Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, Minister of Culture, pays tribute to Michel Vinaver, writer and theatre man, who died at the age of 95.
Born in 1927 to Russian Jewish parents exiled in Paris, Michel Vinaver had to leave France with his family in 1940, before returning as a volunteer in 1944 to the Liberation Army.
After two novels published in the early 1950s (at Gallimard, thanks to the friendly support of Albert Camus), Michel Vinaver wrote a first play, The Koreans, 1955 – while starting in 1953, he had a brilliant career at Gillette, a company he left in 1980 as CEO for France. In 1969, he decided to connect the two parts of his life and wrote Overboard, an epic play that recounts the absorption of a French family business by a multinational; the play profoundly renews dramatic writing, by exploring the workings of capitalism, by paying attention to the «banal» and an original construction of the dialogues. Among other things, The Job Application, Backwards, or The Ordinary, a piece that entered the repertoire of the Comédie-Française in 2009, directed by the author. Michel Vinaver, who in the 1980s was also a professor at the University of Paris III and then Paris VIII, was one of the most ardent defenders of writing and theatre publishing.
A great reader of the daily press, he has made contemporary questions and current events the subject of almost all his plays. As in 11 September 2001, echoing the interwoven echoes of the voices of the victims of the tragedy and the comments of journalists, “inextricably mixes what is immense and what is tiny.”
In 2014, his last play, Bettencourt Boulevard or a history of France was created at the Théâtre National Populaire in Villeurbanne; it tells the story of the family that founded L'Oréal and puts it in perspective with the country’s history over nearly a century.
His plays have been brought to the stage by important directors including Roger Planchon, Antoine Vitez, Jacques Lassalle, Alain Françon and Christian Schiaretti.
Named to the Molières three times, Michel Vinaver was the winner of the Grand Prix of the Académie française in 2006.
The Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin would like to pay tribute to the memory of an innovative playwright, whose work is unique and precious in capturing our world. She extends her deepest condolences to her family and to all her loved ones.