Théâtre de La Gaîté (boulevard Du Temple) - Audinot

Audinot

In 1769 the competition on the boulevard du Temple began to increase. Another fairground entrepreneur Nicolas-Médard Audinot built a theatre next to Nicolet's, which opened on 9 July 1769. Audinot, who had created a new and highly successful marionette show at the Foire Saint-Germain, brought the puppets to his new theatre and opened on 9 July 1769. He also obtained permission to use child actors at the boulevard theatre. The repertoire gradually included dramatic works, mostly comedies, frequently vulgar, with songs similar to vaudevilles. The genre of these pieces was ambiguous, thus the theatre became known as the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique. Audinot had quickly built a more substantial theatre on the same site in 1770, which however already needed to be replaced by 1786.

Both the Gaîté and the Ambigu-Comique theatres had a smaller number of boxes for privileged clientele than other Parisian theatres. These were separated by only half partitions that were more steeply angled toward the stage. The boxes usually found at the rear of a theatre were replaced with galleries of benches which seated more people. According to McCormick, "this type of arrangement, ensuring the largest possible audience with a good view of the stage, belongs to the popular theatres, where the central concern is what is on the stage, not who is in the audience."