Jean-Luc Lagarce

Jean-Luc Lagarce (14 February 1957 – 30 September 1995) was a French actor, theatre director and playwright.[1] Although only moderately successful during his lifetime, since his death he has become one of the most widely-produced contemporary French playwrights.[2]

Jean-Luc Lagarce
Born	(1957-02-14)14 February 1957 Héricourt, Haute-Saône
Died	30 September 1995(1995-09-30) (aged 38)
Occupation	playwright, theatre director
Nationality	French
Period	1970s-1990s
Notable works	Juste la fin du monde

Born in Héricourt, Haute-Saône,[2] he was educated at the Université de Besançon.[2] He was a cofounder of the Théâtre de La Roulotte in 1978,[1] directing productions of playwrights such as Pierre de Marivaux, Eugène Marin Labiche and Eugène Ionesco before beginning to stage his own plays.[1] Some of his early plays were criticized as derivative of Ionesco or Samuel Beckett.[2] Although some of his plays were published by Théâtre Ouvert or recorded as radio dramas, only a few of them were ever staged during his lifetime.[1]

Publishing 25 plays during his lifetime,[1] he died of AIDS in 1995.[1] He also published a volume of short stories, wrote an opera libretto and a film screenplay, and cofounded the publishing company Les Solitaires intempestifs.[3] He was rediscovered by critics after his death,[1] becoming more widely recognized as one of the most important modern French playwrights.[2] This led to many productions overseas, such as the Brazilian version of Music-Hall by Luiz Päetow, which won the Theatre Shell Award in 2010.[4]

In 2015, film director Xavier Dolan adapted Lagarce's Juste la fin du monde into the film It's Only the End of the World,[5] which won the Grand Prix and the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.[6] Le pays lointain was produced at theatre Odeon, Paris in 2019.

Works

Plays

• La bonne de chez Ducatel, 1977
• Erreur de construction, 1977
• Carthage, encore, 1978
• La Place de l'autre , 1979
• Voyage de Madame Knipper vers la Prusse Orientale, 1980
• Ici ou ailleurs, 1981
• Les Serviteurs, 1981
• Noce, 1982
• Vagues souvenirs de l'année de la peste, 1982
• Hollywood, 1983
• Histoire d'amour (repérages), 1983
• Retour à la citadelle, 1984
• Les Orphelins, 1984
• De Saxe, roman, 1985
• La Photographie, 1986
• Derniers remords avant l'oubli, 1987
• Les Solitaires intempestifs, 1987
• Music-hall, 1988
• Les Prétendants, 1989
• Juste la fin du monde, 1990
• Histoire d'amour (derniers chapitres), 1990
• Les règles du savoir-vivre dans la société moderne, 1993
• Nous, les héros, 1993
• Nous, les héros (version sans le père), 1993
• J'étais dans ma maison et j'attendais que la pluie vienne, 1994
• Le Pays lointain, 1995

Prose

• Trois récits, 1994, a collection of three short stories

Other fiction

• Quichotte, 1989, libretto for a jazz opera by Mike Westbrook[7]
• Retour à l'automne, screenplay cowritten with Gérard Bouysse

Non-fiction

• Théâtre et Pouvoir en Occident, a study of how dramatists have contended with political power, from Ancient Greece to the middle of the twentieth century
• Journal, volume 1: 1977–1990, volume 2: 1990–1995

References

1. "Jean-Luc Lagarce" Archived 1 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine. Embassy of France in the United States, 5 March 2015.
2. Glin, Gaëlle. "LAGARCE JEAN-LUC (1957-1995)". Encyclopedia Universalis (in French). Retrieved 23 May 2016.
3. "Jean-Luc Lagarce et la poétique du détour: l'exemple de Juste la fin du monde". Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France (in French). 109 (2009/1). doi:10.3917/rhlf.091.0183..
4. "Music Hall: the steep path of an artist". magazine review in Portuguese.
5. ""Juste la fin du monde", Xavier Dolan sublime Jean-Luc Lagarce" (in French). Radio France Internationale. 19 May 2016. Retrieved 23 May 2016.
6. "Cannes Film Festival Winners: Palme d'Or To Ken Loach's 'I, Daniel Blake'". Deadline. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
7. Capron, Stéphane (27 May 2012). "L'ensemble Justiniana fête ses 30 ans avec l'opéra-jazz Quichotte de Lagarce" (in French). sceneweb. Retrieved 23 May 2016.