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« Sport is universal, bears emotions and brings peoples together. Like music or pantomime. I have chosen to
combine all three. Accompanied by Philippe Leygnac once again, this show for all ages examines sport and
its mentality in a humorous, off-beat manner. Pantomime requires rigour in the movement and awareness of
the body, the tools of my trade, and sensations are the same on a playing field and on a stage: an adrenaline
burst before the start of the game and then anything can happen before the final whistle. Put the body, mo-
vements, feelings and frustrations of a sportsman to music. Have a tender, poetic and critical approach to the
dreams of glory, steel-mindedness, physical capacity and strength of sportsmen and also to their weaknesses
and sometimes their ridiculousness. Why feel a need to do better, to push back the limits and to be the best?
Why defend a challenge, a match, a time or a record as if one’s life depended on it? Perhaps, as in these child-
ren’s games, it is to be the strongest in the world, if only for a day.
And then?
Georges Orwell wrote that ‘Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play’, considering it to be ‘…bound up
with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules …’. Curiously, these features are found in the world
of the burlesque. As the title suggests, following the quotation from Orwell, Fair Play focuses on the sporting
spirit and fair play. It shows a host of examples of bad behaviour and pretentions and mocks ruined careers
and failures. This might bring to mind Jacques Tati’s Impressions sportives or Charlie Chaplin’s The Champion.
Fair Play is two figures on a stage, facing the audience—like two athletes facing the grandstand —but where
the only prize is not a medal but the laughter of everyone, big and small. »
Patric Thibaud
Cast : Patrice THIBAUD, Philippe LEYGNAC
Stage direction : Jean-Marc BIHOUR, Jean-Michel GUERIN, Patrice THIBAUD
Music : Philippe LEYGNAC
Costumes : Isabelle BEAUDOUIN
Lighting designer : Charlotte DUBAIL
Creation : Patrice THIBAUD
Access plan Théâtre du Petit Montparnasse
How to get to the Théâtre du Petit Montparnasse
- Edgar Quinet, Gaîté-Montparnasse
- 28, 58, 68, 82, 89, 92, 94, 96
- Centre commercial Gaîté, Tour Montparnasse, Gare Montparnasse
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