About us

Under Hortense Archambault’s leadership the MC93 is a place where the lights are always on, where you can say what’s on your mind, a place that can bring hearts and minds together. We seek to acknowledge and account for changes in society rather than deploring them. The great strength of this cultural institution is to provoke debate and spark ideas, within and beyond Bobigny. As a public venue, we consider the issue of shared resources. The commons form the basis of our capacity to share an artistic experience with others, to experiment and confront our differences. The wide array of theatre, dance and music we schedule reflects today’s world – addressing antagonism between generations, groups with opposing views, and different cultures. Theatrical performance enables us to experience our contradictions gently, helping us come to terms with and therefore smooth frictions, and soften the brutality of everyday life.

Located in Bobigny, on the outskirts of Paris, the MC93 is a cultural venue rooted in a changing environment that comprises many of the challenges that French society needs to address, especially issues concerning young people and cultural diversity. At MC93, you can experience and invent a country with a window on the world. You can help make France an imaginative, generous place, the incarnation of human rights, with confidence in the future.

Thanks to our programming, our reputation, and our outlook, the MC93 is the very essence of a French cultural institution. MC93 is part of the maison de la culture network envisioned by André Malraux several decades ago. Funded by local authorities, the multicultural public venue boasts an international outlook and influence as a producer and space for the performing arts. We are unique in combining national recognition with an open-border attitude.

Our programming is contemporary; our theatre is a place where we reinvent society by representing it, a place where we write the stories of today, where we tell the stories of yesterday the better to envisage tomorrow, where we share traditions from all over the world reinterpreted by contemporary artists. Whatever form a show takes our focus is always on our interaction with the audience. The programming is universal yet demanding. Our popularity resides in our consideration for our spectators and our attention to detail.

Our users form the fabric of our institution workshops and residencies. Our meet ups are an open invitation to local people and ensure we remain in step with our environment. This institution is a place for creativity and expression where imagination is the watchword.

La Fabrique d’expériences [the fabric of experiences] stems from the observation that a public theatre is not just a venue for performances, it is also a place where society comes together – a place to mix cultures and backgrounds.

This approach opens up a new realm of possibilities, blurring boundaries, affording new viewpoints and different interactions between the institution and the public. We reflect on the scope of our actions and our skill set. For example, we consider how we can acknowledge and cater for the variety of lifestyles in our multicultural society to help them flourish alongside each other.

Cultural rights are a central issue of La Fabrique. However, the broad definition of these rights makes them difficult to grasp. They need to be experienced and tested. Closely related to human rights, cultural rights increase our capability to adopt the best possible position for ourselves in society. In the cultural field, that translates as the ability to develop and use our own imaginative powers. There are no rules, which is what makes the issue both fascinating and difficult.

An ideas laboratory, La Fabrique explores several approaches: drama workshops, specific project participation, and regular encounters with artists in residence. We also offer spectators the opportunity to be our companions, our ambassadors – in short to play a role in MC93.

La Fabrique d’expériences is where each of us switches from participant to researcher, where projects can originate from any of us – artists, teachers, spectators, and society at large. This free space is one of creation and emancipation.

We explore three avenues: youth, hospitality, and the local area (Bobigny and Seine-Saint-Denis).

In June 2020, the MC93 was appointed part of the European Production Programme (Pôle Européen de Production) by the French ministry of culture and communication. The network is composed of 11 cultural bodies in France.

This appointment acknowledges our initial commitment as a Maison de la Culture to be open to foreign cultures, and our role as a producer. Thanks to the funding, we can offer better support to artists and expand our relations with other European venues.

Our goal is to continue broadening horizons by sharing our experience and helping to build a desirable Europe, attentive to the diversity of its inhabitants at a cultural crossroads within the world. 

Being part of the European Production Programme means:

• Improving our network of producers and distributors within Europe and beyond.
• Producing major European artists in French, with French interpreters and technicians.
• Sharing on a European scale major issues concerning the transition of performing arts: economic and social sustainability, thanks to the Sustainable Theatre Alliance for a Green Environmental Shift (STAGES), hospitality, diversity, European culture with our COMMON STORIES project and commitment to change thanks to new dynamics and resources.

MC93 is one of fourteen participants in STAGES, a project developed with the Creative Europe 21-27 programme led by the Théatre de Liège in Belgium (2022-25).

STAGES sets out to meet the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals by testing experimental solutions to assist the transition of performing arts and deploy our thinking, our artistic practices, our working habits, and our venues.

A few examples

Improving sustainability

We shall be looking at the way we use our buildings, our production, costume, and scenery making, and spectator transport to identify areas of progress. The recommendations will be implemented by all members and followed up with feedback sessions to identify best practices.

Addressing the carbon footprint of international tours

Together, members will present new productions on the climate crisis, without moving artists or scenery, using the creations of Katie Mitchell and Jérôme Bel developed by the Théâtre de Vidy in Lausanne.

Inventing new creative processes

Artists and scientists take part in annual workshops to invent “desirable futures” for art and culture, resulting in concrete projects and shows.

Thanks to our programming, our reputation, and our outlook, the MC93 – Maison de la culture de Seine-Saint-Denis – represents the very essence of a French cultural institution. MC93 is part of the maison de la culture network envisioned by André Malraux several decades ago. Funded by local authorities, the public multicultural venue boasts an international outlook and influence as a producer and venue for theatre and live performance.

MC93 was initiated by the communist-majority departmental council of Seine-Saint-Denis in the late sixties, in Bobigny, the préfecture. The project was in line with the move to decentralise theatre (from Paris) and with the ambitious cultural programme of the “red” suburbs. Architects Valentin Fabre and Jean Perrottet designed the building, which was opened in February 1980, with Claude-Olivier Stern at the helm until 1984, succeeded by Joël Chosson for a year.

Outward looking from the word go, MC93 was one of the first theatres to stage foreign language performances. In 1985, stage director René Gonzalez, former director of the Théâtre Gérard Philippe in Saint-Denis, took over the management of the Maison de la Culture, encouraging further international creation. Ariel Goldenberg took over in 1989, pursuing relations with foreign companies for 11 seasons and consolidating the institution’s international reputation. In 2000, when Ariel Goldenberg was appointed director of the Théâtre national de Chaillot, Patrick Sommier, MC93’s artistic director, assumed the leadership. He created the Standard Idéal festival in 2003 to develop and support European creations.

In August 2015, former co-director of the Festival d’Avignon Hortense Archambault was appointed director. Vincent Brossy oversaw a two-year refurbishment programme starting at the time of the changeover.