We were fortunate in finding a wonderful exhibition in a hallway on a floor with no other exhibits on the Chat Noir Shadow Theatre. Most of us are familiar with the wonder poster that around in numerous reprints for Thournée du Chat Noir, with its wicked looking black cat. The Chat Noir was a night club in late 19th century Paris, and was apparently quite the hot spot of the cool set. Below is the text taken from the wall mounted introduction to the exhibit.
The Chat Noir Shadow Theatre
The Chat noir Cabaret, founded by Rodoohe Salis (1851-1897), opened in November 1881 at 84 Boulevard Rochechouart, and moved in June 1885 to 12 Rue de Laval (now Rue Victor Massé), into a private residence occupied by painters
where it quickly became the fashionable and aristic hot spot of Parisian night live. In this chaotic cabaret with its compositions by Steinlen, frescoes and stained glass by Willette, as well as a large collection of unusual objects, people would come to play the piano (laude Debussy and Erick Satie used to practice scales there), to recite poetry or to sing (usually rather bawdy songs).
But usually people came for what was considered to be the main attraction: the Shadow Theatre, set up on the second floor of the Cabaret, in the former studio of the painter Alfred Stevens. Henri Rivière (1864-1951), a young illustrator just starting out, developed this theatre, which owed much to the then very popular shows featuring mime and optical illusion, dioramas, panoramas and magic lanterns. The principle of the Shadow Theatre was very simple: back-lit, cut-out silhouettes moved along runners, behind a white fabric screen. Next to the screen, facing the audience, was the narrator, Rodolphe Slis himself, who excelled at improvising a commentary on the show, while skillfully drawing in references to current events. A pianist provided musical accompaniment. Among Henri Rivière’s colleges were journalists and writers (Maurice Donnay, Jean Richepin, etc) authors of the sketches in the programme, musicians (Charles de Sivry, Albert Tinchant), and particularly, illustrators working with magazines and journals, (Henri Somm, Henri Pille, Georges Auriol, etc), who designed the figures, sets and programme covers. They created more than forty plays, with hundreds of silhouettes whose physical presence disappeared during the show to be replaced by their projected shadows, but whose intrinsic qualities (in particular the perfect stylization) today make them art objects in their own right.
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