Book of parodies of songs composed by Mr. Duchesne, a resident of Bligny who offered it to the director of the "Oeuvres des Sanatoriums Populaires de Paris" in 1907 as a sign of recognition.
Tourloulous cabaret (comic troopers) in the 1920s on the hill of Bligny
It all started in 1898 and came to fruition on August 8, 1903.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, sanatoriums - like leper colonies - were places of death, where we were relegated like outcasts to await death, in the good care of a few compassionate and rigid nuns and doctors on siding. People were depressed, in often sordid premises; were bored all day long, with nothing to do except brood over their fate ...
By inventing the - revolutionary - concept of the Sanatoriums of Bligny in the last days of the 20th century, the founders-patrons and the learned doctors at the origin of its glorious history have implemented what historians of medicine will retain under the name of " Bligny Method ".
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Thus, contrary to what was then practiced, it was considered that taking into account the psyche and morale of tuberculosis patients was as important as trying to heal their bodies, at a time when the disease could not be cured. .
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After a long period of selection, Doctor Louis Guinard was chosen to give shape to this project.
The founders of the health establishments on the hill of Bligny gave it the means to form a young, motivated and competent team.
The doctors of Bligny, therefore, then integrated into the therapeutic process of the time a whole series of obligatory cultural and artistic activities in order to "maintain an optimistic and joyful spirit", and all kinds of cultural and recreational activities.
Congress of physicians discovering Bligny, 1904
The results - from a medical point of view - did not fail to be felt and some old beards of the academy who had mocked the project: "theater, and then what?" quickly stopped laughing and mocking.
Bligny is not the inventor of art therapy, but Bligny is the first to have put its principles into action on such a scale, mobilizing so many human and logistical resources, and financial means. Against all odds.
Resident artists from Bligny costumed for an operetta, written, edited, built and performed on site without any outside intervention: Le Cafard vaincu ”. 1921.
Between the two wars, the "Bligny method" was adopted by almost all sanatoriums in France, radically transforming the life and future of long-term residents of sanatoriums, whatever their social condition.
It was Bligny again who invented the concept of an “exit project” when traditionally we never left a sanatorium, except with our feet in front.
We did everything: painting, song, music, poetry, engraving, photography, dance, sculpture; we played chess, we composed crosswords, we faced each other in eloquence competitions, there was the cinema ...
Those who needed it learned to read and write at the school in Bligny, founded on the very day of the inauguration of the "Oeuvre des Sanatoriums Populaires de Bligny" on August 8, 1903.
There was a library, one of the rare nightclubs of the time, we all had board games, fashionable magazines ...
We spent the year between competitions and competitions: we received medals, cups, diplomas. We were living again.
Thus, from the opening of the sanatoriums of Bligny, with the encouragement and funding of the management, the residents (we did not call them ʺpatientsʺ) got down to making shows of all kinds, in total autarky.
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They did everything: the costumes, the sets, the staging (we spoke more of “regie” at the time); they formed teams, distributed the functions -artistic and technical- rehearsed, learned, acted, sang, played music, designed posters and printed booklets, and several periods in the year were dedicated to major festivals where our artists performed in the concert halls of Bligny, in front of their tuberculosis audience, during concerts, operettas, plays, ballets, even opera of very good performance.
Women of Bligny costumed for an operetta. 20s
The Association du Center Hospitalier de Bligny still has Lumière photographic plaques reproducing posters of shows given in the 10s and 20s, which would not mismatch the windows of the great Parisian theaters of the time.
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This was the heroic period that lasted until the construction of the Théâtre de Bligny in 1934.
Poster for the show of August 15, 1912 in Bligny
BLIGNY: Performing arts factory for over 115 years
The second period which lasted from Wednesday September 19, 1934 - the day of the inauguration of the Théâtre de Bligny "- at the end of the Second World War can be described as an" apotheosis ".
Indeed, the famous doctor Louis Guinard , first doctor-director of the Works of the Popular Sanatoriums of Paris on the hill of Bligny had succeeded in convincing the patrons that the time had come to put at the disposal of the artist-residents of the professional means in order to to give more strength to the ʺmedical redemptionʺ experienced by tuberculosis patients through their artistic activities.
Here again Bligny was a forerunner and this once again changed the situation.
The shows took on an outfit that we can never call amateurish again.
The exceptional technical means available to the artists of Bligny, gave their productions an unprecedented scale and the patrons - skillfully sensitized by Bligny - wanted to contribute their contribution to the building, multiplying the means made available for the creation of pieces of theaters, song recitals and other operettas.
Thus, the piano builder Pleyel offered in 1930 a Grand-Concert piano worth 6,000 francs to the Sanatoriums of Bligny - a considerable sum at the time.
The orchestra's instruments (now all missing) were donated by the most renowned instrument makers, while record companies regularly gave their latest editions to sanatoriums and the Bligny Theater disco had hundreds titles (some were found during historical research linked to the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the theater in 2014), not to mention the film library.
At the end of the 1930s, the inhabitants of Fontenay-lès-Briis saw - medusé - lines of cars with upper-class gentlemen and ladies in hats, coming from Paris to attend the performance of specially engaged Parisian stars, who performed at the Théâtre de Bligny for these privileged rich people, without the presence of the boarders - the fear of contagion was strong - which gave the opportunity to major fundraising for the benefit of sanatoriums (which remained a private philanthropic work ), and of course its theater, a heritage factory of shows.
At the end of the Second World War, the residents and the staff of the sanatoriums of Bligny had built and offered to the director of the time Urbain Guinard (the son of the great Louis) an exact reproduction of the theater as it was in 1945. .
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This model is kept in one of the corridors of the theater in its original glass cabinet.
