Mascare: “Cabaret is an art that is not limited to one genre”

” I want to be a happy lesbian “, screams the Mascare creature, in the middle of a performance that takes you from laughter to tears, from poetic declamation to spoke singing. It is on the stage of La Bouche, a cabaret located in the cellar of a restaurant in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, that nails you. He is part of the quartet that co-founded this space of subversion and catharsis: Grand Soir, Soa de Muse, Bili Bellegarde. The four artists gave their first show in February 2022, affirming their singularity and their independence, with an emancipatory effect also for the public. Because the La Bouche cabaret has the particularity of being self-managed, rather than depending on a direction that is too often unrelated to the creative desires of the artists who animate it, as often happens in more institutional places. Thus, it is a real artistic slapstick that takes place almost every weekend in La Bouche, with the audience as a fifth thief, invited to interact as much as possible to co-create the show, without a theatrical fourth wall. To entice you, Mascare has agreed to answer a few questions…

Interview with Mascare, co-founder of La Bouche Cabaret

To miss. How do you present yourself in civilian life compared to the stage?

Mask. I’m Mascare, that’s what they call me on stage and also in everyday life. My civil name is Elisa Violette. I was born in France, I inherited a piece of Algeria and the ensuing uprooting and some of the health of the underground miners in northern France as my biological inheritance. I am often on stage as a DJ, I produce music. And when cars drive me crazy and I need meat, I play for theater and cabaret.

How did you discover cabaret and what made you want to join?

I discovered the cabaret by frequenting Madame Arthur when it reopened a few years ago [ce lieu mythique a ouvert en 1946 comme premier cabaret travesti de Paris, dans le quartier de Pigalle, avant de fermer en 2010 et de rouvrir en 2015, sous la houlette de la salle de spectacle voisine, le Divan du Monde et de son propriétaire, Laurent Laffont, ainsi que la direction artistique de Jérôme Marin, dit Monsieur K].

Even from movies, in particular Cabaret, Simone Barbès or Virtue, Lola, A Woman is a Woman, Ginger and Fred. The taste for cabaret I immediately had on the tip of my tongue because what I immediately saw was the possibility of being very free, that is to say that cabaret is an art that is not limited to one genre, it is on the verge of several practices, a problem area, and I’m very upset, so I liked it right away.

How would you tell about your creature, the style of your performances and their messages?

The moments on stage that I propose are on the verge of song, theater and poetry” spoke “. I like to be very serious and very stupid at the same time, Mascare has no ground under its feet. He is a passing being, a little friend of comets, genderless, with no desire to do so narrator his relationship with the world, just there, with his great love for the stage under his feet. I like to be very serious and very light because that’s how I fit into the world. I laugh a lot at everything and have a lot of hardness in my face, all at the same time.

How would cabaret be essentially queer and feminist in your opinion?

I can’t answer: for me the petrol is in the bike and that’s it [rires]. I think artists shape the scene, so if you have a queer, feminist existence, it will manifest itself on stage with a little work. I don’t want the stage to say anything, I don’t use art as a tool, I stay with the stage, respect its mystery, respect mine. And then yes, I talk about what touches me, but I don’t talk about things, I’m not just a political being, I’m a being made up of different facets and it’s all these facets that discuss together, work together. I’m a geological lesbianit means that I feel part of the world as Mary Oliver says [poétesse lesbienne états-unienne, née en 1935 et morte en 2019] : “ in the family of things “. Perhaps to answer the question a little, I can say that every cabaret evening the words of people who have disappeared come out of my mouth, I say the words of the lesbians of the past, of those who fought hard so that I, I can stay standing before an audience.

What made you want, in October 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, to launch the self-managed cabaret La Bouche?

So the mouth is really an idea that Isabelle Grappotte, the head of the CO [restaurant dans le 18e arrondissement de Paris dont la cave sert de scène au cabaret La Bouche] and Grand Evening [l’un des quatre artistes qui constituent La Bouche, avec Mascare, Bili Bellegarde, et Soa de Muse] who have known each other for a long time. We were like everyone else, sad as stones and very isolated from each other. La Bouche was born from this promise to tell us that, when everything reopened, we would create a new place on the Parisian scene. It is the emergence of a small island that you can enjoy yourself on.

What makes La Bouche unique from other cabarets?

I really don’t know what makes La Bouche unique, I’m not in the best position to talk about it I think, I find you quickly become the spot for your art and that’s something that makes me quite uncomfortable. Maybe the fact that four artists run the house: we’re a bit like a 4-headed person, a hydra Suzy Solidor [nom de scène de Suzanne Marion : une chanteuse, actrice et romancière française, emblématique garçonne des années folles, qui chantait des amours lesbiennes]. We welcome people to our home, that’s probably what makes this place special.

Do you think that the accumulation of health, social and ecological crises that we are going through makes it increasingly important and precious spaces for meeting, dissent and subversion such as cabarets?

We are living through a very tough period, neoliberal capitalism is a regime of existence that is currently struggling hard to impose its pace and pace, there is a real crisis of meaning in all of this. In the 80’s we could blind ourselves a lot with lots of oil and cocaine and today we are quite shocked to see orangutans calcined, sacrificed on the altar of consumption. Well, it’s our time and I’m talking monkeys here, but it’s a whole part of humanity that is in the crosshairs so that the world as it is keeps going wrong. It’s pretty chilling and I like to deal with things, so my era suits me very well. And yes, cabarets have always been very successful in times of economic crisis. And it’s true, I also do this job to offer three hours of peace to 60 people, a bit part-time in everyday life. Also, I recently learned that I did a lap-dance one night on a famous Justice figure who advocates for the rights of certain victims of sexual assaulters, and that this person said that after a shitty day he’d had, he had done well to be ridden by Mascare. Here I did my job. Happy mascara.

In the continuity of La Bouche, what is queer club L’Œil, which just reopened on January 13, 2023, and where did you just start a residency as a DJ?

L’Œil is a club founded by Grand Soir three years ago. It was there that we both met. The place opened for a month and a half and then there was Covid and many things that made it reopen only now. It is a festive nightclub that aims to be a space for dance and freedom in the heart of Paris. For me, L’Œil could become the temporal extension of La Bouche. When the cabaret finishes around 11pm, a small shuttle, inside pink faux fur, waits at the front of the street to take those who wish to dance the night away. As a DJ, I bring some performance into my setsI’m a real Patrick Mason fan [directeur créatif, designer et performeur de la scène techno berlinoise, inspiré par la techno de Detroit et la scène house new-yorkaise], I can’t help but make my sets spectacular. This is perhaps the connection with the cabaret.

How do you feel when you mix for L’Œil compared to other clubs?

I’m just starting my DJ residency at Œil and have been mixing for less than a year, so it’s not easy to have the perspective to answer. But I know the Eye is at home. I will try to create immersive sets where fiction happens. I like the idea of ​​making the arts porous with each other.

Why do you think it is important to (continue to) create resolutely Trans-Pédé-Gouines spaces in France today?

TPG spaces are vital because while these are places where you exhaust your body by dancing the night away, they are also, paradoxically, places where you rest. We relax from the outside world.

Cover photo credit: Marina VGR

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