When an Actor Calls With a Poem to Share
A Paris playhouse has developed a program of one-on-one “consultations,” delivered by its artists while the theater is closed.
The singer Dimitra Kontou performing this week for an elderly patient at the Charles-Foix hospital in Ivry-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris.Credit.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times
Feb. 25, 2021
PARIS “I am calling you for a poetic consultation,” said a warm voice on the telephone. “It all starts with a very simple question: How are you?”
Since March, almost 15,000 people around the world have received a call like this. These conversations with actors, who offer a one-on-one chat before reading a poem selected for the recipient, started as a lockdown initiative by a prominent Paris playhouse, the Théâtre de la Ville, in order to keep its artists working while stages remained dark.