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This anecdote makes it possible to realize the importance of the Théâtre de Bligny for these people, and how much this spectacle factory had served for the healthy resilience of these people carrying a still incurable disease.
Model of the Théâtre de Bligny offered by the residents and staff to Dr. Urbain Guinard, director of the sanatoriums and of the Théâtre de Bligny in 1945 at the end of the war. During World War II, so-called "marginal" health centers such as psychiatric hospitals, leper hospitals and sanatoriums set up in the countryside were completely abandoned by the Vichy regime. Thousands of people have starved to death in appalling conditions. In Bligny, no one died from lack of food or care. The private institution was completely autonomous in terms of food and all the available land was converted into market gardening, orchards or greenhouses. There were three farms in the sanatorium, we raised rabbits, sheep, pigs and chickens. The only foods purchased from outside were milk and beef (the management considered that the pastures took up too much space) provided by the farms of Fontenay-lès-Briis and Biis-sous-Forges. A few days before the liberation, all the inhabitants of the hill of Bligny (boarders, caregivers, farmers, employees, nuns ...) left the sanatoriums in a frenetic fashion, rushing down the hill to greet the tanks and the fighters. of the Leclerc Division which passed below on the Route de Limours. Never seen....
The Théâtre de Bligny: Tube factory at the end of the war!
After the Second World War, the curative treatments of the disease - which one waited for centuries - finally arrived and the Sanatoriums of Bligny were able to open on the outside.
It turns out - history is written like this - that the famous professor Georges Canetti of the Institut Pasteur (the co-inventor of curative triple therapies for tuberculosis) had a brother named Jacques. (the other brother was Elias Canetti, Nobel Prize for Literature)
Jacques Canetti and his artists
Jacques Canetti was the manager of Trois Baudets in Pigalle in the 1950s.
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He was also the brilliant producer who knew how to unearth young artists who have become legendary like Jacques Brel, George Brassens or Juliette Gréco, to speak only of a few. Here they are: Jean-Louis Barrault, Bourvil, Noël-Noël, Jacques Brel, Maurice Bacquet, Jean Nohain, Fernandel, Georges Brassens, Louis de Funès, Jean Poiret, Michel Serrault, Pierre Dac. But also Jean Amadou, Pierre-Jean Vaillard, Raymond Soupleix, Jean Breton, Anne-Marie Carrière, and all the others that we remember today, or not.
They all came to Bligny at their beginnings.
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Their producer had cleverly succeeded in making them integrate that " Si Bligny laughs, Paris will laugh." If Bligny loves, Paris will love ”.
And they weren't coming just out of philanthropy (and volunteering) to distract sick people.
No, they came with their authors and their team to test their device before facing the fangs of Paris: Validate their artistic choices, try their scenic tricks, verify the laughter; sometimes correct their lyrics or the order of their songs; break in their quetsches, strengthen the cohesion of their orchestra and "flee Paris". Other Parisian cabarets including the Caveau de la République also participated in this movement.
Here again, Bligny played its historic role as a spectacle factory .
Bligny at the dawn of the 21st century.
And then the tuberculosis patients were now recovering and the sanatoriums were depopulated for the first time in France in more than 1,500 years. Bligny began its slow transformation into a general hospital, and in 1971, the Théâtre de Bligny closed after a final cinema screening.
For thirty years.
The disused Bligny Theater. 80 years
Having become a storage room where all the hospital's rubbish were piled up in bulk, it sank into oblivion, leaving its moss-covered facade to rise up like a silent reproach in the heart of the new Bligny Medical Center.
It will take the alert launched by a local elected, then the ambition of the presidency of the Association of the Medical Center of Bligny , and the financial support of the partner municipalities, the department, the region and the state so that finally, after two years of work leading to a total renovation of the interior of the building, the Théâtre de Bligny reopened its doors in September 2004.
The modern period confirms the historical momentum.
In 2004, the presidency of the Association du Center Médical de Bligny authorized the foundation of the Association du Théâtre de Bligny, which now operates the theater, and made the (historical) strategic choice to entrust the management of the Théâtre de Bligny. to an artist rather than a manager.
It was first François Chaffin in 2004, playwright and director with the Compagnie du Menteur ; then Nicolas Hocquenghem since 2009: actor and director with the Compagnie Théâtrale de la Cité .
This choice - which at first seemed incongruous to some - allowed the continuity of the glorious history of the Théâtre de Bligny as a production company, despite the reduction in resources.
Indeed, these creators will not only produce their own creations.
They will - this is a request from the hospital - welcome artists in residence, who create their shows for theater, dance and music, reinventing an art of doing, installing the best possible conditions in order to allow artists to create in complete freedom; thus perpetuating the tradition established on the hill of Bligny at the very beginning of the 20th century.
And now ?
The confirmation of the support of local, departmental, regional and national institutions for the perpetuation of this historical momentum allows the Théâtre de Bligny - a cultural exception in rural Essonne - to confirm its vocation as a place of residence for artists in creation, for the theater, dance, music, circus and all innovative forms of multimedia shows; to strengthen its resources and the quality of its support for artists, without altering its vocation of broadcasting all types of shows for the public of hospital patients, and that of the inhabitants of the villages of the neighboring countryside.
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Today, after many uncertainties, we can say that the Théâtre de Bligny has been saved.
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However, we should not rest on valiantly won laurels ...
The performance hall in 2017 during an artist residency (except public). At the end of a week of work, the artists (here the singer Luciole and her musicians, producers, advisers and technicians) arrive at the end of their creative process and will present the fruit of their work to the public the next day. Hot in front ...
All illustrations of old photographs on this page: © Association du Center Hospitalier de Bligny. Reproduction forbidden. All rights reserved.
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