Vitrac, Roger

Vitrac, Roger (1899–1952), French poet and playwright, one of the leaders of Dada, who in 1927 was associated with Antonin Artaud in the foundation of the Théâtre Alfred Jarry, where his first two plays were performed under Artaud's direction—Les Mystères de l'amour as part of the opening programme and Victor; ou, Les Enfants au pouvoir as its fourth production in 1928. Les Mystères de l'amour, which evokes the amorous and sadistic fantasies of a pair of lovers, is probably one of the most successful attempts to write a play on the Surrealist principle of automatic writing and foreshadowed the Theatre of Cruelty, just as Victor, with its monstrous characters and tragi-comic denouement, foreshadowed the Theatre of the Absurd. It was successfully revived in Paris in 1946 and again in 1962, the second revival being directed by Anouilh, who considered that Vitrac had an important influence on his own work. It was seen in translation in London in 1964. Vitrac's other plays include Le Coup de Trafalgar (1934), the uncharacteristically tragic Les Demoiselles du large (1938), Le Loup-garou (The Werewolf, 1940), and Le Sabre de mon père (1951), a sexual extravaganza set in a fashionable nursing home.