Interlude in Oran

I finally met with the 8 women who will be participating in the KFP. There are 2 more that will be joining us in July. We start officially on July 6. I have had to rearrange the schedule a bit to accomodate everyone--I had been ambitious in the beginning and thought we could work 5 days a week...then it became 4 days and now 3 and everyone is happy. The group is a mix of mainly women in their early 20s. Some have performed before at the TRB or in university theatre organizations and a few have never been on stage before. One woman said "I can't believe you came all this way to work with us! I never thought an American would ever bother to create theatre in Algeria..." I was really quite blown away. For me this project is a must do. I have never given it a second thought.

For the next two weeks I am in Oran where I have been invited to provide an outside eye for a solo show produced by a young up and coming company here. I am having a complete Algerian awakening between the people I have met in Bejaia and Oran. Artists who fall directly into the hipster category--glasses and all, connaisseurs of jazz and Marx, projects abroad and Algerian tours, trilingual book collections...
The Regional Theatre of Oran that was built in 1897 and is emmaculate. I have never seen a space so well taken care of in Algeria. Yesterday, when I toured the theatre even the men cleaning the marble stairs were working so tenderly on the space and with such respect I just wanted to stand and watch them work.