2023-09-11 05:35:13
This is their first season: Laurence de Magalhaes, 58 years old, and Stéphane Ricordel, 60 years old, are fully in charge of this theater which has become in recent years a teeming cultural venue, dedicated to contemporary authors, a mecca of impertinence. In December, author, director and filmmaker Jean-Michel Ribes, 76, handed over, reluctantly.
“Our challenge is to succeed him as honestly as possible,” Stéphane Ricordel assures AFP.
This tandem, a couple at work and in personal life, toured the world for 15 years within the circus company Les Arts Sauts, he a trapeze artist, she production director. Then they settled down, directing the Monfort Théâtre in Paris for 12 years.
For them, it is, first of all, regarding keeping the heritage: putting contemporary authors on stage, welcoming “hybrid and multidisciplinary projects” mixing theater, circus dance, puppets, “taking slightly crazy bets seen nowhere elsewhere,” they indicate.
But also to set their own tone. With more room for foreign artists, for example. This will be the case for the opening on Tuesday with “One Song”, a “physical, invigorating, galvanizing” show staged by Belgian visual artist Miet Warlop.
An additional emphasis is given to contemporary dance (the choreographers Sharon Eyal or Marlene Monteiro Freitas) but also to contemporary authors, with creations or adaptations of works by Lola Lafon, Mazarine and Léonie Pingeot, Vanessa Springora (Le CONSENT), or even Constance Debré.
“Playing with the neighbors”
The duo looks for shows that “unite”. “A good show is when people can share common things even though in life, they would never have found each other. What we call ‘popular’ shows in the good sense of the term,” explains Laurence de Magalhaes.
In 2022-2023 under the previous management, the theater welcomed nearly 130,400 spectators (572 performances).
And the “laughter of resistance”, a Jean-Michel Ribes trademark? “It’s not our DNA,” replies the former trapeze artist. “We are in a more complicated society than a few years ago. Political incorrectness no longer makes us laugh too much,” emphasizes Laurence de Magalhaes.
On the other hand, she points out, “a theater follows the news.” “If there are things that bother us, of course we will open the doors to all kinds of debates and meetings.”
Among the projects for the following season? “Playing in situ at the neighbors that are the Petit and the Grand Palais”.
To support this change of direction, the theater, which includes three rooms, including 750 seats for the largest, located at the bottom of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, has partly had a facelift. Outside, the tarpaulin stamped “Théâtre du Rond-Point” presenting the list of artists of the season has disappeared and reveals the dome and the design of the balcony of the building built in the 19th century.
Inside, the hall has been stripped of its turquoise carpet, the entrance walls repainted in terra cotta color, the bar lamps give a more “zen” atmosphere, a bench seat has been added, a fresco by the artist Bonnefrite decorates a wall of the bar-restaurant. The theater’s graphic identity has become rounder.
On the day of the AFP visit, Jean-Michel Ribes was still there, in a separate room, for the signing of his latest book…
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