A look back at the career of Thomas Jolly, the director of the Games ceremonies, in three memorable works

Thomas Jolly, the artistic mastermind behind the Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies, is known for his wildly imaginative theatre.

He had been waiting for it for almost two years. The opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games, which will be held on Friday 26 July, completes long months of preparation for the director Thomas Jolly. Appointed artistic director of the ceremonies of the Games 2024, the artist of 42 years old has already enjoyed a successful career.

Known for his sense of drama, the excess of his productions and his defense of a “heightened theatricality“, the creative, whom many describe as “gifted”, hopes to make the City of Light and its monuments around the Seine his playground, to offer the public, on Friday, the “greatest show in the world“.

Before becoming the man behind the Olympic Games ceremonies, Franceinfo looks back at three essential works that helped build Thomas Jolly’s reputation.

1 A passion for Shakespeare, to the point of putting on a 24-hour show

Thomas Jolly created his company La Piccola Familia, composed of six actors, after his studies at the theater faculty and at the acting school of the National Theater of Brittany. His first big break came in 2014 with his staging of the entire trilogy Henry VI by William Shakespeare. This creation, exceptional for its duration of 18 hours on stage, brings together the three plays by the playwright. She was awarded a Molière for them in 2015.

Thomas Jolly did it again the following year, in 2016, taking advantage of the success of the saga Henry VI to launch into the last part, Richard III. This time he plays the title role and confirms in passing his talents as a visual director, playing with light beams and laser rays that sculpt the space, ultra-effective sound effects, all in a rock and gothic aesthetic in the style of Game Of Thrones.

In 2022, the director caused a sensation by staging all four plays, to deliver a unique 24-hour performance at the Centre dramatique national d’Angers.

2“Starmania” and its extraordinary lighting work

Awarded two Molières, the new interpretation proposed in 2022 by Thomas Jolly of Starmania, the rock opera by Michel Berger and Luc Plamodon, came to confirm his talent. The re-adaptation had delighted the fans of the first hour and dazzled the entire audience.

The work carried out, in particular on the lighting of the show, is not unrelated to this. A success notably signed by the lighting designer Thomas Dechandon, also in charge of the lighting for the show planned for the opening ceremony on Friday.

3 The opera “Romeo and Juliet” tested during confinement

Carried by a subtle orchestral direction by Carlo Rizzi, Charles Gounod’s masterpiece was acclaimed by the public at the Opéra Bastille in June 2023. The recipe: a dark and luminous staging by Thomas Jolly, and an exceptional couple of Romeo and Juliet embodied by Benjamin Bernheim and Elsa Dreisig.

Before being performed at the Opéra Bastille, it was the lockdown that inspired Thomas Jolly to revisit the lovers of Verona.In March 2020, the lockdown happened. I had just taken up my duties as director of the Quai centre dramatique national d’Angers. So I was the director of a closed theater,” he confided at the time.

He convinced his partner to play Juliet and improvised a show every evening on the balcony of their apartment in Angers.. “At 21 o’clock, my neighbors are at their windows, I make Gounod’s music resound in my silent street, ‘I enter’ onto my balcony, I begin Romeo’s monologue of the act II, scene 2. Then, upstairs, the light comes on, the window opens and Juliet appears… We unfold the entire scene”, he remembers.

A few weeks later, the director of the Opéra Bastille, Alexandre Neef, contacted him to offer him the staging of Romeo and JulietMore than a year later, with the Games ceremonies under his charge, one of the most prominent directors of his generation faces a new challenge.