Antoine Vitez (; 20 December 1930 – 30 April 1990) was a French actor, director, and poet. He became a central character and influence on the French theater in the post-war period, especially in the technique of teaching drama. He was also translator of Chekhov,

Vladimir Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...

and

Mikhail Sholokhov Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov ( rus, Михаил Александрович Шолохов, p=ˈʂoləxəf; – 21 February 1984) was a Russian novelist and winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is known for writing about life ...

Early life

Antoine Vitez was born in Paris and trained to be an actor, finding his first acting job at the age of 19 in ''Ils attendent Lefty'' at the Théâtre Maubel. He failed to enter the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Paris and became a Communist activist, which he continued until 1979, when he left the Communist Party following the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR. He met

Louis Aragon Louis Aragon (; 3 October 1897 – 24 December 1982) was a French poet who was one of the leading voices of the Surrealism, surrealist movement in France. He co-founded with André Breton and Philippe Soupault the surrealist review ''Littératur ...

in 1958 and became his private secretary from 1960 to 1962. He worked in the theater Balachova Tania, and wrote reviews published by Jean Vilar in the magazine ''Théâtre populaire''. Vitez also found work reading on the radio and voice-dubbing in films. He had his first opportunity as director with Sophocles' ''Electra'' at the Maison de la Culture de Caen in 1966.

Career

Vitez' production of ''Electra'' was successful and he continued directing with Russian and Greek repertoire, directing Mayakovsky's ''Les Bains'' in 1967, Eugene Schwartz's ''Le Dragon'' in 1968, and Chekhov's ''La Mouette'' in 1970. After this initial period, he began working more with French and German repertoire, directing works by Racine, Jakob Lenz,

Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...

, Brecht and René Kalisky. He later expanded his work to both traditional and classical theatrical repertoire, including

Sophocles Sophocles ( 497/496 – winter 406/405 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. was an ancient Greek tragedian known as one of three from whom at least two plays have survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those ...

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

, Marivaux,

Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, ; ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the great writers in the French language and world liter ...

Jean Racine Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ; ; 22 December 1639 – 21 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille, as well as an important literary figure in the Western tr ...

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, Pierre Guyotat, Jean Metellus and Jean Audureau. Vitez became a professor at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in 1968, and in 1972 he founded the Théâtre des Quartiers d'Ivry. In the same year, he founded the Ateliers d'Ivry workshop, where amateurs and professionals could share a common theatrical practice. He became director at the Chaillot National Theatre in 1981, and was appointed deputy head of the Comédie Française in June 1988, a post he held until his sudden death in Paris in 1990. In 1978, Vitez' workshop sessions were recorded by film-maker Maria Koleva, who made five films on different workshop sessions.

Aesthetic

Vitez often presented his plays in locations with non-theatrical elements and without any descriptive function, employing an aesthetic of "free play" and "association of ideas," according to Georges Banu. Vitez' work required thought on the part of the audience, more than the reality of a set. He saw the theater as a "force field" and demanded an "elitist theater for all." He defended the great classical texts as "sunken galleons," works that were remote, archaic and mythological.

Legacy

*Théâtre Antoine Vitez on the campus of the

University of Provence The University of Provence Aix-Marseille I () was a Public university, public research university mostly located in Aix-en-Provence and Marseille. It was one of the three University of Aix-Marseille, Universities of Aix-Marseille and was part of t ...

, now Aix-Marseille University is named for him.
*Théâtre d'Ivry Antoine Vitez in

Ivry-sur-Seine Ivry-sur-Seine () is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. Paris's main Asian district, the Quartier Asiatique in the 13th arrondissement, borders the ...

, is also named for him.

Filmography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vitez, Antoine 1930 births 1990 deaths French theatre directors Male actors from Paris Administrators of the Comédie-Française French male film actors French male television actors French male stage actors 20th-century French male actors 20th-century French translators 20th-century French poets French male poets 20th-century French male writers French male non-fiction writers