Puppeteer hopes Olympics won't mean final curtain for marionette show

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Julien Sommer performs 'Little Red Riding Hood', one of the theater's last puppet shows before it closes for four months. /Ardee Napolitano/Reuters

Blue and pink lights lit the stage as the curtain rose at the Champs de Mars puppet theater in Paris, with audience members welcomed to the show by a Guignol marionette against a background of cheerful carnival music.

The puppet show, a fixture of the park since 1902, performed one of its final shows on Wednesday before it has to close for the Olympic Games, which begins on July 26.

"This is my life," director Julien Sommer said. "Finding out from one day to the next that months later, we'd have to pack our bags, goodbye to 25 years of life - well, 35 years, since I started coming here when I was little - erased in two months for three weeks of sports, that's really unbelievable."

Close to the Eiffel Tower, the venue offers a classic repertoire of fairytales such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, as well as new creations, with a troupe of 400 puppets.

In January, Sommer said he had been informed by the city government that it was terminating its contract with the theater, which will be closed from June for Olympic preparations.

A petition to keep the venue open drew more than 13,000 signatures in one month. Paris city council finally reversed its decision to terminate the contract, opting to suspend activity until at least October. No reopening date has yet been set.

Sommer says the city could have thought of ways to integrate his show into the Olympics.

A petition to keep the show open drew more than 13,000 signatures in one month. /Ardee Napolitano/Reuters

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"It's a shame to deprive tourists of Parisian life, of everything that's part of the charm of Paris, and to make something neutral, ephemeral, something without a soul," he said.

Last Wednesday, the puppets gave a joyful performance of the popular fairytale Little Red Riding Hood. Some spectators were saddened by the decline of puppet shows, once a popular spectacle in Paris.

"I think there are only three Guignol puppet shows left in Paris," said Elvire Dauberville, who came to see the show with her two grandchildren.

Backstage, Sommer tidied up his theater. Touching his Little Red Riding Hood marionette, he bade the puppets goodbye. "We'll come back," he said. "They're tough. Don't worry, we'll be fine."