Théâtre Déjazet

The Théâtre Déjazet is the only theater in Paris that keeps the original wooden structure commissioned by a circus director in seventeen seventy-one. It sits on the Boulevard du Temple, a strip once packed with theaters that earned the nickname Boulevard du Crime for the melodramatic murders played out on stage. While the surrounding houses burned or vanished, this theater survived. It takes its name from Virginie Déjazet, a cross-dressing actress who bought the venue in eighteen fifty-nine to perform her own repertoire.