
As we waited for the actors to meander back to the stage from their break, Héctor Flores Komatsu, a junior in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance who worked on the play’s superscripts as a part of his internship for Théâtre de la Ville this summer, continued the discussion we had in our class on Thursday about the company and his experience in Paris. The director arrived suddenly, opening a flood gate of stage orders spoken in hasty French. I sat back in my chair and watched the magician in action. He brought a new life to things we encounter on a daily basis – under his touch, light, furniture, and even the way people stand became art. As a dancer, I am no stranger to the transformation process of tech rehearsals; therefore, it was not the transformation of the everyday into the magical that really struck me, but the fact that this transformation transcends cultural boundaries. This tech rehearsal reminded me that a certain understanding of art translates into every culture – not unlike the way in which paint dries.
