After having lifted the veil on the shadow profession of artists’ agents, Fanny Herrero, the creator of Ten percentdives behind the scenes of the stand-up scene. Funnyavailable since Friday on Netflix, features four young Parisian comedians. 20 minutes asked stand-up professionals if the four heroes of Funny, Nezir, Aïssatou, Apolline and Bling, were realistic. In this episode of our video series “We fact-checked the characters of Funny”, we submitted the character of Bling, played by Jean Siuen, to the expert eye of Jessie Varin, artistic director of The New Seine in Paris, a barge anchored a few steps from Notre-Dame de Paris which offers many stand-up shows.
In the fiction “Funny”
Bling, played by Jean Siuen, is a comedian in his thirties, of Vietnamese origin, who has transformed the family restaurant into a comedy club. While he had his heyday a few years earlier, he is going through a bad patch. To learn more, visit Netflix.
In real life
If Jessie Varin is not a stand-upper, but a stand-upper unearther. The director of The New Seine cut his teeth at Point Virgule. “I started as a cashier and little by little, I climbed all the levels and I understood all the workings of what was the management of a theater”, she says. In 2012, she boarded a barge with her associates at the foot of Notre Dame de Paris. The place, baptized La Nouvelle Seine is “a theater, but also a bar and a restaurant, a real place of life and meetings”. The place schedules many stand-up shows all year round.
On a daily basis, she manages “the operational part, that is to say that the place is in a condition to welcome artists and the public”, and “the pure artistic direction part, that is to say to choose shows for programming”. And to continue: “It’s talent detection, going to see shows in development, but also accompanying artists”.
When she goes in search of new talent, the artistic director of La Nouvelle Seine looks for artists who have “a new humor, a sociological outlook”. And to explain: “Humor is a window on the world. These comedians and stand-uppers have a look at society and are often precursors. They have a total freedom of tone, which we may not have elsewhere, and put small seeds that will change the way people look at life, society, our customs, our values”. For her theater, the artistic director aims for parity “between male and female artists, and to have a great diversity in the artists” she welcomes in her place. “To have a plurality of eyes,” she says.
On the program of La Nouvelle Seine for the next few weeks, the new show by Audrey Vernon, Billion Dollar Baby, “an open letter on the state of the world addressed to her unborn baby”, or even Rosa Bursztein, a show “which speaks more of intimacy, of sexuality. It’s a hyper-uninhibited word”, or even Florian Dardone who talks about “what is it to be a man today”, Laura Demange who takes the viewer into the “phantasmagoric universe” of his insomnia or even Lisa Blum, with her show Better Life, “straddling personal development and humor”.