Breakfast in the Square

It's time for our annual Breakfast in the square
What better way to start the year than with a full English breakfast !
Bacon, eggs, beans, sausages, tomatoes,toast, scones and pancakes galore, fruit juice, and of course tea and coffee

Look forward to seeing you!

La Voix Humaine - October 2012

Always up for a challenge Gabi jumped at the opportunity of working with the renowned Hollywood Director Stephen M. Katz.  He thought of bringing la Voix Humaine (a  Jean Cocteau play) to Forcalquier, and dreamed of presenting it as a bi-lingual performance - perfect for launching Speakeasy.

Many meetings and e-mails later, with a little help from Martine Dumas and the Mairie, it happened - Cocteau in French and English for the first time at la Cave à Lulu in Forcalquier.

Setting the Scene :

The stage in La Cave à Lulu :

The star of the show, Yannick Rocher :

What a crew!  Thanks to you all for making this happen - it was one of the highlights of our first year.

Summer Singalong at Speakeasy

When Gabi first met Rebecca, she thought "hmm, I wonder if we could work together."  After a little more thought, the idea for the Summer Singalong was born and, towards the end of July, Rebecca left hot, sticky London for hot, beautiful Forcalquier to spend a week teaching Speakeasy students how to sing!  Her class was a cosmopolitan bunch, hailing from seven different countries, of all ages and singing abilities.

All the songs and instruction were in English, but the non-English speakers coped great and soon they were making truly international music.

This being France, food is very important and lunch was one of the high spots every day!

Gaby and her team of helpers worked tirelessly to put delicious food on the table.

But after eating, it was back to work every afternoon.

learning new songs

and rehearsing for the big event at the end of the week.

 with everyone pitching in!

Finally, it was the big day! Time for the open-air concert in the Place du Palais!

Our multi-national choir rocked!
There were smiles and congratulations aplenty afterwards.

Well done everyone!

And HUGE thanks to Rebecca for all her hard work.

We're already looking forward to twice as much fun next year!

The Story So Far...

In September, 2012, Gabi Blazquez took the brave step of setting up her own language school - a place where English and French would be taught in a relaxed, friendly environment, and where the emphasis is not only on speaking the language, but having fun while doing so.

Our very first event was a Welcome Breakfast.

Despite the fact that SpeakEasy HQ wasn't ready and breakfast had to be held in the square at the rear of the premises, it was a rip-roaring success.


Soon Speakeasy was running regular English classes for both individual and corporate clients.

Next was English workshops for children and teenagers.

Held every Wednesday afternoon, these soon proved very popular with local youngsters.

Then it was time for some light relief in the form of drama, directed by Speakeasy student Stephen M. Katz and (the visiting?) Maureen O'Brien.

Before we knew where we were, the first term was almost over and Christmas was approaching.  Time to start baking...

The cake is made, now it's time for a party!

Whoever heard of a Christmas party being a failure?  Certainly not us!

In the Spring of 2013, Gabi responded to the demands of the market (and us expats can be very demanding!) and started conversation classes for non-French speakers.  Word spread, and soon a regular bunch of expat patrons were to be seen traipsing through the streets of Forcalquier as they made their way to Speakeasy to converse in French.

This was soon followed by a fascinating and well-attended lecture by naturalist Raphael Sané about his trip to Antarctica.

The academic year was drawing to a close, but there was more to come in the form of an exhibition by Mano Solo which was open to the public every Monday in May and on the last Saturday in May, too.

May was a busy month, as Speakeasy also co-hosted a three night run of the play "Places," presented in Salon Passere, thanks to the generosity of David Galloway.

At last it was summer.  Hooray! Another excuse for a party!

There's no rest for the wicked, though.  While all around settled into holiday mode, Speakeasy went straight into Summer School, with two weeks of classes in July and one in August.

That wasn't enough for our intrepid team, of course!  One on one tuition continued, Mental Mondays continued and, in July, Speakeasy took the plunge and tried something different - a choral workshop.  Visiting Australian songstress Rebecca Rennie, better known as FREYjA, took a group of all ages and musical abilities and coached them all the way to performance level in the course of five days! Wow!

The concert at the end of the week was superb and showed just how hard everyone had worked.

In fact, they worked so hard that all and sundry agreed that their performance was worthy of being the very first non-historical blog post here.

It's the next post after this...