The old Le Normandy theater in Le Havre comes back to life. After the restoration of the facade in 2021, work to revive the interior of this building dating from 1934 has begun. To finance part of the project, a call for donations was launched on the internet.
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Built in the mid-1930s, Le Normandy was one of the only historic buildings in Le Havre still standing at the end of the Second World War. An Art Deco-style building which was in turn a theatre, cinema, performance hall before the curtain was lowered definitively in 1991. Bought in 1999 by Korap Spahija and remained unoccupied, it has been the property of his son since his death in 2020. jessy. It was he who, in homage to his father, took on the somewhat crazy challenge of bringing this emblematic place back to life.
Objective 2024
700 seats, and everything to redo, from floor to ceiling. The construction site is titanic, and its total cost estimated at 2.5 million euros. If Jessy Spahija and his family have invested several hundred thousand euros in 2020 to start the work and in particular the structural work, the road is still long before seeing shows again at Normandy. So, the owner and his teams are struggling to obtain funding, from public authorities but also from private sponsors, and decided to launch an online kitty on the Ulule.fr website.
A campaign that allowed in two weeks to collect 20,000 euros, on an initial objective of 50,000 euros. And Jessy Spahija can count on the support of personalities, such as Le Havre Laurent Ruquier, or even Smaïn who played on the Normandy stage before it closed. “For him, giving life to this theater was also the recognition of the father, I think it’s good. And then at the same time, and this is essential, it’s giving life back to a center of culture“, reacts the actor.
Music hall, cabaret, concert hall, if all goes well, the new Normandy should open its doors in the second half of 2024.
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