Vitez, Antoine

Vitez, Antoine (1930–90), French actor and director, probably the most intellectual and uncompromising of his generation as well as the most deeply marked by Communism and the theories of Brecht. After working in Marseilles and at the Maison de la Culture in Caen in the 1960s, he became one of the moving spirits of the ‘red belt’ of popular playhouses in the industrial suburbs of Paris, taking productions to halls and schools, first at Nanterre and then at Ivry, where he took over the Théâtre des Quartiers. His versions of Sophocles' Electra (1971) and Brecht's Mother Courage (1973) established him as an original though perhaps over-ambitious director, able to handle actors well. As part of the modernization following the student unrest of 1968 he was appointed director and teacher at the Conservatoire, chosen not only because of his expertise in mime—a discipline traditionally neglected by the official body of French drama teachers—but because of his firm Marxist beliefs. He was Joint Artistic Director of the Théâtre National de Chaillot, 1973–4, becoming sole Director, 1981–8, and mounting in 1987, originally for the Avignon Festival, the complete 12-hour version of Claudel's Le Soulier de satin. In 1988 he was appointed Administrator of the Comédie-Française, directing La Celestina in Avignon and Paris in 1989. His productions of Molière and Racine were famous.