"This Will Be My Theatre!"
In 1972, with the support of Jacques Duhamel, then Minister of Cultural Affairs, she set up and directed the Carré Thorigny in the neighborhood of Le Marais in Paris, where she put on innovative multidisciplinary shows. She was especially interested in the circus world and organized an exhibit entitled Circus in color which met with enormous success. Following her contacts with circus people and her meeting with Alexis Gruss, she organized old-style circus performances in the courtyard of the Hôtel Salé, located in front of the Carré. The public's fancy led Monfort and Gruss to set up (in 1974) the first circus and mime's school in France, L'école au Carré, which they directed together. They wanted to highlight the nobility of the circus's origins and were involved in bringing to life an updated old-style circus. The Gruss circus followed Monfort in her successive moves until it became a national circus in 1982.
It was at the Carré Thorigny that Alain Decaux awarded Silvia Monfort the Legion of Honor in 1973 while paying homage to "her passion for the theatre and the inflexible will with which she serves it."
The Carré had to leave Rue de Thorigny in 1974 because of a property transaction. Monfort thus transferred her Nouveau Carré into the old théâtre de la Gaîté-Lyrique which opened on 1 October 1974 and set up the Gruss circus in the square in front of the theatre. The hall was inaccessible for safety reasons, so the new Carré put actors and audiences on stage, but because of the building's great age and while awaiting its renovation, she was forced to set up her stage under a big top in the Jardin d'Acclimatation from 1978 to 1979. She then had to move her big top onto the site of the former abattoirs of Vaugirard. There, she actually set up two big tops, one for theatre and one for the circus. Nevertheless, lacking funds, the project of renovating the Gaîté-Lyrique was abandoned.
Yet she never stopped working to establish a Nouveau Carré at Vaugirard on the site of and in place of the big tops. The decision to build the theatre such as it is today was taken in 1986. On 7 March 1989, she wrote: "This will be my theatre. Even so, incredible! I don't know a single living person for whom his own theatre was built, with his name and of the right size." But she died a few months before its completion. Inaugurated in 1992, it bears her name: Théâtre Silvia-Monfort.
During the last years of their time together, Silvia Monfort and Pierre Gruneberg were constantly apart. In winter, as a ski coach, he had to stay at Courchevel, while she worked at Paris, then during the festival period he worked at Cap Ferrat as a swimming instructor, whereas Silvia Monfort's ill health obliged her to pass the summer at Courchevel, alone.
She died on 30 March 1991 of lung cancer.
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