Unfortunately, this is not a joke.
We thought the Italian Comedy of the rue de la Gaîté had gone out of business since the sale, last July, of Marilyn Monroe's handkerchief: it appears, however, that the 300,000 euros brought back by this pop relic were obviously not enough to extract 'affair the little theater.
The second confinement went through there.
Another blow of the club.
It is now the whole of this small institution in the Montparnasse district that risks collapsing.
Read also: Finita Italian Comedy
“
This sum will have just been used to lift the mortgage that weighed on our theater.
The second confinement will have been fatal for us,
”said the energetic director and director of the Italian Comedy, Attilio Maggiulli, in an article published on Friday on the
Point
website
.
“
We have a hole in the fund of nearly 40,000 euros.
The 100-seat room is ours.
But the adjoining room which serves as a reception hall is rented for around 7,000 euros per quarter to a real estate company.
However, we are no longer able to make ends meet
”.
A situation of helplessness that the man of the theater confirmed to us this Saturday morning: “
We contacted the Ministry of Culture, which sent us on the roses, and the Regional Council .... We were despised.
"
The theater facing the wall
On a tightrope for several years now, the theater tape has sunk into the red with the pandemic.
Reopened in September - with a gauge of 50% - the already bloodless room was definitely taken by the throat with the confinement of this fall;
especially since financial difficulties have been added to water infiltration and various other concerns related to the maintenance of the premises.
So many thorns in the side of the Italian Comedy to which must be added the repeated disinterest of the State and the communities in the small theater in the rue de la Gaîté.
"
We want to continue to work, but we have a kind of wall in front of us, whether it is the town hall of Paris or the Ministry of Culture
", says Attilio Maggiulli.
“
We were told: but you never create events, you are a backward-looking theater, you are out of date, what do you want people to do with you?
», He adds.
A way of doing things that he does not understand: “
For us, it was something catastrophic to feel humiliated after 47 years of existence.
"
“We were told: but you never create events, you are a backward-looking theater, you are out of date, what do you want people to do with you?
"
Attilio Maggiulli, director, founder and director of the Italian Comedy.
An affront to the man who has directed, since 1974, with Hélène Lestrade, one of the last theaters in the world to perpetuate the masked game of commedia dell'arte in its various historical forms.
Installed in 1980 at its current address, in a former police sobering-up center mentioned by Francis Carco in
L'Homme de minuit
and which - according to legend - saw Picasso and Modigliani pass by, its baroque theater is therefore more than ever on the edge of the abyss.
Representation of
Arlequin Valet de Deux Maîtres
, at the Italian Comedy, in 2012. Directed by Attilio Maggiulli after the play by Carlo Goldoni Mirco Magliocca
Disarmed, Attilio Maggiulli resigned himself two years ago to selling the lease of the Comedy.
Shortly before his death, Jean-Pierre Mocky had been one of the first to entertain the idea of settling in rue de la Gaîté.
"
He wanted to take the theater to make his cinema there
", remembers the director.
The cost of buying the building, estimated at 2 million euros by an expert, having cooled those who were most sincerely in love with the theater, they no longer prowl around him but “
predators
” and “
vultures
” as they are called. Maggiulli.
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Among those interested, the clubbing group Paris Society (formerly Noctis) and Éric Lenoir, the managing director of the street furniture company Seri, who last year became the publication director of
Cahiers du cinema
.
Out of the question, however, to see the Comedy add to a financial hunting table.
"
We know very well that once they buy everything, three months after they see us, they put us in a position to leave as they did with Les Cahiers du cinéma,
" sighs the man of the theater.
Other personalities, such as the actor and producer of pornographic films Rocco Siffredi or the fairground pastor Chriss Campion have also expressed their interest in settling there.
Unsuccessful negotiations.
The theater with its baroque facade all in pastel blue could however accommodate a patron who is far more sulphurous than a porn star or an evangelical heir: Dieudonné himself.
Read also: Covid-19: Gérald Darmanin and the prefect of Bas-Rhin file a complaint after an “illegal” show by Dieudonné
Faustian pact
Since his expulsion from the La Main d'Or theater in 2017, the controversial comedian and polemicist has always been looking for a new venue to perform.
It was through his company Les Productions de la Plume that Dieudonné offered Attilio Maggiulli to rent the hall of the Italian Comedy for 86,400 euros per year.
A serious offer which, for lack of anything better, is gradually gaining ground.
Read also: Attacks of January 2015: Ali Riza Polat and Hayat Boumeddiene sentenced to 30 years of criminal imprisonment
“We had all kinds of contenders for the thing. The only ones who have quantified it is Dieudonné's company
,
”
observes the director of the theater with regret.
Attilio Maggiulli was able to confirm to us that the teams of the comedian, condemned several times for racist and anti-Semitic remarks, have indeed taken the measure of the place.
"Even if we are still in complete disagreement with his remarks that we condemn, our association, following the loss of all its subsidies, is forced to sell the lease of our theater"
, had specified at
Point
the Italian director.
Delicate reports that hardly makes more pleasant the presence of the lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre who defends the close friend of Amedy Coulibaly, Ali Riza Polat, at the trial of the January 2015 attacks, in addition to serving as an intermediary for the Productions of feather.
“Wolinski was one of our great friends, he made us lots of posters,”
laments the director of the rue de la Gaîté theater.
"
The friendship with all
the team of
Charlie Hebdo
and Hara Kiri for a very long time
," says the man who had mounted a piece of François Cavanna in 1977 and for whom the prospect to focus on Dieudonné has decidedly nothing 'enchanting.
Read also: Save Maggiulli!
The hunt for subsidies and the survival of the Italian Comedy works the mind of Attilio Maggiulli night and day.
It earned him headlines in 2013, for having thrown his Peugeot against the gates of the Elysee;
a stroke of brilliance which had earned him to meet at Sainte-Anne.
In 1999, already, the director of the theater had started a hunger strike to demand a tax reduction from the public authorities.
The man of the theater, however, is ready to bounce back.
He is preparing with his troop an adaptation of Le
Guépard
, with the conviction of his theater's capacity to "
produce dreams
".
“
We haven't done all this work for 47 years to get us out of business
,” he concludes.
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