Born in 1974, Sylvain Blanchard joined the École Jacques Lecoq (class of 97-98). Shortly after, he founded his own company, La Fabrique des Arts d’à côté, and began learning his craft through various creations and performances, championing a theater of gesture and image. At the same time, he worked with several theater groups, including Théâtre de la Jacquerie, Lanicolacheur, Peuplum Cactus, Namco Théâtre, la Compagnie d’après la Pluie, and La Controverse. He has taken on roles as an actor, puppeteer, director, and technician.

Since 2012, he has been managing a venue, Théâtre Thénardier in Montreuil, which includes apartments, offices, and two theaters, a project he contributed to building with his colleagues.

After studying at the conservatories of Evry (clarinet prize) and Montreuil (jazz prize), he turned to improvised and contemporary music. He took lessons from Malo Valois, Denis Colin, and Sylvain Kassap. He studied composition with Bertrand Chapelier and Jean Gobinet. He composes and plays clarinet, bass clarinet, baritone saxophone, diatonic harmonica, singing, and cigar box guitar.

Today, Nicolas Naudet is a musician, singer, actor, and composer. He applies his diverse skills to theater, street performances, and contemporary music: The company of Théâtre du Frêne (Dom Juan), Comédien et Compagnie (La Jalousie du Barbouiller, Courbes Exquises, La Flûte Enchantée), La Compagnie de la Courte Échelle (Vis au long de la vie), Zéfiro Théâtre (Candide), Théâtre Ouranos (La Famille Tôt, Hilda), La Compagnie TAIM (La Boîte à Mélosique), Compagnie Fixpoint (Maheras), Bollywood Fanfare, Les Experts, Doodle Brothers, G!RAFE, NhoG, WE SHOT (Compagnie du Discobole), Malo, and others.

Son of Marie and Joseph, and mistakenly reborn in the 20th century amidst the gemstone mines in distant mountains. Out of the ordinary, barely understandable, and unruly, he was expelled from institutions and schools. He makes untimely language errors that spark his inventiveness from the very beginning of a sentence. His madness leads him to believe he can change the world with his metaphysics inspired by Carambars and Lidl papillotes. But his cruelty adds spice to his intentions, with all his tortured spiders from childhood and firecrackers tied to cats’ tails teasing the emerging guru. He is the pope of the moment, the failed Dalai Lama, the one who should have been eliminated before he grew up. Son of a world where Teletubbies offer consumer loans while eating fries, he sends his catastrophic light through the debris and invites us to modern spontaneity without any minimalist Asian touch. Everything is edible, everything is usable, everything is emotion. Let’s weep in front of Game of Thrones, fear the Bible, and dress up to buy butter. The driving force: joy. An irrational, amoral, and uncompromising joy. A rage for resourcefulness and creativity at all costs, as if we were going to die, because the apocalypse has always been knocking at his door.

Stefano Perocco encountered the world of masks in 1977 during a workshop led by Donato Sartori ³ as part of the 37th Venice Biennale , then directed by Luca Ronconi and known in history as the ” Biennale del Dissenso  [ archive ] ” ⁴ . That same year, Donato Sartori introduced him to Carlo Boso, with whom he began a long and lasting collaboration. With Donato Sartori, he made Commedia dell’Arte masks for the show Maschere, cronache di servitori e padroni staged by Carlo Boso and created in Venice , campo del Ghetto and performed in various squares of the city.

In 1978 he met Vittorio Basaglia , a decisive encounter for his training as a sculptor, particularly in the creation of installations and monumental sculptures. Stefano Perocco was in fact invited to join the team gathered around Giugliano Scabia for the Marco Cavallo project , as part of the collective artistic laboratory within the psychiatric hospital of Trieste, then directed by Franco Basaglia , a great reformer of psychiatry in Italy.

In the 1980s he began working in France mainly with the Scalzacani company for which he created Commedia dell’Arte masks for several shows directed by Carlo Boso .

In 1983, he began a collaboration with the Tag teatro ⁵ cooperative in Venice for which he created the masks and scenographies for about fifteen shows that toured all over the world. At the same time, he began a collaboration with the Lyon company Les Rotatives, creating the scenographies and masks for the productions of Carlo Boso, the company’s artistic director.

The 1990s marked a fundamental stage in Stefano Perocco’s artistic career with his meeting with Leo de Berardinis , a prominent representative of the Italian teatro di ricerca ⁶ . It was under his leadership that he initiated an aesthetic research of reinterpreting the tradition of Western masked theatre in the service of a demanding and politically engaged contemporary theatre. The six shows by Leo de Berardinis for which Stefano Perocco created masks were praised by both journalistic and academic critics ⁷ for the innovative aspect of the use of theatrical masks, which earned him a citation in the prestigious Treccani encyclopedia ⁶ .

