Berkley Center

<“French is le théâtre,” declares my host here in Strasbourg, which in this light seems but a stage and spotlight away from Georgetown. When one communicates in French, she says, the dialogue is constructed as a mise en scène: build the setting—background information, the time, the place—and only then draw the curtain on the dialogue and action.

This I learned when I told her about a meeting I had had earlier in the day—I had skipped straight to the action and filled in details of the context on a need-to-know basis. My theatrical faux pas had not rendered my account unintelligible as grammatical errors might have, but it did reveal an important difference in the way Americans and the French view language and communication.

The problem: my nonexistent mise en scène had not obscured the concrete meaning of my Act IV, but it had failed to give the proper context of Acts I through III so as to communicate the significance of that action. My account was inside-out, back-to-front.

This simple, eloquently expressed idea about conscientious communication lies at the core of what seems to me a central difference between American and French culture. I had not quite put my finger on what exactly it was, but even besides the obvious linguistic difference, the classes I had attended here up to that point struck me as very in contrast to my classes at Georgetown. I thought it might be the way most students here favor pen and paper over tapping away at a laptop, or the different enrollment process, or even the color of the walls. It was only upon hearing the words French is theater that I felt closer to the answer.

Stateside, generally speaking, the professor lectures, and students participate throughout the class, making for a dialogue, a hands-on learning experience that aims to produce mastery of the skills needed to pass the class. We learn the material by doing, by feeling it, by interacting with the theory or book or problem set in front of us. The structure of the course varies by professor and subject matter, but that approach is very familiar to me.

The French classroom, on the other hand, has a distinct rhythm that had not budged in the slightest across all my classes in the month and a half that I’ve been here. Theory, then example. Idea, then application. As my host explained, the professors first prepare the mise en scène, the ideas, and then introduce students to the action, to the use of those ideas.

“How else would it be done?” she asked. I described the structure typical of American classes, which she explained seems odd in French culture, according to which it’s impossible to "do" without "knowing," without a proper mise en scène, first.

So do I prefer one system over the other? Is it better to “learn to do” à la française, or to “learn by doing” the American way?* I’m happy to say that I have learned a great deal in both American and French classrooms—so I find less value in answering that question than in appreciating the artful, precise articulation of the high regard with which the French hold their language. After all, it was the inspiration for this reflection to begin with, and thankfully, it seems this enthusiasm for engaging with questions of identity and expression is contagious. If language is theater in France, what is it in the United States?

This mise en scène idea extends to life outside the classroom as well, and my good fortune at having been granted entrance to one of the most storied theaters in the world has left me wanting for nothing in my life—academic or otherwise—here.

As I had hoped, study abroad has given me the opportunity to gain proficiency in foreign language through life amidst a different culture. I had not expected, however, for that opportunity to come in the form of admission to a delightfully crowded national theater.

I’ve arrived a bit late to this performance, so in true American fashion, I’ve jumped right in to the middle of the story and am figuring out the preceding acts as I go. I have, however, already taken note of the beautifully crafted stage from which the sensational, talented cast captivate their audience.

*French authors Laurence Wylie and Jean-Françaois Briere write about this in their book Les Français on key cultural differences between Americans and French. I give props to Professor Durmelat for introducing my "French Literature and Civilization" class to their work, though I know her linguistic theater already has a well-curated collection of them at its disposal.