François Guédon - Le Procès Guédon

Espace Gerson welcomes François Guédon with Le Procès Guédon

At Espace Gerson, we prize the kind of live performance that turns proximity into electricity, and that is precisely why we are delighted to host François Guédon in Le Procès Guédon. Our intimate Lyon stage is the perfect courtroom for this playful, razor-edged legal farce, where the defendant, the judge, the witnesses, and—most crucially—the jury all live inside one fast-moving evening. François Guédon treats the theater as a chamber of truth and contradiction, slipping between characters with the assured timing of a seasoned advocate. The premise is deliciously simple: when a comedian puts himself on trial, everything becomes evidence—memories, mannerisms, social tics, even the audience’s own reactions. Espace Gerson’s close sightlines and responsive acoustics make those reactions part of the action. Expect sharp cross-examinations of contemporary habits, objections sustained and overruled with a wink, and a closing argument that lands somewhere between confession and victory lap. In this room, laughter becomes deliberation, and Lyon’s famously spirited crowd becomes the bench that decides his comedic fate.

Le Procès Guédon is a timely proposition because it speaks the language of today: accountability, image, and the fragile contract between performer and public. François Guédon plays with that tension, staging a trial that is as much about self-satire as it is about collective bias, and he toggles from quick-fire punchlines to carefully built set pieces that feel almost like legal briefs read aloud, then gleefully undermined. Fans who keep up with contemporary talk and satire will feel right at home with the pace and tone—think the topical reflexes you catch nightly on Quotidien or the spirited roundtable energy that fires up C à vous, with the steady, idea-driven thrust you might savor in 28 minutes. The show’s rhythm invites the same bingeable attention you bring to podcast institutions like Un Bon Moment or FloodCast, where riffing, callbacks, and well-placed silences matter as much as the headline joke. In this living courtroom, François Guédon summons archetypes we all recognize—the overzealous prosecutor of our social feeds, the defense attorney we improvise for ourselves in awkward moments—and he lets them clash in a sequence of set pieces that keep the verdict pending until the last laugh.

A sharp, immersive comedy experience in the heart of Lyon

What makes this date at Espace Gerson special is not only the craftsmanship of François Guédon’s writing and performance, but the way our room amplifies his interactive instincts. The low stage, the warm, focused lighting, and the crisp, conversational sound create a setting where a raised eyebrow can be as loud as a punchline, and a whispered aside becomes a shared secret. In Le Procès Guédon, audience members become de facto jurors, and our team leans into that invitation: we keep the space agile so that improvisation, crowd work, and bursts of collective applause can pivot on a dime. Lyon’s historic streets just outside the doors give the evening a civic glow—step in from the cobblestones, and you’re instantly in chambers, where François Guédon flips through the dossier of modern life: work emails masquerading as emergencies, the way we “object!” online, the solemn rituals of group chats, and the tiny hypocrisies that make us hilariously human. If you love the crisp sketch logic you might see distilled on Le Grand Oral and the nimble, character-led framing prized in late-night panels, this performance will feel both of-the-moment and unmistakably theatrical. Espace Gerson is proud to offer the city a night where form meets substance: a courtroom comedy that refuses to lecture, preferring instead to cross-examine our reflexes until the whole room bursts into unanimous laughter.