Innovative tent constructions in Paris

Today, tent-style venues are used for far more than conventional circus performances. Two futuristic examples can be found in the French capital: the Cirque de Paname, offering a completely new concept of the stage in the west of the city, and the Cabaret Sauvage, a new, soundproofed take on the historical mirror tent, incorporating environmental aspects.

Le Cirque de Paname considers itself France’s answer to the Cirque du Soleil: a futuristic style of mega entertainment, using state-of-the-art stage technology and presented in a specially designed, postmodern marquee.

From November 2019 to February 2020, Le Cirque de Paname on the outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne showed the production Le Monde de Jalèya.

The tent construction itself is 110 m long and 57 m wide. With all its offices, stores, kitchen etc. and parking facilities, the Cirque de Paname covers an area of over 18,000 m². It occupies the kind of space, then, that just cannot be found in the tightly built-up interior of Paris – it can only stand outside the city.

For the producers Thibert Abid and CDP Entertainment, the main challenge was to invent a new venue format, based on the circus tent. They wanted it to be as large as possible yet still transportable, and to offer the public an optimal view of the action from every seat. Not only that, they wanted to create an authentic circus experience yet use innovative technology for visual and scenic effects based on a frontal theatre design.

In a classic circus tent, the video-mapping used here would either be reduced to a patchy effect or it would restrict the acrobats’ freedom of movement. A key element of the set of the opening piece Le Monde de Jalèya is a model of a tree at the rear of the stage area, which performers climb and use as a kind of trapeze. In the classic theatre-in-the-round, the giant sculpture would block many audience-members’ view of the action. The solution was a stage with an arched back wall and a circular proscenium. This ensures a simultaneous view of the back wall and the apron substituting the circus ring, from every seat.

The theatre occupies 2850 m² (plus 730 m² backstage area) and provides seating for 2532, with 28 spaces for disabled visitors. Inside, there is a stage of enormous dimensions with arched trusses, 12 m high, 37 m wide and 25 m deep. The proscenium takes up 8 m. There are no straight or diagonal lines here, only curves. A small revolving stage has even been built in between the main stage and the proscenium, measuring 4 m in diameter and concealing a treadmill.

Thanks to the arch-based construction style, no central masts are needed for the 6000 m² marquee. The theatre’s eight arcs span 57 m while the four supporting the foyer stretch over 44 m. At each end, the tent is 22 m high. All the trusses for the stage technology are accessible and safe to walk on. From outside, the construction looks more like an exhibition or sports hall than a circus. It is a kind of tube, opening towards the ends and contracting in the middle – and a far cry from the classic domed circus top.

But the circus idea pervades the entire project, even the rigging. Like in a circus ring, the trusses are circular. The spotlight technology is by PRG, with the console connected to 47 PRG Icon Edge, 38 from the Martin Performance series and 85 from GLP’s Impression series and some others.

The sound is spatialised throughout the auditorium in 360° with d&b Soundscape. In addition, a cinema screen for video projections, travellers and other devices are used, looked after by the five riggers on the team.

Though the tent was designed to be able to go on tour, it takes a full four weeks to assemble or disassemble. But Abid hopes that assembly times will be reduced once the team has got routines established.

Cabaret Sauvage: The soundproof mirror tent

On the other edge of Paris, in Parc de La Villette, the French capital’s largest park covering 55 ha, is the Cabaret Sauvage. Since opening its doors in 1994, this mirror tent has become an institution of the Parisian music scene. Originally a first-generation, historical tent, it was replaced in 1997 by a new construction in the same style.

The Cabaret Sauvage hosts 220 events each year, attracting 150,000 visitors – much to the annoyance of residents. To avoid lawsuits and perhaps even enforced closure, the city of Paris and the Île de France region decided to promote the construction of a new, soundproofed Cabaret Sauvage, providing funding of over 2.5 million Euros.

The old Cabaret Sauvage was demolished and an entirely new construction built in its place. The basic wooden structure, consisting of foundations, beams, buttresses, and panels, is made of pinewood. As the venue is located on a canal, the components, made by the Dutch firm Woodteq, could be delivered directly by ship from Bolten in the Netherlands to the building site. In addition to these elements, over 30 diagonal supports were needed between the internal and external wall, laminated round masts for the inner circle, numerous prefabricated and insulated wall and roof panels and curved beams for the upper-level round walls.

Riffing on the classic circular tent construction, the architects added an outer, asymmetrical round – housing the foyer and bar – to the two symmetrical rounds. The new Cabaret Sauvage opened in late October 2019 after four months’ building. Like its historical predecessor, it is mobile and can be packed into a shipping container.

On the inside, the new Cabaret Sauvage feels just like the original, with wooden parquet flooring, wooden pillars, red velvet, and colourful window bars. The circular construction measures 35 m in diameter and has capacity for 600 seated or 1200 standing.

The insulation problem

Rebuilding was the answer to the problem of poor insulation. Urgent improvements were needed to reduce noise and retain warmth. The firm Natrufied developed a new concept for the roof and external walls, using only natural materials. The wall elements also contain sound insulation materials. The Cabaret Sauvage is, then, the first tent construction of its kind to be so efficiently insulated that from 200 m away, noise emissions are zero, even if a concert is taking place at full volume. The operators hope that they will now have made peace with the residents, none of whom live closer than 600 m away. Additional measures included the soundproofed outer doors by the Dutch company Alara-Lukagro. And in the entrance area, where the doors open and close in quick succession during concerts, a second wall has been added to create a kind of double-door system.