H6R3, a behind-the-scenes documentary series on Shakespeare’s ‘Game of Thrones’ directed by Thomas Jolly

In front of a full and incandescent hall on 4 and 5 June 2022, Thomas Jolly, his troupe La Piccola Familia and the teams of the National Drama Center of Angers Le Quai completed the crazy theatrical feat announced 9 months earlier: Henry VI continues and Richard III by William Shakespeare, 24 hours of entertainment! The documentary series H6R3 goes behind the scenes of this human adventure.

For those who have lived these 24 hours – with intervals every hour and a half – in the T900 hall of the Théâtre du Quai, the experience remains unforgettable: the Radio-France journalist Julien Baldacchino has also told very faithfully in this article.

This extraordinary show takes up the entire 6^th and last episode of the documentary series H6R3 and systematically launches each of the top 5 in “flash forward” mode: but the story told by Tomasz Namerla, who spent almost a year immersed with Thomas Jolly and his teams – his chosen family – is that of a long construction site, and the resurrection of two shows.

As often happens when you want to start a story, you have to go back a few years. In 2014, Thomas Jolly caused a sensation at the Avignon Festival with the staging of the Henry VI trilogy: 18 hours of entertainment, enthusiastic press and audience, he won a Molière the following year. La Piccola Familia will play Henry VI for the last time in December 2015 in … Angers.

In 2016, Thomas Jolly staged Richard III for a more modest duration – 4h30 anyway – in which he played the lead role and which the troupe will play up to Taiwan.

In September 2021, when he has been directing the CDN in Angers for two years, Thomas Jolly announces that the two shows will merge to make one: the first Shakespearean tetralogy is reconstituted, it will last 24 hours.

H6R3 (code name of Henry VI/Richard III) begins here, a documentary tale in the (dis)measure of the show: for Tomasz Namerla, performance is “only” the final sprint of a marathon. A 275-day countdown that sees obstacles one after another, of all kinds, arise and which will have to be overcome. The series is built around three times: the nine months preceding the show during which the different teams immersed themselves in the project, reopening the boxes, folders, trunks with costumes for the first time in years, the eight weeks before of the show when everyone dove headlong into rehearsals and finally, the 24-hour show.

And the story in there? The Hundred Years War, the War of the Two Roses, the genealogy of the Plantagenets, the Yorks, the Lancastrians? You don’t need to have read Shakespeare to follow H6R3, the director even maliciously tells us in the first episode that he did it for us. For a (very brief) summary of Henry and Richard’s respective tragic fates, it’s here.

Let’s go back to the series. For the director explaining his approach in this interview, “This serial format has allowed me to better tell the evolution of the story, the twists and turns but above all to dedicate myself more to those close to Thomas Jolly”.

Tomaz Namerla has decided to tell the collective adventure. “In fact, a documentary series can break down the image we have of a Jolly medium who frequents the sets of shows such as We’re not lying or Quotidiano where, inevitably, all alone arrives. As he often says, he couldn’t have imagined such an adventure without this company he founded after school with his closest friends. Yet it is he who has 1,000 ideas a minute, it is he who the media are asking for, it is he who the Familia has brought to the fore. The series allows us to better see these relationships which, as in any family, are not always simple.

Not easy to solve either the logistical difficulties posed by welcoming the public 24 hours a day during the Quai.

In an interview published on the CDN d’Angers website in June 2021, Thomas Jolly clearly saw in it a return to the sources of Elizabethan theater: “Shakespeare wrote comedies that were watched standing up, in the open air, while eating, while going out (…) This theater takes place on stage without stopping the life in the hall, with, in fact, real interaction. With Henry VI + Richard III, I therefore propose to the spectators, to spend a moment of shared life. In 18h and possibly 24h, we are hungry, thirsty, sleepy, we have many desires, life does not stop. While one can suspend one’s desires, one’s life, during an hour and a half show, this implies and generates another link with the stage, another link between the spectators and another link with the theater in general. (…) Is there a place in the world where people stay together for 24 hours, in the same space, witnessing the same story? ca no longer exists. And that’s exactly what I want to offer.”

Throughout the six episodes of H6R3, there will be hundreds of plastic boxes to unpack containing costumes and accessories stored in a hangar for years, texts to remember, a staging to imagine and rethink because keeping Henry VI and Richard III together is not enough because works by itself. We will also talk about the extent of day and night work, things have evolved a bit on this side since the 16th century.

But all this is just an anecdote with respect to the deep and visceral love that reigns within Thomas Jolly’s Piccola Familia, the true narrative engine of Tomasz Namerla’s documentary fresco, a piece added – and taken up again – at the time of a long underwater shot.

“Sky, it goes black. Day, make room for night” Thus opens Henry VI. A silhouette advances from the wings towards the stage. You are ready ? Start H6R3.

H6R3, a documentary series in 6 episodes of 26 minutes directed by Tomasz Namerla

An OHNK production with the participation of France 3 Pays de la Loire – France Télévisions

To be found in full on the france.tv platform

Episode 1 The announcement

Seven years after the last performance of Henry VI and five years after Richard III, Thomas Jolly announces the staging of a play bringing together the two works of Shakespeare. Its duration? 24 hours. It is therefore necessary to recover the costumes, the sets and start the countdown of this project of all the impossible…

Episode 2 Recovery :

Almost a year before the show, in the war room, the H6R3 team dives into the archives and works to re-enchant the staging, the reception of the spectators, the technical and artistic briefs to piece together this gigantic puzzle. even better…

Episodes 1 and 2 broadcast on France 3 Pays de la Loire on Thursday 24 November at 11.00pm, repeat at 9.05am on Friday 25 November and Tuesday 13 December

Episode 3 The test

100 days before the show, ten-year-old sets and costumes are tested on the set, taking into account new staging ideas. It is in fact for the first time that a theater group is confronted with Shakespeare’s tetralogy in its continuity. Time is running out because the theater’s availability for these rehearsals is limited. You have to act fast, make decisive decisions for the rest of the adventure and everything doesn’t go as planned…

Episode 4 The distribution

Most of the actresses and actors play the same roles but the artistic and technical cast needs to be completed, and it is not so easy to play kings and queens, “hyperpower people” of the 15th century. New people must therefore deal with this literary and theatrical monument and commit body and voice to make this text as contemporary as possible.

Episodes 3 and 4 broadcast on France 3 Pays de la Loire on Thursday 1^is December at 11.00pm, repeat at 9.05am on Friday 2nd December and Wednesday 14th December

Episode 5 The point of no return

The whole team meets at the Quai for the last three weeks of rehearsals. Some people haven’t seen each other for 7 years. Joy mixes with excitement. While the art and technical teams are rehearsing the entire show and the theaters prepare to welcome 1,000 people, Thomas Jolly is constantly trying to construct the final image that must bring this theatrical epic to the end.

Episode 6 A family

June 4, 2022, the public, this long-awaited member of the family, has finally arrived. Equipped with sleeping bags, sandwiches, bottles of water, he is as happy as he is nervous about being locked up at the Quay for 24 hours. When the curtain rises to thunderous applause that makes the walls of the theater vibrate, the great marathon begins. Everyone is dedicated to offering the best on stage and behind the scenes, and humanity flows from stage to audience and from audience to stage. The notion of time is blurred for the spectators as well as for the troops and technical teams, the bodies are tired but everyone holds on as if bewitched by a unique and shared great adventure.

Episodes 5 and 6 broadcast on France 3 Pays de la Loire on Thursday 8 December at 11.00pm rebroadcast at 9.05am on Friday 9 December and Thursday 15 December