M. Proust, on stage at the Steppenwolf, is the monologue between Celeste Albaret (played by Mary Beth Peil) and an invisible and irrelevent visitor inquiring about Marcel Proust’s life. During Proust’s 8 most prolific, and final, years Celeste was his housekeeper. She earned his respect and trust and became a confindante. “I was like his mother and his daughter”, proclaims Celeste’s character.
The background of this wonderful performance at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, was the sacking of Troy by the Greek armada, led by Agamemnon and his cronies. Euripides wrote Hecuba around 424 BCE, his second of several plays inspired by the Trojan War and its repercusions.
Idiot, in Greek means a “private individual”. In classical Greece, a private citizen not involved in the public affairs was considered a bad character, hence the derogatory meaning of the word in the English language. In modern Greek, however, idiotic university means literary the private university.
A friend asked me for my recipe for stuffed peppers, so I thought I’d put it up here as well. There are several variants of the recipe. just about each Greek family has its own. The three types of recipes that are most popular among greeks are: stuffed with rice, stuffed with mix of rice and ground beef, and stuffed with cheese. The recipes are the same except for the stuffing, really.
