Founder’s Letter 2024
Dear Friends of the French Theater Project,
“Zero to one” is a popular phrase in Silicon Valley start-up culture. According to this outlook, creating a new venture requires some cocktail of passion, imagination, skills, perseverance, invention, and resilience. The individuals who demonstrate all of these and bring a start-up to fruition are to be lionized as modern-day heroes and rewarded with untold riches from IPOs and venture capitalists. A lovely fairy-tale (or perhaps a dystopic world view, depending on how you look at it), but laughably far from my reality.
I prefer a view captured by Jean Vilar, who founded Festival d’Avignon in 1947. He wrote: «Il s'agit donc de faire une société, après quoi nous ferons peut-être du bon théâtre». Translation is always an inexact art, but for myself I like to read this as: “The key is to build a community, after which we may perhaps create some decent theater”.
The year 2024 was certainly the “zero to one” year for the French Theater Project. In April we presented our very first show, Tu seras un homme papa, whose author/performer Gaël Leiblang was infinitely tolerant of all our false steps and improvisations, which he described as “rookie mistakes in your rookie season”.
The year 2024 could also be described as our “zero to two” year, as we followed up in November with La Femme à qui rien n’arrive, a show in which Léonore Chaix delves into themes of getting stuck in one’s routine and the quiet courage it takes to do things differently. How appropriate for our second foray into making theater.
Less visibly, the year 2024 was our “zero to team” year. These shows happened because of the behind-the-scenes efforts of Georgia and Morgan, Yolanda and Griffin, Emily and Antonio, Claire and Henry and Katelyn and Fanny and Stephen and Lee and Diane. They happened with the sage advice of Courtney, Florent, Frédéric, Matt, Cécile, Sylvie, and more. I am enormously grateful to all of you for your hard work and belief in this project.
But following Vilar’s wisdom, I view 2024 as our “zero to community” year. Hundreds and hundreds of our Boston-area neighbors came through our doors to see the work of these phenomenal French artists on a local stage. The existing vigorous francophone communities and institutions of Boston – the French Library, Boston Accueil, FACCNE, the Lycée International de Boston, the Consulate General of France in Boston, francophone individuals and francophone-owned businesses – supported our work and welcomed us into their circle. They spread the word and encouraged us at every step of the way.
To all of you in our French Theater Project community, I send my deepest appreciation for your presence and participation. It has been a sustained and sustaining pleasure to engage with you through theater in the year of 2024. May the year 2025 bring fulfillment to us all, as individuals and as a community.
À bientôt au théâtre,
David Miller
- Founder and General Manager
