Antoine Vitez (December 20, 1930 – April 30, 1990) was an actor, director and poet. A central and influential figure in twentieth-century French theatre, the importance of his theatre education is recognized. He also translated Chekhov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Mikhail Sholokhov.
He was general administrator of the Comédie-Française from 1988 until his death.
Antoine Vitez liked to recall that his photographer father was also an anarchist. A student of the National School of Oriental Languages, he graduated in Russian and thought for a time to become a translator. He was attracted to the theatre, but failed the competition of the Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique de Paris in 1950. A communist militant until 1979, he left the PCF following the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR. He performed the play Drame à Toulon - Henri Martin by Claude Martin and Henri Delmas, which recounts the life and trial of Henri Martin, a sailor opposed to the war in Indochina and sentenced to five years' imprisonment for participation in an "enterprise of demoralization of the army and the nation". Charles Denner, René-Louis Lafforgue, José Valverde and Paul Préboist are some of the actors of the troupe. Performances are prohibited by several prefects and mayors. But censorship is often foiled and the play is performed more than three hundred times. In 1958, Vitez met Louis Aragon, whose private secretary he was from 1960 to 1962. He thus participated in the writing of the volume of the parallel history of the U.S.A. and the U.S. R.S.S.: 1917-1960 devoted to the USSR and directed by Aragon. He studied theatre with Tania Balachova, contributed to the magazine Bref, published by Jean Vilar, and to the magazine Théâtre populaire. He did radio readings, film dubbing and began directing with Electra by Sophocles at the Maison de la Culture in Caen in 1966. In 1971, he proposed to the city of Ivry to found the Théâtre des Quartiers d'Ivry. He staged avant-garde plays by René Kalisky, Pierre Guyotat, classical plays, adaptations of novels, and welcomed the achievements of young directors such as Stuart Seide. Despite the success and influx of a passionate audience, the necessary subsidies were slow to arrive and the theatre went bankrupt. His staging of Paul Claudel's Partage de midi for the Comédie-Française in 1975 was so successful that it was revived at the Salle Richelieu the following season and until 1981 (with a detour to Buenos Aires during an official tour in May 1977). In 1981, following the election of François Mitterrand, Vitez received the direction of the Théâtre de Chaillot for seven years. He staged for the Avignon Festival the complete version of Claudel's Satin Shoe. In 1988, he was appointed administrator of the Comédie-Française. His writings on the theatre, personal notes, interviews or articles published during his lifetime, testify to a restless and demanding thought, in constant evolution. They were collected after his death in three collections entitled: L'École, La Scène and Le Monde.
My published books:
