page_title: Chose Promise
section_title: Synopsis
hierarchical_section_title: Chose Promise / Synopsis
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Arnaud Tsamere au Festival du rire de Montreux, le 2 décembre 2010.English: Arnaud Tsamere at the Montreux Comedy Festival on 2 December 2010.
context_page_description: Chose Promise is a one-man show performed by the French comedian Arnaud Tsamere from 2007 to 2014. Written by Tsamere, François Rollin and Arnaud Joyet, it features the character Patrice Valenton, a teacher who is performing a comedy show because of a promise he made to his friend Rémi, who died in a car accident. After explaining this, he attempts ventriloquism, shadow puppetry, a vaudeville play and a song about Rémi. Tsamere then comes out of character and does a routine about bulbs around mirrors in dressing rooms.
  The show's title comes from the expression chose promise, chose due and it deals with the theme of death; the character of a teacher was chosen to depict failure. Chose Promise was released on DVD on 6 March 2013 after being recorded at the Sébastopol Theatre in Lille, and its final performances were at the Olympia in February 2014—it has been broadcast on the television channels Comédie+ and D17. It was well received by critics, who praised Tsamere's performance, particularly in the vaudeville sequence.
context_section_description: Patrice Valenton (Arnaud Tsamere) introduces himself as an economics teacher at the University Institute of Technology in Vincennes. He explains that he is there to honour a promise he made to his best friend Rémi, who was hospitalised by a car accident. Patrice arrived to see Rémi on his deathbed, and Rémi asked Patrice to perform a one-man show on his behalf. Patrice answered "I promise...", and Rémi died, not knowing that the end of the sentence was "...that you'll get better" and that Patrice did not want to perform. Patrice explains that he will keep his promise because becoming a comedian was Rémi's dream, but that he is not a comedian and is not there to get laughs or applause.
  Patrice begins the show, explaining that he will use memories and objects relating to Rémi to perform. He says that Rémi loved ventriloquism, and performs his own routine with a monkey puppet called Falzouille, in which the puppet never speaks. He talks about how the puppet is not alive as it has Velcro pads, and imitates a cat and mouse with Velcro on their paws. He tells a story of when he removed the batteries from his colleague's calculator, then takes out Rémi's notebook, which contains the telephone numbers of prostitutes and vomit stains. Patrice performs a shadow puppetry routine in which an Armenian soldier rescues his daughter from 25 duduk players. It becomes clear that Patrice is not actually making the shadows, and he gets annoyed at three stagehands called David.
  Patrice decides to perform the final scene of a vaudeville play he has written called La Pendule (The Clock). He explains the complex plot and characters: set in 1929 in a townhouse in Provence, the play involves the Duke of Ponfouy and his family, associates and household servants. He performs the scene, playing all the characters himself and exaggerating their voices and mannerisms. For Patrice's final act, he plays a recording of Rémi and himself from 1985, then sings a song he has written about Rémi and the accident. When the audience applauds the song, he criticises them as he does not want to be a famous comedian. After imitating a marionette, he performs his curtain call with a toy dragon; he dances with it and a sparkler, and flaps its wings to Johann Strauss I's Radetzky March.
  Tsamere comes out of character, thanks the audience, writers and producers of the show, and explains that the preceding story is a fiction. He talks about his stage fright and goes off on a tangent about the bulbs around mirrors in dressing rooms; he asks a row of the audience to stand repeatedly to check whether pillars in the theatre are load-bearing. He ends by saying that he does not need the mirror, as he does not wear make-up.
caption: Tsamere holding his puppet Falzouille
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D700", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.6.11", "Image DateTime": "2011:06:26 16:54:19", "Image Artist": "Olivier Wavre", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ReferenceBlackWhite": "[0, 255, 0, 255, 0, 255]", "Image Copyright": "wavre.ch", "Image ExifOffset": "402", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "9612", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "300", "Thumbnail YResolution": "300", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "9724", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4901", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "1250", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:12:02 22:08:41", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:12:02 22:08:41", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Spot", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "250", "EXIF SubSecTime": "38", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "38", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "38", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1801", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2832", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "250", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}