A relief”. The manager of the Guignol theater on Champ-de-Mars, a local figure, ordered to leave because of the ephemeral stadium built at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, will return to his theater after the Olympic Games. Julien Sommer, to whom the Paris town hall announced at the beginning of January the termination of his concession on March 31, will finally be able to continue performing his children’s shows until the end of May. And “the puppet theater will be able to return to its location at the end of the Games”, confirmed to the Deputy for Commerce Nicolas Bonnet-Oulaldj.
“It’s a suspension and no longer a termination, so I can come back in October,” two months before the end of his six-year contract at the end of November, he told AFP on Tuesday. . During the four months of closure, Julien Sommer, 38 years old, who has worked since the age of 15 in this tiny theater founded at the beginning of the 20th century, “can be compensated”, according to the town hall, which guarantees him to be able to leave his equipment on site .
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The termination of the contract “scared” the puppeteer, who feared being permanently “fired”. Even if a new competition must take place for the future contract, there is “fairly little doubt” that he will not be able to obtain it again, reassures the town hall.
“I knew well, with the Olympics, that I was going to have to close, but the trauma was the termination, absolutely, and not having any perspective for the future,” Julien Sommer told Le Figaro in January. It’s distressing.” The forced departure of the artist, justified by the ongoing construction of an ephemeral stadium for beach volleyball events, had moved beyond the neighborhood. “It’s scandalous and contemptuous to leave people like that,” said Olivier Kaplan, a local resident behind a petition to defend the Champ-de-Mars traders.
