L’École Parallèle Imaginaire
November 12, 2025
France
The École Parallèle Imaginaire (ÉPI) is a nomadic space that invents experiences in theaters, museums, public spaces, and for territories. Playing on the boundary between reality and fiction, it works to expand our imagination and create contemporary rituals. It is directed by Simon Gauchet who is an actor, director and scenographer.
Le Beau Monde (The Beautiful World) has been initiated by Remi Fortin who has gathered Arthur Amard, Blanche Ripoche and Simon Gauchet to create this show.
RÉMI FORTIN trained with the 2013 promotion of the TNS (Théâtre National de Strasbourg) drama school. Since graduating in June 2016, he has performed under the direction of Mathieu Bauer, Simon Delétang, Adèle Gascuel, Thomas Jolly, Frédéric Sonntag, Christophe Laluque, Anne Théron, Cendre Chassanne, and Olivier Martin-Salvan. He also collaborates on the radio with Blandine Masson, Chris Hocké, Laure Egoroff, and Juliette Heynemann In cinema, he has worked under the direction of Loïc Barché, Clément Schneider, Anna Luif, Arnaud Khayadjanian, Clemy Clarke, and Arnaud Simon.
Alongside his acting career, he also enjoys creating his own projects in which he performs and crafts the original idea. Without being a director himself, he offers to fellow actors to embark on a theatrical experiment together, like his first solo project, Ratschweg, a walking performance inspired by Büchner’s, Lenz, rehearsed in itinerancy with director Charlie Droesch-Du Cerceau and dramaturge Pierre Chevalier during a journey on foot through the Vosges from Strasbourg to the Théâtre du Peuple in Bussang.
From 2018 to 2021, he was an associated actor at the Théâtre Public de Montreuil. He is currently working on his next creation, La Peur (The Fear), for which Adèle Gasquel will write the script. It will be premiered in the autumn of 2025.
BLANCHE RIPOCHE began her theatre training at the Regional Conservatory of Rennes under the direction of Daniel Dupont. Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Performing Arts and a Diploma in Theater Studies, she joined the TNS drama school in 2013. Since graduating, she has appeared in productions directed by Thomas Jolly (Le Radeau de la Méduse), Mathieu Bauer (Shock Corridor), Rémy Barché (Stoning Mary, La Truite by Baptiste Amann), and she assisted Suzanne Aubert in the creation of Baleines at the Comédie de Reims. Blanche also leads theatre workshops, especially in EPHAD (nursing homes) and the Conservatory.
She is also an actress in Espace Furieux, a production directed by Mathilde Delahaye, as well as in Noces d’Enfants by Hélène Bertrand. Since 2018, she has been working with Sylvain Creuzevault on the productions Les Démons and Les Frères Karamozov.
Blanche has also co-founded the company 52 hertz with Margaux Desailly and Hélène Bertrand. Together, they created their first production, Sirènes, which was first performed in November 2022.
ARTHUR AMARD graduated from the 27th class of La Comédie de Saint-Étienne, sponsored by Pierre Maillet. He has worked with Élise Vigier and Marcial Di Fonzo Bo on the creation of M comme Méliès, and more recently with Pierre Maillet on Le Bonheur (n’est pas toujours drôle) and Théorème(s). Since 2012, he has been a member of the Compagnons Butineurs, based in Eure. During the 2018/19 season, he was in a co-residency at La Cascade, Pôle des Arts du Cirque, where he joined the itinerant workshop, a collective interdisciplinary working group. There, he continued his research on circus performance.
In 2019, he co-founded the collective La Dernière Baleine, with which he created Tant qu’il y aura des brebis – portraits de tondeurs et de tondeuses at the Comédie de Caen, along with Léa Carton de Grammont and choreographer Cécile Laloy. Since 2020, he has been dancing under the direction of Mathilde Papin in Serein. As an accordionist and pianist, he regularly incorporates music into his work.
SIMON GAUCHET works as an actor, director, and scenographer. After studying at the School of Fine Arts in Rennes, he enrolled at the École Supérieure d’Art Dramatique of the Théâtre National de Bretagne, from which he graduated in 2012. He is the co-creator of the École Parallèle Imaginaire, a utopian structure that combines education, experimentation, and the production of artistic works.
As a director and scenographer, he crafted about ten productions and performances across Europe since 2004. At the TNB, he created L’Expérience du feu for the Mettre en scène festival in 2014. In 2015, he directed a choreographic study for three dancers blending dance and archaeology, titled Pergamon Altar, performed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Rennes and at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. In 2016, he created the participatory performance Le Musée recopié, where 150 people were invited to transcribe the Museum of Fine Arts in Rennes. He also led the project Radeau Utopique, an expedition on a raft in search of the island of Utopia.
He created Le Projet Apocalyptique based on Saint-John and Günther Anders at the TNB and CDN de Lorient during the Festival Mettre en Scène in 2016. In 2018, he was awarded the 2018
Kujoyama Villa residency to develop the project L’Expérience de l’arbre, which was first performed in 2019. His latest production, La Grande Marée, will be released in November 2023 and will be presented at the Théâtre de la Bastille (Paris). As an actor, he has collaborated with Eric Lacascade, Stanislas Nordey, Eric Didry, Yves-Noël Genod, François Tanguy, Thomas Jolly, Benjamin Lazar, and Bernard Sobel.
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