“The Laughing Madmen!”, a comedy festival organized this summer in Montauban

Christophe Guilbert, what is the genesis of this festival?

This idea came to me when I was invited by Smaïn to be a jury for the Lyon humor festival, Les Lions du Rire. I found this event superb, and with Smaïn, we thought about doing a comedy festival in Montauban. The idea is not to repeat a stand-up festival, like the Lions of Laughter, but to create an event combining sketches, humor, and theater.

What is the program ?

The program is quite heterogeneous and will take place over 4 days. We start on Thursday with a one-man show by Laurent Baffie. On Friday, we will have a duet, with Oldelaf and Arnaud Joyet. They will perform their new show Operation Pretzel. On Saturday, there will be a special evening: “The duo festival” and on Sunday, there will be a Parisian café-theater play called “The desperate housemen get married”.

Can you tell us more about Saturday night?

The duets evening will take place in the presence of the comedian Smaïn, who is the patron of this festival and who will chair the jury of this evening. 8 duos and 1 trio will each present one of their sketches, of more or less 7 minutes. Two prizes of 1,000 euros will be awarded. One on the public vote and the other on the jury vote.

The actors were selected thanks to the videos they sent and it was the La Comédie de Montauban team who carried out a vote to select the best. Among the participants, we have two very young girls aged 6 and 9, but we also have much more experienced actors like Mina Merad, the sister of Kad Merad or Eric Collado, a former member of “Nous ç Nous”, who will present a sketch with his 16 year old son.

The evening will also be hosted by Manu Joucla and Éric Massot, two other former actors from “Nous ç Nous”. They will perform a kind of inter-sketches, between each skit of the participants in the competition. The idea is really to have an artistic and good-natured time!

So this is the first time this festival has been held. Is it an event that is meant to be repeated every year?

Absolutely, it’s a first but we hope that it will be a success and that next year, we can launch a second edition. A bit like the Voice of Montauban, the karaoke competition that will be organized again this summer in August, at the Violon dingue. We really want to create regular cultural events and bring live entertainment to Montauban.