be true to your school.

So what is le Cours Florent? Well, it's a school for the "dramatic arts" created by Francois Florent in 1965. But not just any school. At its best it has rivaled the National Conservatory and produced some of France's most renowned and respected actors. While it's recently been criticized for increasing class sizes along with tuition, it's still considered to be the best private conservatory in France. I have yet to meet a Parisian that doesn't know what the Cours Florent is. In the spring they hold auditions for "la classe libre". Over a thousand compete, through a three-round audition process, for twenty spots--a few of which are reserved for international students whose maternal language is not French. Those who get in are put through a rigorous training program with twice as many class hours, the best professors, and twice the workload. And tuition is waived. Yes, come March, I will be auditioning.

In the mean time, I have class Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. Plus outside rehearsals that are becoming more and more frequent. Our last assignment was the series of monologues I mentioned earlier (the tout seul). Now we are working on the parcours d'un role--basically a ten minute breakdown of a play focusing on the development of one of its characters. I am doing Octave from Les Caprices de Marianne, by Musset, for mine, and participating in Le Diable et le Bon Dieu by Sartre, The Seagull by Chekhov, and The Taming of the Shrew, amongst others, for some of my classmates' projects. We have also been assigned three other scenes from differing plays that we are supposed to be working on.

I've been wanting to get pictures to share, but pulling out a camera seemed to be too American or touristy or something. And I found out that we aren't allowed to take pictures in class. I finally snuck a couple the other day, but because I couldn't use my flash, this is the only one that really turned out:
All the classrooms are similar. Lights on the 'stage' part, dark in the seats.

My professor is Valerie Negre. And she is amazing. And really blunt. And never has a play (written before 1995) been mentioned in class that she doesn't know about. Never.

It gets better. My classmates are awesome. They are passionate, intelligent, incredibly talented, and cool. I know that down the road I am going to be saying, "I went to school with that guy" all over the place.

For example:
That's Marius. Stud. One of the coolest people I've every met, and not just because he's originally from Romania.

And this is Hannah:
She does awesome work and has consented to play opposite me for my parcours. Her and Lisa, whom I don't have a picture of, love to make fun of my American accent. Merci, les filles.

And I could go on, but I don't have anymore pictures. Except for this one of a few of us at a Vietnamese Restaurant after class:The girl closest to the camera is Katya. She's originally from Bulgaria and her father runs an acting school in L.A. She just applied for a green card and her English is great. Almost as good as her acting.

I don't know what else to say about school. I love it. Any questions? Did I mention that I love it?