Paris (AFP)

The director Jean-Pierre Vincent, who died at the age of 78, dusted off a large number of classics and was an early companion of Patrice Chéreau.

"With Ariane Mnouchkine and Patrice Chéreau, he represented a theatrical generation which opened up to the world of classics too long stuck in a dusty immobility", reacted the former Minister of Culture Jack Lang to the announcement of the death that occurred during the night from Wednesday to Thursday.

Affected by Covid-19 in the spring, he was hospitalized for stroke afterwards and his health deteriorated, until his death in his house in Mallemort, in Provence, according to his family.

With Michel Bataillon and Jérôme Deschamps, Jean-Pierre Vincent was a companion from the very beginning of Patrice Chéreau, at the theater club of the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand in 1958.

"We started to read Brecht like crazy, and Meyerhold, which was not yet translated. French theater at the time was horrible, for us. These Marivaux played with the accent of the 7th arrondissement ... We were mean, we wanted to eat the world, "he confided to Le Monde in 2018.

He followed Chéreau to the Théâtre de Gennevilliers then to the Théâtre de Sartrouville before being noticed in 1968, notably with "La Noce chez les petits bourgeois" by Brecht, of which he staged several other plays.

"Few men have been visionaries and great Gentlemen at this point", reacted in a press release the Théâtre du Gymnase which hosted many of its plays.

This man with the brush mustache and small round glasses was a "master of French theater, excellent teacher and brilliant director of actors", adds the theater.

- A hundred shows -

The MC93 (Maison de la culture de Seine-Saint-Denis Bobigny), where in 2018 he presented his last play, "George Dandin" by Molière - a great success -, greeted "a great gentleman of French theater, someone who has always been attentive to transmit ".

During his more than 60-year career, Jean-Pierre Vincent was director of the National Theater of Strasbourg and general administrator of the Comédie-Française (1983-1986).

This talent scout also directed the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre (1990-2001), where he brought Stanislas Nordey, current director of the Théâtre national de Strasbourg, to his side.

He will claim that the French administrator's post was "the most difficult with that of Matignon".

Having staged a hundred shows since 1958, he has been awarded several times by the Syndicat de la Critique.

Defending a theater which "does not leave people intact, which leaves them augmented with thought, with humanity", he is described by Jack Lang as "one of the leading men of the new theater policy of the left in 1981".

It was Jack Lang, then Minister of Culture, who had appointed him to head the Comédie Française in 1983.

"We are witnessing a brainwashing, a break from History (...) the leaders, from the highest to the most average, have lost their memory, it was programmed by the victory of finance capital", affirmed the director. on stage in 2016.

Professor at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Paris from the 1980s and speaker on several occasions at the National School of Theater Arts and Techniques (Ensatt), he has trained many great actors.

"Jean-Pierre Vincent was a huge one. I was his student at Ensatt, I owe him my entrance to the Comédie Française and much more. To hear him talk about theater was a chance", tweeted Jeremy Lopez, member in French.

© 2020 AFP