Porridge and Nothingness

It is almost the end of Atticus’ school year. We can hardly believe that he has gone for a full school year at the French school. He’s learned so much, and we are really proud of him. The other night he had his end-of-year party and school play. The play was Goldilocks and the Three Bears, with a bit of a French twist.

We’ve mentioned before that whenever the French school has an event, there just always seems to be a strange thing that comes into it- recall the weird Vincent Van Gogh theme of the Xmas party, the Pixies (a late 1980s-early1990s alternative band with less than child-centered lyrics) blasting over the loud speakers for the soccer tournament, the strange Carnival exhibition that seemed to involve forest spirits (we think?),etc… So this play was no exception. Case in point: Atticus’ role in the play: a shadow. Yep - A talking shadow that peeked out from behind the shutters and spoke in unison with two other eerie shutter peeking shadows. In fact, there was a chorus of three shadows that piped in here and there as Goldilocks background commentators. Actually we don’t know what they were saying – it was in French, and Atticus didn’t know the translation (or chose not to share it…), so it only added to the creepy factor. The true creepiness came in the middle however when Goldilocks (who incidentally is an old flame of Atticus’) is lying in the bed sleeping and the next grade up of girls came in to sing some kind of weird melodious dream sequence. They lined in a circle and then shifted positions in a clock-like manner as they sang. It was freaking scary – but props to the third and fourth grade girls- they could sing really well.

So the play progressed along and we are pretty sure there must have been some secret French existential meaning imbued into the classic tale, although we can’t prove it due to our paltry linguistic training.
Anyhow, here are some pics from the play.

Oh, and the really strange/great part? For a conclusion, the whole play just suddenly shifted into a lip-syncing rendition of “Our House” by Madness and the kids recreated a Madness concert (posters, air guitars and all). Why? Who knows? It was fun though.