L'Interlope (cabaret) ・ Comédie-Française

INTERLOPE n. m. and adj (Engl. interloper) 1. Archaic. n. m. A merchant ship engaged in smuggling 2. Mod. adj. Whose activity is not legal 3. Fam. (1772 as a noun.) Shady or suspicious in appearance

During the interwar period, Paris, along with Vienna and Berlin, enjoyed a thriving scene for cabarets and transvestite balls, a clandestine world that offered spaces of freedom in which homosexuality thumbed its nose at the society that forbade it. All Paris frequented these illicit nightspots. Welcome to L’Interlope!

In this cross-dressing cabaret imagined by the Sociétaire Serge Bagdassarian, we are welcomed by the tomboy manager. Behind the curtain, the artists are in their dressing rooms –the ultimate intermediary space, the temple of transvestism. By turning themselves into women for a short while, they escape from their daily lives and everyday routines, shaking free of the bleak oppression they have suffered with an incorrigible sense of humour, great elegance and already a first few songs. We go from the intimacy of this moment before the curtain to the performance in the blaze of the spotlights. In a production far removed from grimacing farce, Serge Bagdassarian highlights the different registers of the vast musical repertoire of the Roaring Twenties while selecting of some of its loveliest songs.