Mon Premier Guignol - Le Théâtre La Maison De Guignol, Lyon

At SALLE 2 - THEATRE MAISON DE GUIGNOL, a first encounter with a legend

From our stage in SALLE 2 - THEATRE MAISON DE GUIGNOL, we are delighted to welcome young audiences and their families to discover Mon Premier Guignol, a gateway performance into the living heritage of Lyon’s most beloved puppet. Our intimate second auditorium has been curated to offer clear sightlines, warm acoustics, and a close connection between performers and audience—crucial ingredients for the wit, rhythm, and quicksilver reactions that define Guignol’s world. As the custodians of this tradition, we take special care in preparing a setting where first-time theatergoers can feel safe to marvel, laugh, and join in the fun. Expect nimble dialogue, playful surprises, and the spirited repartee that has carried Guignol through generations. The wooden faces, hand-painted sets, and deft manipulation of the marionnettistes turn simple props into little miracles, and the proximity of SALLE 2 amplifies each gesture, wink, and aside. Mon Premier Guignol has been shaped for discovery: accessible in tone, generous in humor, and anchored in the values that have always defined the character—cleverness, kindness, and a knack for standing up to bluster with good sense and a smile.

The artistic heartbeat of our troupe, today

Behind the curtain, our team at THEATRE MAISON DE GUIGNOL continues to expand the repertoire and refine the craft that keeps Guignol vibrantly contemporary. While we honor a centuries-old lineage, our resident puppeteers and artisans stay active with new scenarios, refreshed staging, and evolving musical punctuation that supports the pace of modern family audiences. We develop programs that nurture curiosity—introducing children to stage language, rhythm, and character—and we maintain a workshop culture focused on carving, costume, and restoration to ensure the longevity of our figures. Throughout the season, SALLE 2 hosts creations that balance tradition and invention: short forms for first-time viewers, and broader stories that tease out the character’s social humor and sense of justice. The refinement of lighting, the choreography of scene changes, and the integration of live or recorded soundscapes are all calibrated to the scale of SALLE 2, making the smallest detail legible and the largest laugh ring clear. Our artistic life is one of constant dialogue—with history, with our city, and, most importantly, with the spectators who give breath to the show through their reactions, questions, and applause.

Mon Premier Guignol channels that dialogue into an experience tailor-made for discovery. The performance invites participation—those delightful call-and-response moments that turn the audience into protectors and playmates—while remaining gentle in tone and transparent in storytelling, so even the youngest spectators can follow. You will encounter the familiar energy of Guignol: his quick wit, his heartfelt indignation at unfairness, and his irrepressible joy in setting things right. In SALLE 2 - THEATRE MAISON DE GUIGNOL, the scale serves the story, allowing the marionnettistes to animate characters with precise, musical timing: a tilt of the head to reveal a secret, a flourish of the baton to punctuate a joke, a sudden hush to open the door to wonder. We design the journey so first-timers discover the language of theater—how lights signal a change of place, how music cues mischief, how a simple curtain can become a forest, a market, or a square in Lyon. Families often tell us that the performance becomes a shared memory: the first time a child shouted out to warn a hero, the first time they saw a puppet bow. That is why we care for every detail—from welcome to farewell—so that Mon Premier Guignol does more than entertain; it plants a seed, encouraging young spectators to return, to look, to listen, and to feel at home in the theater.