EWhile preparing his son’s snack, it was with fingers full of butter and jam that Florent Peyre answered our questions, by telephone, before his visit to Irissarry, Airoski room, this Saturday October 5 at 8:30 p.m. As part of the Show’lidarité festival, the Ardéchois will perform “Nature”, his latest one-man show.
“South West. » The show that revealed you on France 2, “We only ask to laugh about it” (Ondar) ended ten years ago. How was it useful to you?
Florent Peyre. She changed part of my life, my career. When you suddenly have a spotlight on your work, the rooms are bigger and fill up. I had already been making a decent living from my job for three years, but I was not known. I can never thank Laurent Ruquier and Catherine Barma (the producers, Editor’s note) enough. Ondar taught me to work hard and intensely, to create regularly, to put myself in danger every week with new sketches. It made me progress enormously. I love thinking about this period. From time to time, I watch some of our collective sketches.
There you met Éric Metayer, a member of the jury at the time, who became the director of your only…
We almost collaborated together many times, after Ondar. It never really happened because each time, we had an obstacle. When I wrote this show, I immediately thought of him. We were very happy to work together, because we realized that there is a real connection in our culture and our way of approaching the profession. We have a lot in common.
How did you come to co-write your one-man show with Mathieu Brunel (“A guy, a girl,” “Les Guignols”) and Philippe Caverivière (RTL, “Quelle époque”)?
These are long stories of friendship. Mathieu and I met at the Avignon Festival, when I was starting out. I met Philippe when I was a waiter in a nightclub in Saint-Raphaël, in the Var, where he is from. At the time, I had two and a half sketches that I performed every now and then at a bar. The boss had transformed the place into a small café-theatre. When I found out who Philippe was, author for Canteloup and already in the game (laughs)…. I stood at attention next to his table. “Do you want a little more ice, coke? » I was in bean bag 2,000. As he is very nice, we quickly started a conversation. I told him what I was doing. The next day he came to watch the 40 minutes I played. That evening, there was no one there. The bar had not been transformed. People around weren’t listening at all. They ordered beers, vodkas. It was quite sporty. For me, it was Tarantino coming to see me with three of his friends. At the end he debriefed me and gave me advice. We have remained friends ever since. We were looking forward to writing a new show to work together.
What was your common thread?
I had ideas for characters, but I didn’t know exactly what we were going to tell. The life of a musical comedy troupe, on the evening of its first performance, quickly became apparent. How a team of broken arms, each more worthless than the last, who fight backstage and do anything on stage. Will try to bring this show to fruition. I play all the members: the backstage technician, the producer, the actors and actresses. There are around twenty of them. It’s a bit like I’m playing a play by myself. We included all the subjects that I love. I wanted to talk about ecology, too. We wrote it quietly and did several writing residencies. It took us two years because we had a lot of activities on the side, both of us. The show was born in July 2020, between the two confinements.
How do you go from one character to another?
Each character has a way of standing. We first set up the trips. Afterwards, I added the voice and the body of the character, then the rhythm and the interpretation. Now, since I’m at almost 300 performances, it’s automated. It’s very ingrained in the body. Sometimes I think it’s crazy, I don’t know where it’s going to hide in the body. I hadn’t played in eight months. There, I started again last weekend. The characters are there, buried somewhere and come out when called. When I play, I don’t feel like I’m alone, but with all my characters. There are animals, objects: I make a fire extinguisher, a mouse, a dolphin, a seal, a polar bear, a penguin…
Of the five animals, four are endangered species. Did you want to illustrate a form of alarm signal?
My polar bear picked up the Marseille accent because it’s 35 degrees on the ice floe and it’s becoming the Côte d’Azur. The bear is on the verge of extinction, but he doesn’t even realize it. Another character tells him that the ice floes are disappearing, that we are in danger, that we are going to die, but he doesn’t care. He wants to drink mojitos and tan. It is a metaphor for humanity which sees that everything is falling apart, but continues to party, to produce, to consume too much. It’s hot, there are floods, deserts, storms. The penguin sells donuts on the ice floe. It’s a lot of entertainment. My goal is to amuse, to make people laugh. But here, as I have a subject that is close to my heart, I take the opportunity to pass messages.
You are a musical theater nut. The collaboration with Pascal Obispo seemed almost inevitable?
I have always listened to musicals: “Starmania”, “Notre-Dame de Paris”, “The Ten Commandments”, “Romeo and Juliet”. It rocked my adolescence, my childhood. “Spamalot” (performed in 2013, at Bobino) opened me to Anglo-Saxon musicals. It’s not quite the same culture, it’s another world. Whenever I can, I go to London or New York.
One day, Philippe Caverivière asked me why I didn’t ask Pascal Obispo to make music for me? I texted him and he responded within five minutes. I told him about my show and it made him laugh. We wrote the lyrics to the songs because we wanted them to be sketches, for the songs to be funny, for there to be jokes in them. We didn’t want these to be moments where the audience said: “OK, he’s going to sing along to us, he’s learned to sing and he wants to show us. » So I explained to Pascal each song, each reference. They were mostly American. Behind, he put all that in his sauce. We can smell its paste. I sing Obispo every night, anyway. As he knew that I wanted to do musical comedy parodies, he had the intelligence to caricature himself a little. It was great to see him working in the studio. He went behind his microphone and sang the whole thing to me. It was a magnificent experience.
Borderline Production
Florent Peyre is passionate about musicals.
The inhabitants of Irissarry and the surrounding area will be able to discover this spectacle. Do you often go to play in small villages or inland?
I like going to places that are a little more difficult to access, where not all the shows go. On tour, it’s always a little more difficult. It’s obviously easier to go and play in big cities. In two hours by train, you are there. There, the journey to Irissarry will be longer, but there is no reason why we should not come into contact with the public who are in slightly more remote regions. The rooms are beautiful and the atmosphere is great. I make it my mission to go and play my show everywhere. I’m a real acrobat (laughs).
What is your relationship with the Basque Country, which you discovered while filming a film in 2017?
I’m very happy to come back, it’s one of the first times I’m going to play here. I find it great to offer my show here, which talks about nature and ecology. Nature is very preserved, lush and perhaps still a little wild in the Basque Country. I discovered this place, which I knew little about, when I filmed “Mission Basque Country”. I had perhaps come to Biarritz once in my life. I spent two months there and fell in love with it. Since then, we come a lot with my family. I’m also going to the Landes – I know I shouldn’t say that (laughs). I love this whole region, it is magnificent. I would have liked to stay there for a few days, but I am filming in Sète at the same time (read elsewhere).
Borderline Production
The Ardèche comedian has already performed nearly 300 performances of his one-man show “Nature”.
What projects?
Florent Peyre recently filmed a series, “Commandant Saint-Barth”, which will be broadcast this winter on TF1. The comedian will end his tour on January 19, 2025. “The life of this show will end at the Folies Bergère, in Paris. » At the same time, he participated in the filming of the second season of the TV film “Le Fil d’Ariane”, with Chantal Ladesou, again for TF1. “It worked well last year,” he says. Other projects, “a little less precise”, should animate his coming weeks. “There is plenty to do. I have work, something to have fun, something to flourish. I’m very lucky, because I go from stage to film sets and to TV. These are just places where I do my job and I measure how lucky I am every day. »
