Guignol is sad.
Since December 8, Julien Sommer, the director of the Guignol theater at Champ-de-Mars in Paris, has known that he has to pack up.
And it was simply via a registered letter that this thirty-year-old learned of the termination of his concession on March 31, when it was supposed to run until the end of November.
Reason, the work planned by the organizing committee of the Paris Olympic Games (from July 26 to August 11) on the famous esplanade.
Gone are the policeman and the thief,
Beauty and the Beast
... A disaster for this puppet enthusiast who has been running this theater since 2018, and already laughed at these charming puppets in his earliest childhood.
Here, facing the Eiffel Tower, this small 150-seat theater, which dates from the last Universal Exhibition in 1902, serves as a Gallic village against the great Olympics.
“
I knew well, with the Olympics, that I was going to have to close, but the trauma is the termination, downright, and not having any perspective for the future.
It’s distressing
,” confides the artist with no hope of activity for these long months to come.
“
It’s scandalous and contemptuous to leave people like that
,” says Olivier Kaplan, a local resident behind a petition to defend the traders of the Champ-de-Mars
.
There is great opacity as to what will happen in the coming months, and even after the Olympics!”
On Wednesday January 17, the Paris town hall indicated to AFP that the three businesses, including the Guignol theater, whose agreement was terminated earlier than expected “
could be compensated
”.
For all businesses, “
work has been undertaken so that they can set up during the Games period in alternative sites, after competitive bidding
,” she adds.
“
New commercial operating sites will be proposed
” after the Games so “
that these activities can be carried out there again
”, continues the municipality, again after “
competition
”.
Friday January 19, when we wrote these lines, certain merchants neighboring the theater had received a visit from officials.
Julien Sommer, for his part, was waiting for a sign, while already preparing his two daily performances over the weekend.