French MP ejected from theatre after ‘drunkenly’ disrupting play
London: A French Greens MP was ejected from a Paris theatre after drunkenly disrupting a performance of a play about the country’s former Socialist president Francois Mitterrand.
Aurélien Tache, a former close political ally of President Emmanuel Macron, was mocked by MPs from opposing parties after being called out on Twitter by the play’s director.
French Greens MP Aurélien Tache.Credit:Facebook
According to a series of now deleted tweets from Benjamin Guillard the MP was “totally drunk” and disturbed the show by “speaking loudly” and applauding in “an absurd way”.
“He then lamentably threatened the manager with reprisals. It was absolutely mind-blowing and lamentable. Who do you take yourself for, Aurélien Taché? What world do you live in?” he wrote.
The incident occurred at the Lepic Theatre on Tuesday night, during a performance of Lettres à Anne (Letters to Anne), which features actor Patrick Mille in the role of Mitterrand, writing to his mistress, Anne Pingeot.
Newspaper Le Monde reported that as soon as the curtain rose, a spectator became “agitated in his seat” and “responded to the actor out loud” which audience members “increased the volume of their ‘shhhs’“.
Aurélien Tache was a former close political ally of President Emmanuel Macron.Credit:Facebook
Mille, who was re-enacting a heated Socialist debate from the 1960s, went down into the audience and glared at the audience member who the newspaper described as “obviously tipsy” and “loudly displaying his knowledge of the history” of the Socialist Party.
The actor stopped and asked him to leave, with Tache obliging while yelling at the theatre manager: “I’m a member of parliament. You’ll have to deal with me. It’s not going to stop here.”
Tache, 38, told the Paris-based newspaper Libération, he was “really surprised” at the extent of a scene “which lasted two minutes”.
“I applauded, and therefore I naively disrupted the performance a little,” he said.
“And at the same time, a phone rang, which added to the hubbub. Then I wanted to clap quietly, waving my hands… I am especially surprised by the reaction of the director, who allows himself more than accusations… I was just coming out of a dinner where I had had a drink or two beforehand.”
Tache said his applause “was not appropriate” but “left as soon as I was asked to”;
“But I didn’t insult anyone. There’s nothing really bad about it,” he said.
Mille later said the incident was “nothing serious” and the MP “wasn’t violent and he came out when I asked him”, however his co-actor, Marie-Clotilde Ramos-Ibanez confirmed to Liberation the version given by the director.
It is the latest in a number of controversies involving the former member of Macron’s En Marche! Party who quit the party in May 2020 because he believed it had strayed from its progressive agenda and was being run by conservatives. He led a breakaway group of dissidents who now call themselves the New Democrats, who are aligned with Europe’s Greens movement.
On September 7, he was sentenced to a fine of 5,000 euros by the Niort court for violence and contempt, where he had insulted and threatened the police after being the victim of an attack in a bar in Niort.
Former Greens MP Cecile Duflot was among Tache critics, tweeting “alcoholism is a disease (and even a professional disease of politics) and that the taboo that remains around alcohol prevents it from being treated as such.”
President of the Green group, Cyrielle Chatelain, said there was a need for possible disciplinary action under the group’s internal rules.
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