In a luxurious hotel room on the 16th floor, overlooking the heart of Paris and the River Seine, 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,” says 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 outsize projects in France, producing a 24-hour Shakespearean tetralogy in 2022 and reviving the musical Starmania .
He has won three Molière prizes, France’s highest theatre award. Now, he is tasked with sharing France with the rest of the world in a parade that is 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 said in an interview on Friday. This dynamism, he believes, fuels the country’s reputation for protests and strikes – manifestations of France’s constant re-examination of its identity and values. Last year, France hosted the Rugby World Cup.
The opening ceremony, imagined by Oscar-winning actor Jean Dujardin, who portrayed a beret-wearing baker in a 1950s rendition of France, received criticism.