With this idea in mind I approached three of my fellow students with considerable acting and directing experience: Marie de La Guéronnière, Marion Dufranc, and Jean-Marie Perinetti; as well as Caroline Reck, an experienced actor and driector and former Lecoq graduate; and Darragh MeKeon, an Irish director who has worked with Mangiare before: and proposed the idea of creating five short new plays that would run one after the other on the metro. They were all into it and we began discussions on what it would be and how we could make it happen.

The early meetings were mostly about logistics and the overall tenor of the piece. I decided that while I would be the overall "artistic director" of the project, once we had established a common vision among the individual directors they would be free to work in a modular fashion: finding their own actors, writing or devising their own peice, and rehearsing it. The common vision came out of discussions on the metro, life in the city, the Parisian experience, and other themes that came up in common for us. We decided to make a kind of Robert Altman-esque theatre piece, with the five pieces running consecutively but casually interlinking with each other when appropriate. With all this in mind, the directors went off to prepare their pieces for me to view in the final week of rehearsal and I went off to ride the rails, looking for the best line to use.

After a lot of time spent on the Metro, riding a lot of lines, and having a lot of conversations with experienced Metro commuters, I settled on the route: Line 8 departing Bonne Nouvelle direction Cretiel. What I was looking for was a line that was not too crowded and not too noisy. As each play was scheduled to be between 4 and 5 minutes long -- and since I wanted the project to end in the same station it departed -- I needed a run of about 10 minutes between the starting station and a "turn-around" station. Also, as I wanted the public to be as easily led through the project as possible, I needed starting and turn-around stations that were simple: i.e. only one line running through them.

Line 8 was a very quiet line, not very crowded after Opera with a lot of single-line stops. As a plus, the cars were darker and more atmospheric than a lot of the other lines, with good playing spaces and shielded lighting. They even had what I could use as an orchestra pit for the live musicians. Although it has two lines running through it, I chose Bonne Nouvelle as the starting station because it was fairly simple in layout and was also darker and more atmospheric than other stations, with a dividing wall between the two tracks, and very cool globe lighting. Plus I thought the name was appropriate. The timing was right to use either station Ledru Rollin or Faidbherge Chalignly as the turn-around, depending on the length of the pieces. With the line in mind, I settled on three consecutive runs of the Project happening on a Monday night - the quietest night for commuters.

Meanwhile, all the other directors were busy putting their pieces together. We had a few meetings to settle on a provisional order and to air potential problems and snags and to discuss possible overlaps, but mostly we were working independently of each other. All five pieces came together the weekend before the performance when the musical director Steve Wickham flew tp Paris to watch the pieces and come up with the music.

As it happened, Steve's contribution to the project was enormous. I knew it wold be very important to have the right music linking the pieces. This would give it a kind of "soundtrack" and bring the individual plays a cohesiveness they would not have without it. With this in mind I approached Steve, a hugely talented and experienced musician with some experience playing music for drama, and asked him to be involved. Thank God I did, because I had no idea how important the music would be in providing a through-line to the project; in creating a unified atmosphere for the performance, and in linking all the pieces.

In the end, the whole project came together incredibly well. We all met on the Sunday before the performance where, during the course of two tech-rehearsals held on the metro, we ironed out all the unforseen problems (such as the noise of the open windows. Solved by designating a "window closing crew" for the run). On the Monday night the three performances ran with barely a hitch and boasted an attendence of about 100 people (not counting the punters already riding the train, a few of whom unwittingly played roles in the project...). The only tense moment was when three metro authority personell boarded the carrige in the middle of Caroline Reck's play about metro authority personell. But they had a sense of humour, and the MetroProject ended with no one -- not even me -- getting arrested.

Much to my dismay. I mean, who can get arrested for doing theatre these days...?

credits...