OLYMPICS PARIS — In a luxurious hotel room on the 16th floor, overlooking the heart of Paris and the iconic Seine River, Thomas Jolly prepares for the grand spectacle that will inaugurate the Paris 2024 Olympics. "I was overwhelmed at first. I wondered how I could create a show where everyone can feel represented as part of this great union," admits Jolly, the actor and stage director who was tapped two years ago to helm the artistic direction of the opening and closing ceremonies.
"This responsibility was ambitious, complex, but magnificent for an artist." More than a billion people are expected to watch the July 26 opening ceremony. But Jolly, 42, is no stranger to outsized projects in France, producing a 24-hour-long Shakespearean tetralogy in 2022 and reviving the favorite musical "Starmania.
" He has earned three Molière prizes, France's highest theater award. Now, he is tasked with sharing France with the rest of the world in a parade that's expected to last nearly four hours. "France is a story that never stops being constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed.
It's alive, it remains alive," Jolly passionately explained in an interview on Friday. This dynamism, he believes, fuels the country's reputation for protests and strikes — manifestations of France's constant reexamination of its identity and values. Behind Jolly, the scene is a hive of activity, with construction workers toiling on the settings for the upcoming ceremony on the riverbanks of the Seine, se.