While Florent Peyre triumphs on stage with his new show entitled 'Nature', which he plays in Paris and on tour in the provinces, he gave an interview to the 'Journal des femmes'. The opportunity to discuss his surprising show or how ecology has changed his family life.

It was on the stage of the La Gaîté Montparnasse theater in Paris that comedian Florent Peyre was a hit with a show called Nature , parody of a musical with ecology as the red thread! If one could think the subject breaks the mouth, it appeals to very many spectators. We discussed this show with him but what. Exclusive interview.

Journal des femmes: Where did this risky idea of ​​a musical around ecology come from?

Florent Peyre : I don't think it's risky. And then ecology is not the main theme, it's that of the life of a troupe, one night at the premiere, when you don't know if it's going to work [he plays alone on stage no less than twenty of characters, editor's note] and it's a bunch of broken arms... Ecology is a theme in the background because it's very close to my heart. I wanted to take advantage of the platform that is the stage to spread the message and balance, with the other characters, that of Florent who is 'too much'. At the same time, ecology is close to my heart but I don't want to be moralizing, I want to entertain people.

JDF: How does your green commitment translate?

Florent Peyre: Already doing this show. There, during the promo. Then, in my daily life, it's already been ten years since with my wife and my son, we changed a lot of things, it goes from more scooters, more planes than trains, bikes. Me, for my tour, I really have to show myself by A plus B that the plane is the only solution. And it happens but, I did 200 dates last year, I had to fly twice... Everything else I'm going to do by train even if it's 6 hours by train! Afterwards, I'm not going to forbid myself from taking holidays abroad. I tell myself that we must not stop everything. We have to do it little by little, so that it becomes part of our habits. I, for example, haven't bought a plastic bottle for 5 or 6 years. Same, you can open our fridge, there is no longer a trace of plastic in it. When I open it, I see only local and seasonal vegetables, only homemade dishes, only glass tupperware... I want to open the champagne, I'm so happy.

JDF: How did the collaboration with Pascal Bishop for the music of the show?

Florent Peyre: It was born from the fact that I knew Pascal because we had met on a few shows and we had a good laugh. I had seen that he was someone with a lot of humor. And when we were writing the show [with the help of Philippe Caverivière, editor's note], we saw that it was slowly heading towards a musical. We sent a message to Pascal who replied to me within 5 minutes saying to me: 'it's heating me up.' I pitched the show to him, it made him laugh, for him it was a playground, something he hadn't done yet. And it was great working with him. It is THE benchmark for musicals in France. I found myself in Pascal's studio, the one where Johnny Hallyday recorded Allumer le feu, frankly it was great!

JDF: The character of the producer who hates the project and thinks it's going to be ruined, does she exist?

Florent Peyre: The part of truth is that, already, my producer is called Catherine and it is a direct inspiration from Catherine Barma [ex co-producer of the show On n'demande qu'en rire, by which past Florent Peyre, editor's note] whom I worked with for a long time, and to whom I owe a lot. He is a colorful character and we want to imitate him. Catherine's character is so tasty. But it has been distorted, it's the caricature of the producer who doesn't want to spend too much money and at the same time these are questions that we asked ourselves: if I proposed to a producer who produced my previous one man show a musical with 40 people on stage on ecology, I think he would try to dissuade me!

JDF: And the character with Down syndrome, did you hesitate to play him on stage?

Florent Peyre: Little Tanguy, my character, really exists. I created the character without knowing it existed, and I have a friend who once told me that he had a couple of friends whose son had the same voice, the same expressions [as the character he had imagined, editor's note] and explained to him what I was going to do in the show. Then Tanguy and his mom came to see the show last summer, and they're the only ones who could have made me change something in the script if they thought it was mean or clumsy. And he came on stage with me, bowed with me, I was in tears. It can be a crazy subject, we asked ourselves a thousand questions, we wanted to approach the subject without making fun of it but laughing at it. It just forces vigilance not to fall into the easy valve, nor into mockery. The return is always the same: 'Thank you for laughing about it, we never talk about it in the shows'. So if it can help change the way we look at Down syndrome...

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JDF: Do you set yourself limits with humour?

Florent Peyre: No! There are subjects that I don't want to tackle and registers in which I no longer want to go, as I did at the very beginning of my career, before I made TV. I wanted to do dark, trashy humor, and that's what I did a little clumsily. And the thing is, there's an after-sales service for trash humor, and when I feel like I've hurt someone's feelings, I'm not happy. Me, what makes me happy is to see that people have spent two hours elsewhere, they have traveled, I have entertained them. Now, if I see that there is a subject that touches me, is close to my heart that we can approach it in an intelligent, fine way, we do it. That's what we did on trisomy.

JDF: You are afraid of the judgment of haters ?

Florent Peyre: I'm not a fan of this kind of pressure from social networks, as soon as you say something... I don't like it, but that's how it is! But it forces vigilance, excellence, where we would have allowed ourselves an easy valve, we don't put it on and we find one a little better. But obviously this kind of pressure, this people's tribunal, I don't like it at all. That's why we must not let it go, we must be equipped and armed.

Find Florent Peyre in Nature at the Théâtre de La Gaîté Montparnasse, in Paris, until December 31, 2022. Then on tour throughout France until May 2023.

Exclusive interview that cannot be resumed without the mention of women's diary .

Source journaldesfemmes.fr