Emma De Foucaud - A L'ancienne

At Espace Gerson, we welcome Emma de Foucaud with A l’ancienne

From our stage in the heart of Lyon’s old-town theater district, Espace Gerson is thrilled to host Emma de Foucaud and her new show A l’ancienne. Our room was built for artists who feed on proximity, timing, and the electric vibration of a crowd seated just an arm’s length from the mic; Emma’s craft thrives on precisely that. We have been curating evenings where emerging voices and confirmed talents collide, and Emma’s arrival is one of those moments we look forward to: an encounter between a razor-sharp performer and an audience ready for honest, finely tuned comedy. A l’ancienne is a title that nods to the roots of stand-up—wit, perspective, and the rhythmic pleasure of storytelling—while the substance feels current, immediate, and joyfully alive in the room. From our vantage point, the show’s tempo, its sudden accelerations and intimate asides, fits our stage like a glove, inviting laughter that rolls from table to table and the kind of shared silence that only happens when a house is fully with the artist.

Inside the room: a show shaped by craft, timing, and Espace Gerson’s intimacy

When Emma de Foucaud steps out for A l’ancienne at Espace Gerson, our technical team dials in a setting that lets precision carry. The lighting carves out a nimble playground: warm wash for conversational beats, tight amber for confessional turns, and crisp front light for punchlines that deserve to land like a drum hit. Emma’s writing favors lived-in details and the agitation of daily contradictions—the way nostalgia and modern chaos wrestle in the same thought, how tenderness can coexist with a gleefully uncompromising point of view. In our room, the audience sits close enough to catch shifts in breath and eyebrow, and that proximity intensifies her rhythmic choices: a pause that stretches just enough, a grin that signals a twist, a pivot that reveals a second layer to the story. The result, in performance terms, is a sequence of waves: a quick volley of laughs, a reflective lull, and then another crest of shared recognition. It is contemporary stand-up delivered with a respect for craft that makes “old-school” feel brand-new when amplified by the focused acoustics of Espace Gerson.

Emma de Foucaud’s artistic present is as lively as her stage presence. A l’ancienne moves with the momentum of a touring creation that has been tried, tightened, and shaped by real-world contact with audiences—exactly the path we champion at Espace Gerson. We’ve watched her sharpen sections through try-outs and short-format sets, then stitch them into a full evening that feels both spontaneous and meticulously orchestrated. On our calendar, she arrives amid a season dedicated to strong, authorial voices: performers who carry their world on stage and invite the crowd into it. In that sense, Emma’s show sits comfortably in the lineage of acts that have found here not just a stop on a tour, but a sounding board where every beat can be felt and refined. Expect the unusual pleasure of hearing new material bloom alongside polished crowd-favorites, a dynamic that suits the room’s scale and our audience’s appetite for freshness. At Espace Gerson, we measure a night’s success by the way conversations continue at the exit, on the cobblestones outside: with A l’ancienne, we anticipate that ripple—the bright afterglow of a performance that lands, lingers, and sends you back into Lyon humming with ideas and laughter.