This research continues with the shows staged by Luca Franceschi for which he creates masks and signs the scenographies of numerous shows from 1994, in France and Belgium, as well as with those of the company Le Belle bandiere ⁸ directed by Elena Bucci and Marco Sgrosso , two former members of the Teatro di Leo, the company of Leo de Barardinis in Bologna with whom he collaborates on around ten shows, the first of which we can cite L’Anima buona di Sezuan by Bertolt Brecht .

In 1998, Stefano Perocco signed the scenography of Els 2 bessons venecians by Carlo Goldoni directed by Toni Cafiero, created as part of Operació Goldoni at the Mercat de les Flors in Barcelona .

In 2002 he designed the costumes for The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare , translated by Jean-Claude Carrière and directed by Camille E Manolo ( Théâtre du Centaure ) for the 56th Avignon Festival ^, at the Clos de l’Abbaye de Villeneuve-lez-Avignon .

In 2005 he created the masks for the show Disco Pigs ⁹ by Valter Malosti ( Teatro di Dionisio  [ archive ] ) produced by the stabile di Torino and created in the enchanting setting of the Cavalerizza reale  [ archive ] in Turin.

He also works with many companies around the world (Italy, France, Spain, Romania, Greece, United Kingdom, Belgium, Finland, Russia, Lithuania, Chile, United States) ¹⁰ .

Loïc Braunstein has been writing and publishing poetry, short stories, and essays for about ten years in the magazine A Verse as well as in the first issue of Place de la Sorbonne, a prestigious reference journal dedicated to authors who are not yet deceased. He has been active in the Lille slam scene since the early days of the movement in France and hosts open mic nights at Zem-Théâtre, just steps away from his favorite café. In 2003, he founded the association le Styl’Oblique, dedicated to using writing as an unconventional exploration tool. His experience spans from schools to festivals, from training social workers at the P.J.J. to the Brive Book Fair, including a one-month residency at Éditions du Diable Vauvert.

In 2007, he was invited by the French Cultural Center of Pointe-Noire (Congo-Brazzaville) where, with a group of local artists, he laid the groundwork for what would become, in a few years, the largest slam-poetry movement in West Africa in terms of its scope, dissemination, and number of affiliated artists.

As president and co-founder of the Cie Deux Croches Rondes, he became a producer of children’s shows and lyrical performances while also teaching French. He later took on the role of public relations officer at the Théâtre de Saint-Maur (94), giving him the opportunity to apply all his skills.

Today, Loïc Braunstein is focused on finishing what he started: a collection of short stories titled Devant le son published by L’Harmattan (2017) and a theater adaptation, along with a novel project and a second collection of short stories well underway. With guitarist and graffiti artist Guillaume de Remusat, he formed the polymorphic duo Carapace, allowing him to reconnect with the stage, singing, beat-boxing, and performance.

Nicole Ayach (French-American) trained in visual arts at Pratt Institute (New York). In the United States, she worked with the circus company Circus Amok. Then, she moved to Cairo where she developed committed and collaborative puppet projects from 2012 to 2016. 

In 2016 she returned to France and completed a Master’s degree in International Cultural and Artistic Projects (theater department) at the University of Paris 8, where she wrote a thesis on transcultural puppet projects between France and the Middle East. She co-founded the Hékau Company in 2017 with Hany Hommos and directed Tarakeeb  in 2021 and  Min el Djazaïr  in 2023. 

After obtaining her diploma in costume design from Martiniere-Diderot in Lyon in 2016, she joined the workshop at the Opéra Bastille for a 6-month professional contract. Since then, she has continued to work regularly on opera productions, as well as a diverse range of other projects, including theater, film, video games, circus, and dance. She favors more artistic projects. Recently, she has trained in accessory-making techniques at CFPTS in Bagnolet and in leather mask making with Stefano Perocco di Meduna.

Lou Pfaffmann studied at the Lycée Théâtre Victor Hugo in Paris. In 2009, she traveled to Africa with the company “Le Théâtre du Peuple Lié,” where she became the costume designer and set designer for their productions. In 2010, still associated with the company, she created 18th-century costumes using African fabrics for Molière’s Le Malade Imaginaire.

That same year, she worked with the collective “Moments Donnés” on the pantomime Libre Si On Veut.

In 2011, she pursued studies in scenography at the École des Beaux-Arts in Naples. There, she collaborated with the company “Asylum Anteatro” on costumes for their productions: Pietro il matto and the performance La Giorniate delle donne.

In 2015/2016, she designed all the sets and costumes for ICI LES AUBES SONT PLUS DOUCES, directed by the Théâtre du Peuple Lié. Since 2018, she has been working at the Opéra Bastille as a props designer.

Several decades in the service of live performance rather focused on contemporary writings. Recently worked with the companies Issue de secours, 6ème dimension, le loup-ange Dell edulis, théâtre de la vallée, Bacchus, petite lumière, Rhodnie Désir, Brutaflor. In his spare time became a hermit in the Morvan.