French company created in 1992 by the actor and stage director Alain Lecucq (Paris, 1945) and the scenic designer Annie Bizeau (Paris, 1949), who had founded the shadow theatre company, La Citrouille, in 1976. Since 1985, after having discovered Paper Theatre (also called Toy Theatre) in London where he trained at the Little Angel Theatre, Alain Lecucq dedicated himself to the renewal of this form that had been popular in the 19th century, naming his new company Papierthéâtre.

While keeping the miniature figures and the intimate dimensions, Lecucq worked with contemporary texts. Papierthéâtre presented Marat-Sade (1988) by Peter Weiss, but it was after his meeting with Michel Deutsch, whose Empires collages (1995) he staged, that Alain Lecucq began a genuine involvement with living authors: Matéi Vişniec for Théâtre décomposé (Theatre Deconstructed, 2000) and L comme oiseau (L like a Bird, 2004), Baptiste-Marrey with Elvira (1997), Mohamed Kacimi with La Confession d’Abraham (2002), the English Howard Barker with Les Possibilités (2003). In L comme oiseau, he introduced video images with the paper figures.

Initially based in Troyes, then Mourmelon-le-Grand since 2004, the company also pursues an important historical and heritage research into the genre of paper (toy) theatre. It is also preparing the opening of a creative residence and resource centre and, since 1998, has organized a biennial event, the Rencontres Internationales de Théâtre de Papier (International Theatre Meetings for Paper Theatre).

Papierthéâtre has demonstrated the artistic value of and general interest in this apparently antiquated form, which is conducive to the stimulation of the imagination and to the presentation of contemporary texts.

(See France.)