This is their first season: Laurence de Magalhaes, 58, and Stéphane Ricordel, 60, are fully at the helm of this theater, which has become in recent years an abundant cultural place, dedicated to contemporary authors, a mecca of impertinence. In December, the author, director and filmmaker Jean-Michel Ribes, 76, reluctantly passed the hand.

"Our challenge is to succeed him as honestly as possible," Ricordel told AFP.

This tandem, a couple at work as in personal life, has toured the world for 15 years in the circus company Les Arts Sauts, he trapeze artist, she production manager. Then came the Monfort Theatre in Paris for 12 years.

For them, it is first of all a question of keeping the heritage: staging contemporary authors, hosting "hybrid and multidisciplinary projects" mixing theater, circus dance, puppets, "taking crazy bets seen nowhere else," they say.

But also to set their own tone. With more room for foreign artists, for example. This will be the case, for the opening Tuesday with "One Song", a show "physical, tonic, galvanizing" staged by the Belgian visual artist Miet Warlop.

Laurence de Magalhaes at the Théâtre du Rond Point in Paris, September 5, 2023 © JOEL SAGET / AFP

An additional emphasis is given to contemporary dance (choreographers Sharon Eyal or Marlene Monteiro Freitas) but also to contemporary authors, with creations or adaptations of works by Lola Lafon, Mazarine and Léonie Pingeot, Vanessa Springora (Le consent), or Constance Debré.

"Playing at the neighbors' house"

The duo is looking for shows that "federate". "A good show is when people can share common things when in life they would never have found each other. What we call +popular+ shows in the good sense of the word", details Laurence de Magalhaes.

In 2022-2023 under the former management, the theater welcomed nearly 130,400 spectators (572 performances).

Stéphane Ricordel at the Théâtre du Rond Point in Paris, September 5, 2023 © JOEL SAGET / AFP

And the "laughter of resistance", Jean-Michel Ribes trademark? "It's not our DNA," replies the former trapeze artist. "We are in a more complicated society than a few years ago. Political incorrectness is no longer too funny," says Laurence de Magalhaes.

On the other hand, she points out, "a theater follows the news." "If there are things that bother us, of course we will open the doors to all kinds of debates, meetings."

Among the projects of the following season? "Play in situ at the neighbors that are the Petit and the Grand Palais".

To accompany this change of direction, the theater, which includes three rooms, including 750 seats for the largest, located at the bottom of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, has partly been revamped. Outside, the tarpaulin stamped "Théâtre du Rond-Point" presenting the list of artists of the season has disappeared and reveals the dome and the drawing of the balcony of the building built in the nineteenth.

Inside, the lobby has been cleared of its turquoise carpet, the entrance walls repainted terra cotta, the bar lamps give a more "zen" atmosphere, a bench has been added, a fresco by the artist Bonnefrite decorates a wall of the bar-restaurant. The graphic identity of the theatre has been rounded.

Laurence de Magalhaes and Stéphane Ricordel, the new co-directors of the Théâtre du Rond-Point, on September 5, 2023 in Paris © JOEL SAGET / AFP

On the day of the AFP visit, Jean-Michel Ribes was still in the premises, in a secluded room, for the dedications of his latest book...

© 2023 AFP