Ramatuelle – Thirty Seven East

A Midsummer Dream in France
English edited by Delphine Schrank
French Version via Le Petit Journal

For some of us this summer, France is calling, and we may even experience the mysterious sense of a first encounter. Yet for many others, France remains a distant dream and desire, an aching absence after so many months.

So, allow me to share with you my ideal vacation, the sum of multiple experiences: cultural, artistic, gastronomic, and oenological in historical and natural places. Together these make France one of the most varied, envied, and marveled-at countries in the world. I dream above all of sharing those experiences with family, a family of chosen friends, day after day.

So, come along this epistolary journey: a night in Versailles at Alain Ducasse’s newest hotel, an invitation to deep thought and conversation at the Napoleons in Arles, the magic of music in La Roque d’Anthéron, entertainment at the Festival de Ramatuelle, a breath of oxygen (and greed) atop Chamonix, and a glass of champagne in Reims to toast an exhibition with the seductive title, “Blooming.”

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At Your Home, Without Me: Ramatuelle, Jacqueline Franjou’s Essential Festival

Tonight, August 1^st, 2020–and until August 10th. If you are in Ramatuelle, a little village above the Mediterranean Sea near Saint Tropez in the South of France, you might be among the luckiest people. While almost all summer cultural events have been canceled in France, Jacqueline Franjou is opening the 2020 Festival of Ramatuelle, a series of plays, stand-up comedies, and concerts under the stars and the songs of crickets. A must attend annual event, a rarity this year.

This summery feast has been scheduled every August since 1985. But with movies, theaters, operas and museums still closed in most places around the world because of containment and a very much still present covid19 pandemic, the mere possibility to see comedians and musicians on a stage has become an extraordinary experience. This year’s Festival is an act of audacity and resistance, against all odds, a small, yet safe step to keep us on the pace of being humans, together.

I was fortunate to attend last summer and I remember fondly the performance of French actor Gérard Depardieu (Golden Globe 1991 for Peter Weir’s movie Green Card) sing Barbara’s most iconic songs in a soft and elusive voice.

I cannot go this summer but will have a special thought for Franjou, the co-founder and President of this Festival, a woman I was lucky enough to work with for a few years and who has never been afraid to be disruptive to keep all of us thinking beyond the obvious. We need this festival, we need culture to fill our hopes and dreams, we need words and scores and stories to pave our immediate future.

Next is the translation from a French interview I did with Franjou while I was still confined in New York and she was already planning this week’s performances (published in Le Petit Journal).

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