H-3. In a few short hours, Panayotis Pascot will find himself facing more than 300 people for around forty performances of his show. Almost on the stage of the European in Paris. But before meeting his audience, the comedian rehearses his staging. Light, sound, placement, entry into the room, no detail is overlooked. If he confesses to be a little stressed for this first in this new place, he does not let anything show through since the text, him, scrolls in his head without hindrance.
Media explosion and self-quest
In Almost, his only on stage launched in October 2019 before being interrupted by eighteen months of a global pandemic, Panayotis Pascot returns very briefly to how he made himself known to the general public. At the beginning of his adolescence, the young man carries out interviews in which he interviews comedians and people of the spectacle. He launches shortly after on Vine, the application to videos lasting six seconds. Thanks to the audience he acquired, he began to meet people and in particular Alex Lutz, who told him that the producer of Small Journal, presented at the time by Yann Barthès, is looking for a new columnist. “I came to TV at 17, which is much too early,” he says on stage without developing his thinking further.
“I was really in a period where I did not know at all who I was, he explains to 20 minutes. I obviously still don’t know, but now I understand that you never really know. On television, I kind of felt like someone was starting to stick an image on me that wasn’t really me, and I didn’t know what it was. »First in The small newspaper then in Day-to-day, Panayotis embodied this guy a little lost, offbeat, with repartee sometimes absurd but always touching. “What you do, people take it as ‘this is that person’ when you are under construction. It’s very complicated, ”he says.
Still under construction, and still in high school, Panayotis Pascot succeeds in passing his scientific baccalaureate while writing a column in front of nearly two million viewers. After going back and forth to the Parisian suburbs where his parents lived for a year, the columnist moved to the capital. There, he discovered another aspect of the profession. “I obviously had a feeling of illegitimacy telling myself that it’s too weird that so many people come to talk to you, send you messages when I told myself that I didn’t know what I was doing. It took me a long time to understand. “
A comedian with a “reverse career”
From this experience which allowed him to put on his show, Panayotis only retains the positive. After the millions of people in front of their television screens, the comedian decided to make about thirty people laugh in a tiny Parisian room, while being paid the hat at the end of his performances. “It’s a bit the opposite of a career,” he laughs. This period will at least have allowed him to understand that he wanted to be on stage for a period unfortunately too short.
March 2020, the world stops turning and theaters lower the curtain. A glimmer of hope can be glimpsed between the two confinements of the year thanks to the opportunity to play a few dates despite a room half full due to health constraints, a curfew overhead and spectators and masked spectators. In these more precarious conditions, Panayotis Pascot understands that he takes more pleasure in telling his story than hearing the stifled laughter of his audience. “I tell a story that is close to my heart and I feel that it has been received,” he testifies. I feel much more legitimate to tell a story than to make jokes on TV ”.
“I have the impression that I get closer to me with what I give in the show than what was on TV,” says the comedian. At the end of his performances, the audience describes to him the emotion felt when listening to his story, which will help him to assimilate a feeling of legitimacy.
For now, Panayotis Pascot is booked until May 2022, when his tour of 52 performances will end. He will travel through small towns “to meet everyone” and perform in venues ranging from 290 to 1,200 seats. Subsequently, the comedian will devote himself to other projects, such as Thank you for your visit, the short film he shot two years ago. “I understood that it was cool to do things that don’t have to be jokes,” he smiles.