dive into the world of talent scouts looking for the comedians of tomorrow

In front of the red facades of the Parisian theater Le Point Virgule, passers-by pile up under the already declining August sun. Lined up two by two in the queue, they are there to attend a traditional “Trempoint”, a typical show at the establishment. Several times a week, the stage opens up to hand-picked young comedians. They present, one after the other, a few minutes of sketch over a total duration of one hour. That evening, there are six of them, all of whom have won their place by passing an audition, sometimes several years ago.

Brian Ravenet, a college professor and comedian in his spare time, remembers it like it was yesterday. He thinks about it and sees himself again. “We are about fifteen comedians. We have to show in five minutes what we can do. Everyone looks at each other. We have to wet the jersey”, he says with determination. He has a deep voice, a bit drawling and plays his double role on stage: he talks about his cruel lack of authority in front of students he can’t manage to bait. On the day of the audition, the lecturer nevertheless managed to seduce Antoinette Colin, the theater’s programmer, on the first try.

In the capital, his name is famous among comedians. Its Le Point Virgule theater – an almost obligatory passage for this kind of artist – has welcomed the greatest at the dawn of their careers, such as Florence Foresti, Stéphane Guillon or Chantal Ladesou. Antoinette Colin’s role is to unearth those who will make us laugh tomorrow. But hitting him in the eye is not easy: “I’m looking for something that will touch me, that I’ve never seen elsewhere. It often goes through writing, especially the way an artist revisits a theme that seems universal.”

Singularity is also one of the criteria of Xavier Lebreton, creator and artistic director of the Dinard Comedy Festival. “You should not seek to please or to be fashionable. As Cocteau said, fashion is what goes out of fashion”, he recalls. His festival was born in 1998 and has since acquired a certain notoriety. On the program each year: a competition between eight comedians freshly landed in the middle. He does not organize an audition to determine those who will go up on the boards. “I’m afraid that, like singers, I’ll get a hit then nothing.” To Instead, he criss-crosses theatres, comedy clubs (café-theatres dedicated to stand-up) and comedy festivals in search of the rare pearl.

“I look a lot in Paris, because it is very centralized, but when I arrive in a new city, I look if there is a café-théâtre. To choose what to see, I observe the posters, the pitches and the titles of the shows, explains Xavier Lebreton. Meticulously trimmed beard and cap on his head, comedian Guillaume Fosko appears smiling on the poster of his show Half-way. It was plastered on the walls of the La Petite Loge theater in Paris where he has been playing since October 2020. He also continues to test his jokes in other theaters in the capital, such as at Point Virgule this August evening.

“There, I go to the Paname Art Café, he explains as he leaves the stage. I’m going to do the same passage as the one I just presented, reworking it. I check in, I listen, I see what’s wrong and I try to improve.” The artist – who gave up his job in advertising to devote himself to humor – also plays at the Barbès Comedy Club and Café Oscar. For Antoinette Colin, linking scenes is an absolute necessity: “The new generation is really hardworking, but also impatient. However, there is an incompressible time of game maturity, on the board.”

“Sometimes the artists are not ready right away, we spot them and we say to ourselves that we will offer them something in a year, believes Xavier Lebreton. For it to work, you have to eat from the scene.” The Festival d’Avignon is the perfect place to mature his work as a comedian. Nicolas Vital, director of Bérengère Krief (among others) and artistic director of the Festival d’Humour de Paris, accompanies each year the artists he follows in the south. “These are three intense weeks of training, warming up. It allows them to save time, six months of work”he notes.

The director thinks with them about the texts, the scenography and the acting. “Not all comedians have gone to theater school and sometimes a certain theatricality can be lacking.” Solène Rossignol, whose show is on show at Point Virgule until the end of August, has understood this well. During her visit to Trempoint, she arrives dancing on stage, then displays a tight smile that gives her a resolutely comical air. She uses and abuses facial expressions that set her apart from her colleagues.

Everything to stand out in a world where finding your place and getting noticed is becoming more and more complicated. The proposals have multiplied: “Comedy clubs are springing up like mushrooms, Xavier Lebreton analysis, It looks like the cabarets of the 50s.” The risk is sometimes standardization. “We have never had so many women in humorsays Antoinette Colin, but there is not enough diversity in the themes and the way they are treated.” Too often, the subjects of the couple or the periods are approached. “After Blanche Gardin, we saw a lot of mini-Blanche go on stage.”

Budding comedians, Guillaume Fosko and Brian Ravenet, also have role models, like the famous Americans Sebastian Maniscalco or Bill Burr. “I spend my day watching videos of them”, entrusts the former advertising. While in the 2010s, television served as a relay for comedians, it has now been replaced by social networks. There, headhunters can uncover nuggets. It is on Instagram that the casting director Constance Demontoy has also sought the actors of the Netflix series Funny, by Fanny Herrero, broadcast in March 2022 and not renewed despite its success.

“With covid and the various confinements, theaters and stand-up places have closed. So we followed the artists and clubs on Instagram, we tried to track them, watch excerpts online…”, she recalls. Nicolas Vital spotted comedian Jérémy Nadeau, famous on YouTube with 3.5 million subscribers, on social networks and scheduled him for the Paris Comedy Festival. “He’s an artist who took the time to work on the delicate transition from the web to the stage. This step can also be difficult for the public, because we go from free to paid.”

For Nicolas Vital, offering real artistic content on social networks is a way to acquire a loyal community ready to move into theaters. The artistic director of the Festival d’Humour de Paris is confident for the new generation, which is mastering these digital tools better and better. “The artists must be identifiable very quickly, including through their social networks”, does he think. Indeed, the productions – which finance the comedians – also identify their future recruits on the Internet.

“Today, anyone can get started, all you need is a phone and a connection”, remarks Xavier Lebreton, but getting out of the game remains a challenge. Sometimes it’s an intonation, a rhythm, a breath, a look at society that will convince. “There are extraordinary moments, others of great loneliness, emphasizes Nicolas Vital. It’s a solitary job. We face people for an hour to make them laugh. You have to have a lot of self-confidence to dare to take the plunge. It’s very scary, but at the end of the show, the applause is for you, all alone.”