It all started with a joke from Jean-Michel Ribes, the former director of the Rond-Point theater in Paris. In 2020, he called Pierre Guillois and Olivier Martin Salvan to order what we call a small form. “I don’t have any money so make me something out of cardboard!” “.
The two directors then took him at his word and created a small free 45-minute show intended to be performed in the theater gardens and presented with cardboard posters. A way for Jean-Michel Ribes to relaunch a season disrupted by Covid-19. The public reacted so well that the Rond-Point scheduled the show first in the small room then in the large one. But this trial run was to become a “real” spectacle. The two protagonists returned to the task so that the 45 minutes passed to 1 hour 15 minutes, and the 150 small cardboard posters multiplied to 500 copies.
The show was recreated on the square in front of the Théâtre de Célestins in Lyon in June 2021 and has been scheduled ever since. He had residencies in Angers then in Rouen. Exceptionally, this work born in the public theater migrated to the private theater. Pascal Guillaume welcomes him to his theater Tristan Bernard. She will stay there for a year and a half. Today, he is on the bill at Saint-Georges for the entire season. The 420 seats in this very pretty art deco room, whose staff is very welcoming, are packed every evening.
A success such that Pierre Guillois and Olivier Martin Salvan formed other casts, each one as good as the next. The big ones who skate well tour all over France. Today they are celebrating their 650th performance, to the delight of the 250,000 spectators who came to applaud. If you still need to be convinced, here is a video extract from this play that we went to see three times, filming the same three scenes performed by three different casts.
