At Cabaret Bio Dégradable, the best of the worst autobiographies

Readings of classics of literature or theater by famous actresses are now more and more regularly on display in Parisian theaters. Le Cabaret Bio Dégradable is inspired by this principle, but with very different texts from those that the public is used to discovering. Around ten actresses and actors, including Virginie Pradal, will take turns every Thursday on the set of the Tristan Bernard Theater to read, in front of a microphone, without changing a single comma, extracts from what is announced as the “worst” autobiographies of personalities of yesterday and today. The list goes from Massimo Gargia to Nabilla Benattia via Plastic Bertrand, Élodie Gossuin, Michel Polnareff, Sheila, Julio Iglesias and a few others.

Didier Morissonneau, a Quebec producer, is at the origin of this first in France. He had the idea the day after the year 2000, after immersing himself in the memories of a star from his country. The discovery of each chapter seemed to him an excuse to laugh. “The vanity, the pretension, the implausibility of certain confidences or their lack of interest, were such that second-degree reading became a real pleasure,” he says. Thus, after having invested a substantial sum in the purchase of several hundred works of the same style, he spent weeks selecting the pages that seemed to him the funniest or the most ridiculous, sometimes both. He ended up building a show recalling, in a parodic form, the literary cabarets of yesteryear, with a Poets' Club aspect.

The enthusiasm and laughter triggered by a succession of remarks which, originally, were not intended to be funny, were such that fifteen years after the creation, the performances continued with the same success, in Montreal and on tour. Pascal Guillaume, the director of the Tristan Bernard Theater, attended one of them, and gave the green light to an adaptation on the same principle, but based on exclusively French material. Morissonneau thus selected sometimes esoteric remarks such as those reported by a medium claiming to have had long conversations with Claude François from the afterlife. He also included a long chapter in which Alain Barrière claims to have been the victim of a plot led by the Élysée, and an analysis by Élodie Gossuin on the impact of the Gulf War on his daily life.

Short phrases appear in this set, such as the one uttered one day by Massimo Gargia: “I would be happy to see Leonardo Di Caprio play my role, if the film project on my life comes to fruition”. He also transformed certain passages into short dialogue scenes with the appearance, for a moment, of Bernard Hinault in the preface, or of an investigating judge facing Nabilla.

“The golden rule is rigor and absolute seriousness in reading these masterpieces of authenticity and hilarity, overflowing with juicy details and essential anecdotes,” smiles Morissonneau who concludes with presenting this set as “a literary experience on the borders of intimacy”. Finally, he plans to make his documentation available to the public. In order, if necessary, to demonstrate to those who doubt the authenticity of this material. And that reality can sometimes surpass affliction. The Organic Degradable Cabaret. Tristan Bernard Theater, Thursday at 9 p.m. From October 26