French Literature Nights in NYC: March 2014

As is our tradition when flowers bloom, our next French night is dedicated to theater.

We are welcoming one of the most hilarious and cruel contemporary playwrights.

Herve Blutsch

He likes cruel situations and has invented new genre of plays. In Gzion, a « space drama » and the first play we read in May 2012, at The Cornelia Street Cafe, he put together three main characters in a spaceship, Gzion, somewhere in the outer space. As they don't have any chance to survive, they become so delusional until one of them suddenly appears dressed as a bear. Then the comical farce changes into a cruel tragedy.

Anatole Felde, the short play we are going to read on 4/14/14,

has the same farcical and tragic feeling.

It's a short play, as a short story in an artistic compression of a novel. As Gzion was a "drame spacial" ("a play about outer space"), Anatole Felde is a "drame bural" which is a theatrical version of the office of cruelty.
The story takes place in an office with three characters. They share the same office. One of them is so tired that he is about to quit and leave not only the office, but life in general. His colleagues realize very quickly that he is much more interesting dead than alive.

The play was published in a collection of short plays by the Editions Théâtrales in 2010.

Hervé Blutsch is also an author supported by Theatre Ouvert in Paris, a theater dedicated to contemporary French theater.

Please come and join us for a comical yet cruel night, laughter at the sharp edge of satire.

4/14/14
6pm

at Cornelia Street Cafe

Cornelia Street 28

NYC, 10021

This first French night of the year was dedicated to sons, sons and their relationships with their fathers or their mothers.
It was an evening of depth and wit, the reading resonated in every one's mind as we all are sons or daughters and some of us know now the parental side of (the wild side?) having sons or daughters.

As usual the evening began by chatting and drinking a glass or two of wine.

Happy new people and happy faithful friends

Then Emmanuelle Ertel launched the readings by presenting the first excerpt, a short story, Tout pour lui plaire/Everything To Please Him, written by Carole Fives and translated by Brett Ray. It is part of a bigger collection named When Happiness Finds Us, published in France in 2013.

The son in this short story ceaselessly tried to get his father's approval, by becoming a painter, then a writer, then a comedian making fun of his own father. He finally understands that there is no way to please him, no way to make his father satisfied. It's hopeless.

Emmenuelle read the short story in French and Brett Ray read his own translation, alternating the language as the son changed his professions.

Everyone is focused, silently listening to the echoes this story sounded in everyone's mind !

Then Isabelle Milkoff took over and presented the next excerpt from Veronique Olmi's latest novel - La nuit en verité/The Truth About The Night.

The three first chapters were read : in French by Isabelle and in English by John Galbraith Simmons.

The young Enzo lives with his mother Lioubia in a big apartment in the center of Paris, a neighborhood in the middle of the city that is popular with the tourists. He goes to school while Lioubia cleans the apartment and has tea with her friends. But Enzo is a fat boy, clumsy and frequently bullied by his class mates and even once by the gym teacher when he forced him to try to climb at the top of a rope, even though it was impossible for him. On that same Friday evening he came back home in the rain and as he got into the house, he heard Lioubia and her friends. He knew immediately he would not be able to get to the Nutella and have the snack he so desperately wanted.

Now it's time for the last excerpts.

The last but not the least.

They were taken from The Unbreakable Boy/Le Garçon incassable by Florence Seyvos.

Philippe Aufort read the French part of the chapters we chose, Tom Radigan read the English that he had helped to translate. The first draft of the translation by Isabelle Milkoff and Catherine Dop-Miller found the English voice to this French story.

The book tells two stories of about a son and his father -

Buster Keaton's story as well as the story of Henri, the narrator's step-brother. Henri is handicapped since birth but his father pushed him to stand, walk and live like any other kid.
But Henri was not like any other kid.

"Henri’s father says : «Children, you have to break them. He truly thinks that you cannot raise children without breaking their spirit, that there is no other way. Not just make them bend, but break them."

"His father forced him to kneel outside on the cement, telling him he would stay there until he decided to greet Yacouba politely. Henri stayed there an hour, yelling, crying with rage and still refusing to yield. "