This week we are hosting our first artist in residence, Francois Paire, who is working with students from 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade for a full week. The Paris-based artist is very much inspired by our consumer society which blasts images at us all the time in a mind-numbing continuity. He takes on some of these scenes, the personalities, the logos, and works with them. He takes them, reproduces them, alters them, multiplies them -- recreates them to force us to see again what we have become blind to. He was part of the Paris Nuit Blanche in 2009 and added his own personal touch to the "arts et metiers" metro station for the occasion. For those of you who would like to get a glimpse at some of his work, you can check out his blog (yes we all have blogs)... 

http://francoispaire.blogspot.com/

The elementary students' productions will be constructed and prepared for display by secondary students and then parents are invited to preview the display this coming Friday.  The production will become part of the May 7th Rights of Children manifestation and will be part of the exhibit to celebrate the right to say no to violence!

 This is of course a good time to thank Mr. Paire for volunteering his time to come spend this week at LILA -- and hopefully inspire other artists to come work with our kids on all campuses!

There are times when a source of pride as educators and parents comes not in all the things that, as a team, we have worked on and put in place for the students... but rather in what the kids are able to accomplish without our help at all... Last Saturday, I showed up at La Conte Middle School to see a student-led production and I honestly had no idea what I was going to see. I really could not have been more proud of this group of LILA secondary students. They spent four months working on a major dance show, choreographing, organizing, rehearsing, marketing... dealing with all the hurdles and complications of a full-on production... to put on a show to help raise money for a charity called My Friend's Place (www.myfriendsplace.org) that provides services to adolescents in need. In one night they raised over $2,300 and represented their school in a way that no marketing campaign or mission statement could ever do. These kids embody everything we want and hope all our LILA students will become: kind, creative, awesome human beings that look beyond borders of language and reach out to help others. Take a look at a little compilation of that night's event... share if you will who our LILA kids are... They are without a doubt something to celebrate.

‘No Exit’, ‘The Chairs’, to each his own hell…perhaps the ultimate torture is the one that repeats itself eternally, no matter the language or the season.

‘Huis Clos’, ‘Les Chaises’, à chacun son enfer…le supplice ultime n’est-il pas celui qui se répéte éternellement, quelque soit la langue ou la saison?

LILA students and teachers awarded a standing ovation to eight performers who took them on a 90-minute examination of the meaning of Hell.  The students were attending the January 25th performance of adaptations in French and English of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos/No Exit and Eugène Ionesco’s Les Chaises/The Chairs presented by Les Illustres Comédiens of the Cours de Jeu Théâtral and their director, Jackie Planeix, at Silverlake’s Lyric Hyperion Theater.

The field trip was the culmination of an arts integration project that some of the secondary teachers had worked on directly with Ms Planeix. Teachers participating in the project were Mmes. Marissa Harris, Isabelle Lesouple, Sylviane Rebaud, and Laurence Leroy. Subsequently, the 9^th grade students attended the show as an introduction to their theater unit in French class, while the 12^th grade IB class was able to utilize the performance as a companion piece to their IB literature course. The 11^th graders (FB and IB) benefited from the theme of ‘Text/Representation - Adaptation/Translation’. 

Les Illustres Comédiens is made up of eight current and past LILA students: Anika Dorschner, Turner Edwards, Maeva Elchibegian, Chloé Grison, Madeleine Planeix-Crocker, Simone Sasse, Hayley Voland, and Camille Werzowa.  Most of them have been studying French Theatre with Ms. Planeix since elementary school, working their way up through classic works of French comedy and tragedy as well as original works co-created by them under their leader’s direction. After an all-French performance of the Sartre and Ionesco works in 2009, the troupe worked on translating and adapting the pieces into English. Their most recent performances in January (a public performance took place on January 23^rd) featured their self-translated scenes in English and then in French.

The audience was transfixed as three young actors skillfully took them through an existentialist exercise of emotional torture that unearths the absurdity leading to Sartre’s famous line, “Hell…is other people.” Under Ms Planeix’s astute staging, spatial movement to music seamlessly wove one story into the next as the five other actors continued the theme of comic absurdity, offering up Ionesco’s complex and sometimes nonsensical text with ease. The English language performance was followed immediately by a fluid transition into the French version, ending with a closing interpretive dance by the entire troupe.

A post-performance question and answer session clearly demonstrated that the students in the audience had firmly grasped the meaning of the performance. Ms Planeix’s expressed wish for “young people throughout the world to be familiar with the work of these two great French playwrights” had most certainly been granted in that theater that day.   As soon as footage is available, I will try to work up a quick video that will be posted in the popular videos section to give parents a front row view of this magnificent project!

For more information about the work, contact Jackie Planeix  bluepalm@prodigy.net

Press Contact:  Ai-Lin Grison     grison.ailin@gmail.com    323-336-0894