Heartbeats

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Monday, January 11th, 2021 - 9:23pm.

I got to do a show today. Theaters are currently closed, as they have been for so much of the last 10 months, but schools are open here and a primary school about 35 minutes away invited me to come perform my bilingual version of ‘The Gingerbread Man.’

It’s the classic tale, revisited with a few feminist and political jabs and nods to American pop culture. The show is set up to work in a classic theater space but also in a library or school, so when this school contacted me in November in the midst of a lockdown I was assuming I was looking at an afternoon performance in the school auditorium. The teachers, Dominique and Muriel, explained to me that they were doing a whole unit around The Gingerbread Man and that the kids had been practicing their English. They were on speakerphone and so enthusiastically repeating after each other that I initially thought I was only talking to one woman but with an echo on the line. I explained that my set was simple and adaptable and asked what kind of space they had available, at which point they told me they were getting special permission from the town hall to open the town’s theatre space.

So off I went! The seats folded down in my little Citroën and my set, props and costume all loaded up. A school show but in a real theatre! When I walked into the space my heart did a little leap of joy, the elevated stage was framed by red velvet curtains with deep blue curtains along the wings and upstage wall and, best of all, a beautiful fresco painted along the top of the stage.

Admittedly, it was pretty cold in there because the space had been closed with the heat off for the last few months. There wasn’t a light technician, so I had to just flick the stage lights on and the house lights off myself from the wings. It wasn’t exactly glamorous, but it felt so good to be in a real theatre and the kids had been practicing their English and reading the story for months, so they were raring to go.

I play a zany Granny Ginger who hosts a cooking show featuring classic American recipes. Today’s recipe is, of course, gingerbread man cookies. I start by making the cookie, showing the kids the butter, sugar, eggs, flour and ginger, teaching them the English words and a little song. While we wait for the cookie to bake, I tell them this recipe belongs to my great-great-great-grandmother and that one day when she was making a gingerbread man he hopped out of her oven and ran away. As I tell the story, kitchen utensils are revealed as marionette animals that chase behind the Gingerbread Man who run, run, runs until of course he’s outsmarted and gobbled up by the clever fox.

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