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A feisty femme
Cécile: Director and powerhouse
Cécile is the director of a play I’m in here in Paris, but more accurately, she is the star of it.
She set the tone early on, at an introductory meeting in September. “If you are hesitating,” she said to the prospective participants, “don’t do it.” If there’s one thing you can count on Cécile for, it’s her total and unembellished honesty.
I don’t know the details of her career path, but playwriting, directing, acting, and circus have all been mentioned. Looking at her, you’d guess she could do all that and more. Cécile must be in her mid- to late-forties, but she has a spryness and energy that are almost boyish. She has short, dark hair and a trim but robust physique. She carries herself in a certain vertical way, that makes it seems as if she could spring up off the ground at any moment. When she laughs, her shoulders bounce and her face erupts in a delightfully childish way.
Don’t be fooled though… when Cécile is pissed, things are anything but delightful! Her directness works both ways: her comments are always heartfelt and genuine, but her criticism is also rather blunt. You’ll never get a, “Hmm, let’s try that line another way,” from her. Phrases like, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” and “That’s not it!” are typical of her rehearsal style. She also has a crazy-making habit of changing her vision of a line (or a scene, or a character…) on the spot, and then becoming positively exasperated when the actor plays it the way he’s used to. A “That’s not it!” might follow such a moment, despite the fact that that WAS it, last week. Merde, couldn’t you read her mind?
In a funny counterpoint, Cécile has an inordinate amount of patience and compassion for non-acting blunders. A boy in our class is more than 20 minutes late, or absent, literally every week. Last week, when he entered an hour late, she said, “Diogo, je ne suis pas contente.” His lame reply was that he overslept. Her response? “What if I called you at 8 AM Monday mornings to wake you up?”
Cécile is the star of our play not just because of her sparkling personality, but more literally, because she could actually play every part in the script. When she goes to show the Cop, the Narrator, the Bishop, or the Maid how something should be done, she immediately sheds her director skin and becomes that character. Man or woman, aggressive or docile, Cécile adopts the movement, facial expressions, and tone of voice of whomever she is playing. Sometimes I imagine our play (a compilation of Jean Genet’s work) as a one-woman show, with Cécile switching instantly from one character to the next. Not to sound disparaging of our own work, but I’m quite certain she could pull it off better!
