A Midspring Night's Schizophrenic Episode

Coolest thing to happen recently: On Thursday, Meredith asked me if I was interested in going to a dinner theater.  A Midsummer Night's Dream was this weekends show, and she thought it would be a fun, different thing to do in Angers.  So we went last night, Saturday.
Meredith, Elvynia, and I arrived at the Restau-Theater a little after 7:30.  We weren't sure what to expect.  It was a restaurant with a small stage decorated with bright red, pink, and white plastic flowers and paper leaves.  The food was excellent, three courses.
Here's what I ate:
Entrée (appetizer): Grilled  Shrimp with something-Provençal, which was like a cold Ratatouille.
Plat (main course): Duck with some kind of dried berry. It said sec airelles. "Sec" means dry, and "airelles" means bilberry, blueberry, OR cranberry.  It tasted closest to cranberry, but cranberries do not grow in Europe. On the side were cooked peas, carrots, mushrooms, and potatoes; they were plain but good.
Dessert: Mille-feuilles de pancake avec fraises et chantilly.  I thought this was going to be a Mille-feuilles like I had in Paris.  Mille-feuilles literally means "a thousand sheets."  It's typically a tall, flaky pastry with a custart cream in it.  This was not that.  This was pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream, which was also good.

Anywho, we enjoyed having a semi-fancy meal.  Before the show, I commented on the bright scenery, saying that I hoped it was a moderny-interpretation.
It was better than that.

It was one woman.  One woman with her hair in crazy braids, sticking out all over her head with a pink dress and stripey witch tights and crazy pink makeup.  She came into the center of the dining room and strew paper leaves all over the floor while a kind of electro-rock song played on the speakers.  Then she started the play.  We knew ahead of time that it was going to be a French translation, but I think the fact that it was in French tripped me up at first.  I knew she was saying Puck's lines.  Then she put on crazy white hoop skirt and changed the tone of her voice, which I didn't pick up on immediately.  I kept waiting for more actors and actresses to show up.  They didn't.
There were two skirts, which she put on to play the female characters.  She crouched and looked mischevious when she was Puck, and she stood under a blue spotlight to be Oberon, king of the fairies.  She did this kind of jumping/creeping dance to switch between characters, which was amusing when two characters were conversing.
She looked like a crazy person.
But, it was impressive.  And it was definitely interesting.  After getting over the initial shock of what she was doing, I enjoyed it.  I understood much of what she said, and she gave us all balloon flowers at the end.


A cute kid story: One little girl asked me Friday, comment tu es née? "How were you born?"  I pretended I didn't understand, but she was persistant, so I just told her I didn't know.  Then she asked, Comment ta mère t'a appris anglais?  How did your mom teach you English?  I explained that that was the language we speak at home.  Then I asked her what language she speaks at home. She told me "sometimes Morroccan, sometimes Turkish."  But she still didn't seem to grasp that I also spoke another language at home.  It was very cute, though.

In other news, there is a teacher's strike Tuesday.  What does that mean for me?? I don't have to work!  I am so unreasonable excited about the strike.  I'm not striking; I don't think I even can strike.  But because all the teachers I work with on Tuesdays won't be there, the kids won't be there either.
The teachers do not get paid for the days they strike.  Christophe told me this amounts to about €60.  The strike is for hiring more teachers and changing some benefits.

I have another theory on why they are striking.  They, too, are tired teachairs.  I've had several classes cancelled in the last couple weeks because teachers were absent for one reason or another.  It's almost spring.  The weather is nicer, and the kids have spring fever.  They are getting crazier every day, and the teachers are just plain tired of dealing with them.
But, I could be totally wrong.