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         To play theater is a way of learning French culture that both teachers and pupils appreciate... until June. In most schools, at the end of the year, there is a theater performance.

         Usually, two teachers are requisitioned to organize the rehearsals and one is a French teacher. For some reason I have never quite understood, the second teacher is often the sport coach.

         Any experienced teacher knows how to escape such a chore. During my first three years of teaching I was lucky (but unaware): none of the classes I was in charge of had been chosen. You cannot rely on luck: it turns. Let's be honest: I was happy and proud when, in my fourth teaching year, I was told that I had to prepare the yearly theater performance. That is exactly how you can easily recognize a novice! I still had the pupil's point of view: fun and fame.

         I worked a lot more than usual. We could have been ready if the two main characters had not fallen ill. Their understudies were radiant. The D day came.

         Most times, the audience, the pupils and their parents, waited quietly the end of the play, snoozing, and politely applauded when the curtain fell, except for the parents whose kids were on the stage: they took pictures.

         This time was different. I distinctly heard the first laugh: it was mine. Had I not laughed, people might have just smiled. But the understudies were so poor actors that you thought it was made on purpose. They were the best comic actors who had ever jumped on a stage. No one had ever laughed so much during a school performance.

         I know for sure that some parents still believe that I ignored that Andromaque was a tragedy.

         Gabrielle Guichard is a French teacher who reads novels and comments French linguistic issues on French Reading.