Théâtre Les Quinconces

Located on Place des Jacobins in Le Mans, the Théâtre des Quinconces has been one of the two venues of the Scène nationale Les Quinconces-L'Espal since 2017, alongside the L'Espal theater in the Sablons neighborhood. Put into service in 2014, the current building is the third municipal theater to occupy this site. It includes a Grand Théâtre of about 822 to 825 seats (including a balcony, with numbered seats) and a more intimate Petit Théâtre of around a hundred unnumbered seats. It also has an orchestra pit that can hold up to 70 musicians and variable acoustics, allowing it to host concerts, opera, theater, dance and circus alike. The complex also includes a 300 m² rehearsal room, a multipurpose space and an exhibition space, plus a 610-space underground parking lot.

As a national performing arts center, the theater offers a demanding, multidisciplinary program mixing large-scale productions and more intimate creations, with artist creation and residency work carried out in partnership with L'Espal. It is one of Le Mans' key cultural venues, for major productions as well as for the regular season.

A bit of history

The history of the Le Mans theater goes back to 1842, when the first Théâtre municipal was built on Place des Jacobins to designs by architect Pierre-Félix Delarue: a classical “à l'italienne” theater with three superimposed tiers of balconies, Doric or Ionic columns and Corinthian pilasters, seating about 900 people. The building remained a landmark of Le Mans life: on August 22, 1944, two weeks after the Liberation of Le Mans, General de Gaulle addressed the crowd gathered on Place des Jacobins from the theater's balconies.

Deemed dilapidated after the war, the building was thoroughly renovated starting in 1959 to designs by municipal architect Pierre Savin, in a squarer, plainer style that gave up the classical tiered design in favor of a portico preceded by a large rectangular mass. This second theater was finally demolished on December 17, 2009.

The current theater, the third building on the site, opened in 2014. In 2017, it joined the L'Espal theater to form the Scène nationale du Mans, under the name Les Quinconces-L'Espal.