PORTRAIT. With his first show, Lot-et-Garonnais Nathan Chabrot opens his heart to bring laughter to tears

French junior champion with the 4 Cantons in 2016 and vice-champion of France with Lacapelle-Biron in 2018, Nathan Chabrot was promised a great little Rugby career. However, it is on the stage that he best expresses his talent today. To make the audience laugh by recounting different life experiences. “Everything I say, I have lived it. Sometimes I exaggerate it for comic effect. But if I made up stories, people would inevitably feel it.”

This is why, when he got into comedy, he very quickly favored stand-up over one-man shows. “In this last exercise, we invent characters to make people laugh.” The native of Monflanquin really puts himself on stage. “This is the style I looked at before I started. It’s truly what I love the most.”

“Tom Baldetti gave me the impetus”

Rugby, DUT in Agen, at 18 years old, Nathan Chabrot, fond of humor, did not see himself going on stage. This is the example of another young person from Haut-Agenais, Tom Baldetti, “who gave me the impetus”. “Seeing a guy from my country school doing that made me freak out (laughs)! Where we come from, that doesn’t exist. But seeing him made it possible.” Direction Toulouse for a Staps license – “I don’t even know if I got it or not” – and especially the first stand-up rooms which are starting to emerge in the pink city.

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“Five years ago, there were only two stages in Toulouse. So you try to get your place, take two or three minutes on the microphone. But when you're starting out, that's enough,” he laughs. -it today. After Toulouse, with his friend from Lot-et-Garonne, Nathan headed to the capital. Mecca for comedians. But also the jungle. “There are so many artists, it’s almost a shapeless mass. You have to fight to find your place.”

To live in Paris, he took on odd jobs and appeared on the Comedy Club stages as often as possible. He refines his style, tests his texts with the public, refines his jokes, finds his universe. His own brand in a way.

Five years of sketches led to this first show

And a year and a half ago, tired of Parisian life, Nathan Chabrot returned to Toulouse, where he found a much more developed stand-up scene. It's time for him to take a step forward and write his first one-hour show. “I thought I was short on material. But in the end I had to cut a lot of things!”

And this October 19, in the hall of the Petite Comédie in Toulouse, he delivered his first real show alone on stage entitled “Bouquet final”. “Obviously it's more pressure than going to a Comedy Club. There, people come for you. They have booked their evening, paid for their ticket so that you can make them laugh.” This premiere went very well for the child from Monflanquin. “Everything in my show, I've been researching for years. I knew what I liked and what didn't like. The whole point was to make it a coherent whole, with a certain common thread.”

“I played in front of exes, I’m immune!”

But anyway, what does Nathan talk about on stage? “Lots of love,” smiles the person concerned. “Childhood, nostalgia. I just turned 25, a bit of a weird time. I realized that I am now an adult. I’m talking about what touches me the most.” Amidst the laughter, the Lot-et-Garonnais also likes to cut the rhythm, for one or two minutes without joking, “to go deeper into reflection”. “I'm quite private, but with a lot of self-deprecation. I compensate for my asocial side on stage. And then, now that I've played in front of my family, my close friends and even some of my exes, I'm immune !”

Nathan Chabrot will replay his show at the end of November in Nice and at the end of December again in Toulouse. In the meantime, his sketches and improvisations can be discovered on the various stages of the Pink City.