ARCHIVES 2011 / Ébauche d'un portrait

Twenty-three notebooks and hundreds of pages, written more or less in one go, without any crossing out, to recount day after day, for 18 years, the life of a man, of a writer and director. Short and long stories, Jean-Luc Lagarce's views on himself and the world, reflection on time that goes by and death that lurks. Based on this literary material, François Berreur imagined this moment of soap-opera theatre that recounts, the day-to-day itinerary of an artist, neither hiding his doubts on his own work, nor his appetite for life or his deep solitude alternating with a collective commitment in the performing arts, which occupied the greater part of his life. It makes us discover another facet of Jean-Luc Lagarce: that of a remarkable storyteller with scathing humour, who found unexpected resources of energy in words, even in the most difficult moments, when the illness that was sapping his life away inexorably showed itself. Surrounded by objects of the author's daily life, the actor Laurent Poitrenaux distils the words of this Journal. Subtly, he makes the nuances of the writing resonate, as well as the moods of a writer who lived in disquieting doubt, who attempted to convince himself that his semi-failures were great successes, who recounted his love stories, his readings as the days went by, constantly questioning the quality of his work, tenaciously determined to make it endure in time. The time of after-death, that time in which he would have so much liked to return, soothed and serene like "a very free and happy man." JFP

Untimely departed, Jean-Luc Lagarce (1957-1995) left a body of work that is now staged throughout the world. The author of about 20 plays, his fragmentary, fascinating and haunting writing, made of false repetitions and silences, blends the private and the collective, guided by the urgent need to live and love.

JFP