Fondée par Jean-Baptiste Duperray en 1994, la Compagnie des Quidams a créé une quinzaine de spectacles. Avec entre 100 à 150 représentations par an, les artistes de la Compagnie des Quidams ont voyagé dans une cinquantaine de pays, du Costa Rica à l’Afrique du Sud, en passant par le Japon ou l’Australie.

In a visual, luminous and musical universe, the company introduces strangeness and poetry into everyday life, and with the help of giant costumes and metamorphoses, takes over the public space to transform it for the duration of a show. As in an invitation to dream, everyone can give free rein to his imagination and create his own story.

La compagnie réunit une trentaine d’artistes et de techniciens issus d’horizons divers (théâtre, danse, musique, cirque, …). Elle est installée à Bresse Vallons, village dans le nord de l’Ain. Parallèlement à son activité de diffusion, elle y développe des projets de sensibilisation aux Arts de la Rue (répétitions publiques, stages, ateliers de pratique artistique,…).

En 2023, suite à une passation artistique, Vincent Borel, Françoise Hueso-Chapon et Bastien Rolly deviennent les nouveaux responsables artistiques de la compagnie.

"By taking over everyday places, the Street Arts create encounters, arouse emotions, and invite the spectator to see and experience them differently. We think of our creations as an invitation to dream, to give free rein to one's imagination, a space of freedom where each person, through the images proposed, can write his or her own story. The language is made of gestures, dances, music, silences; a language that allows us to meet all languages and all cultures. Giant costumes, metamorphoses, lights invest public spaces, in the city as well as in the country, to transform them for the duration of a show.

La Compagnie des Quidams

For its fourth web-documentary of the series "an artist, a territory", theAddim de l'Ain has chosen Jean-Baptiste Duperray, the artistic director of the Compagnie des Quidams, as its subject. He talks about his links with Etrez and the Bresse.
A beautiful video realized by Thierry Vallino

Shows created by the Compagnie des Quidams

Polynie
2022

Five busy, hyperconnected, stressed men and women wander around with their giant suitcase, hurrying and stressing themselves until they break, shock, daze.
From this state will be born around them and in them new forms of symbols of life, of connection to nature and to the beings that populate it...

Taking the emblematic character of the Penguin to express the fragility of the world today and the necessary solidarity to get out of our "human, too human" functioning...
What could be better than the game of metamorphosis, one of the trademarks of the Compagnie des Quidams, to express this world?... This world in metamorphosis.

Mère Veilleuse

This show allows to travel in time and space. Its transformation into a live show will allow everyone to adapt it to their own vision of the world and their own value system.

By accompanying the spectator in his intimate reverie, by proposing to him to plunge back into his memories and his physical, olfactory or sensory feelings, it is a question of inviting him to join his child's soul and perhaps to allow him to find in his turn this desire to grow, to set out, to evolve still and to invent still... ?

Show written by France Hueso-Chapon

PapilloteS
2018

PapilloteS Etrez

On earth they simmer
In the air they float
In the sun they rub
In the shadows they blink
In the round they chatter
Stories are knitting
Swollen PapillotteS!

Show co-written with Géraldine Clément

This show is no longer on tour.

Au Fil de Soi

Two mineral forms come to life, discover each other and go to meet each other to replay before our eyes the different facets of the couple.

They do not say words but they do not express themselves less, in gestures, in dances... their diaphanous appearances, luminous of the interior, intrigue, question and lead us in poetic and harmonious dreams the time of a moment...

Show co-written with Géraldine Clément

This show is no longer on tour.

TOTEMS
2016

TOTEMS

Giant silhouettes with totemic shapes slip noiselessly among the spectators. With slow, muffled gestures, they come to life and begin to dance lightly.
But who are these luminous shadows?

Show co-written with Géraldine Clément

FierS à Cheval
2013

FierS à Cheval

Horses sculpted in large inflatable materials set in motion by daring puppeteers in legendary costumes.
A stroll of images, a dreamlike ride, alive, a succession of imaginary ...

Show co-written with Hal Collomb and Géraldine Clément

L'Effet Sphère
2010

L'Effet Sphère

First, there is a planet that rolls, enormous, pushed by a very small man, the Roller... Two jumping minions, agitated, turn around... In pursuit, the Elles, gigantic and extremely light silhouettes, guided by an Enchantress.

Show co-written with Hal Collomb

This show is no longer on tour.

The Pops
2008

"The Pops": a whole era revisited between rock and disco by three stilt walkers bursting with energy!

Musical Notes
2008

Musical notes

"Musicla Notes": three precious characters tell passers-by about their musical confidences.

This show is no longer on tour.

Kendama
2007

Kendama

Kendama, a character inspired by Louis XVI, plays with his giant toys, music box, bilboquets and skittles. And when these toys come to life and rebel, who becomes the other's toy? A fixed street show, poetic and visual, where aesthetics and music take us on a journey through time, from the baroque splendor of the 17th century to the present day.

Show co-written with Fabienne Clarimon

This show is no longer on tour.

Le dragon du vent
2004

Dragon du Vent

Street animation. A gigantic snake of 20m long, a dragon wanders through the streets and invites young and old to follow him.

This show is no longer on tour.

Àciel ouvert
2003

A ciel ouvert

Born from a research on the Tangram, a puzzle originating from the East.
Five geometric shapes on stilts wander and meet in duet, in trio, forming visually new images.

This show is no longer on tour.

Faim d'siècle
1998

Faim d'siècle

It is a contemporary farce which proposes to the public to eat what is cooked on stage, while approaching the notions of otherness, difference and inequality

Show in co-production with " Les Comtes en Ô ".

This show is no longer on tour.

Herbert's dream

Created with the Cie Inko Nito. Herbert's Dream" is an enchanting wandering show that takes spectators of all languages and cultures in France and abroad into a waking reverie. Adaptable show, both for events and festivals.

Show in co-production with Inko Nito

From 1997

The Compagnie des Quidams directs its work towards more visual artistic forms. The practice of stilts is used to stage gigantic characters. Thanks to research on inflatable costumes, the characters metamorphose, offering the public spectacular images in movement. Stories without text, using for only language the poetry of the gestures, the choreographies and the music, the spectacles of the Company of the Quidams invite to the dream, to the voyage and to the imaginary one...

La Preuve par l'oeuf
1996

La preuve par l'oeuf

A peddler sells the "coquière", a gadget for cooking an egg.

But he's not interested in selling, what he wants is to talk, to talk about himself, about us...

This show is no longer on tour.

Pinpon
1995

pinpon

A brigade of zany firemen play with fire...

This show is no longer on tour.

Comme des mômes
1994

Comme des mômes

Comme des Mômes" plunges us into the world and dreams of childhood, the silly things we do as children or what we dream of becoming later. The notion of "play" is the engine of this show. As a child, we play at being someone else: we pretend to be... " So it looks like you are ...?" Wonderful beginning of adventure that allows transgression, dreaming and so many other things...

This show is no longer on tour.

The team

Vincent Borel, Françoise Hueso-Chapon & Bastien Rolly

Responsables artistiques

Benjamin Rollin

Coordinator and communication officer

Frédéric Grand

Technician, artist and handyman

Maxime Nemcik

Chargé de diffusion

team
The artistic, technical and administrative team of the Compagnie des Quidams in 2019

The Company of Quidams in the world...

tours