Bernard-Marie Koltès

Bernard-Marie Koltès is a dramatic author French, born with Metz the April 9th 1948 and died with Paris the April 15th 1989.

Biography

Bernard-Marie Koltès discovers the theater at the twenty years age and receives a true shock when it attends the interpretation of the actress Maria Casarès in Médée . It then starts to write for the theater. In 1970, it assembles its own theater company, the “Theater of the Quay” and writes “the Heritage” that Maria Casarès reads for the radio. Between a passage to the Communist party (1974-1978), many voyages in Latin America and Africa, Koltès creates many parts, like the long monolog written for Yves Ferry the Night right before the forests , which is assembled in off to the Festival of Avignon into 77 by the author, then with its request, by Moni Grégo with the CDN of Lille. Its theater, in rupture with the former generation of the theater of the absurd, is a permanent research on the communication between the men. With the beginning of the year 1980, it meets Patrice Chéreau which becomes its director.

But the writer, patient, die at forty years of the AIDS. Bernard-Marie Koltès, whose texts are translated in about thirty languages, is one of the French playwrights most played in the world. In February 2007, with Return to the desert , it enters to the repertory of the French Comedy, in a setting in scene of Muriel Mayette, but a controversy with its have-rights leads to the cancellation of the representations.

Born in 1948 in a middle-class family from Metz, it carries out a violent life, solar and anchored in the revolt like that of Jean Genet. After having seen Maria Casarès, he becomes actor with the National theater of Strasbourg, then carries out there ten settings in scene. After several rewritings, its first large part, the Night right before the forests , is given in 1977 to the Festival of Avignon. He travels much, in Africa, America, with stays in New York and Paris.

The theater of Koltès, based on real problems, expresses the tragedy to be it solitary and of death. Its writing accentuates the dramatic tension and the lyricism of its parts.

It is obvious that Genet and the absurdists influenced the theater of Koltès. Like the absurdists authors, it feels exiled. However Koltès is based on traditional roots: Marivaux, Shakespeare of which it translates the Tale of winter , which one finds in Roberto Zucco, Rimbaud and Claudel, of which it retains the idea of communion with the spectator at the time of the theater. Theater of revolt, Koltès is homosexual in a world heterosexual. In Africa, he sees the African culture crushed by Europeans. This subject becomes the part Combat of negros and dogs . After a visit in America, he writes Western Quai , on a brother and a sister in a foreign culture.

In Prolog & other texts, he writes in an explicit way his feeling of strangeness vis-a-vis the theater and to the culture of his time: whereas the film of kung fu the last dragon practically did not receive any criticism and few spectators in Paris - " still a film of kung-fu" - he proposes, while leaving films usually to the cinema, to spit with ground of spite by saying " still a film of amour". Because the superiority of films of kung fu, finishes it, it is that they speak best about love while the films of love speak " connement about the love, but moreover, do not speak at all about kung-fu". In the same way, in In the loneliness of the cotton fields but also the majority of its parts, the human relations are considered sometimes under a ethologic prospect (the human beings meet like dogs and cats, on problems of territory), even an economic outlook (the deal like metaphor of the relations between individuals and engine of a meeting).

Works

Theater

the Bitternesses (1970)
Walk (1970)
Drunk Lawsuit (1971), the Editions of Midnight, Paris, 2001, 80 p.
the heritage (1972), the Editions of Midnight, Paris, 1998, 80 p.
Of the deaf voices (1973)
Sallinger (1977), the Editions of Midnight, Paris, 1998, 128 p.
the Night right before the forests Tapuscrit de Théâtre Open (1977), Editions Stock (1978), the Editions of Midnight, Paris, 1988,

64 p.

Combat of negros and dogs (1979), followed Notebooks , the Editions of Midnight, Paris, 1989, 128 p.
Western Quay (1985), the Editions of Midnight, Paris, 1985, 110 p.
In the loneliness of the cotton fields (1985), the Editions of Midnight, Paris, 1986, 64 p.
Tabataba (1986), preceded by Roberto Zucco , the Editions of Midnight, Paris, 1990, 130 p.
Return to the desert (1988), the Editions of Midnight, Paris, 1988, 88 p.
Roberto Zucco (1988), followed Tabataba , the Editions of Midnight, Paris, 1990, 130 p.
Fragments: Coconut
the Day of the murders in the history of Hamlet

Translation

Shakespeare, the Tale of winter , the Editions of Midnight, Paris, 1988, 128 p.

Accounts

the horse Escape very far in the city: novel (1976), the Editions of Midnight, Paris, 1984, 160 p.
Prolog (1986) and other texts (1986 - 1991)
a share of my life: Talks (1983-1989) , the Editions of Midnight, Paris, 1999, 162 p.

Internal bonds

External bonds

Biographie of Koltès on “contemporary Theater”
the site of a fan of Koltès
Documentation criticizes on the work of Bernard-Marie Koltès (Auteurs.contemporain.info site)

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