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Antoine Vitez
René Kalisky with Antoine Vitez (right)
Born	20 December 1930 Paris, France
Died	30 April 1990 (aged 59) Paris, France
Education	Tania Balachova
Known for	Theatre director, stage director

Antoine Vitez (French pronunciation:[ɑ̃twanvitɛz]; 20 December 1930 – 30 April 1990) was a French actor, director, and poet. He became a central character and influence on the French theater in the post-war period, especially in the technique of teaching drama. He was also translator ofChekhov,Vladimir Mayakovsky andMikhail Sholokhov.

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Antoine Vitez was born in Paris and trained to be an actor, finding his first acting job at the age of 19 inIls attendent Lefty at the Théâtre Maubel. He failed to enter theNational Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Paris and became a Communist activist, which he continued until 1979, when he left the Communist Party following the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR.

He metLouis Aragon in 1958 and became his private secretary from 1960 to 1962. He worked in the theater Balachova Tania, and wrote reviews published byJean Vilar in the magazineThéâtre populaire. Vitez also found work reading on the radio and voice-dubbing in films. He had his first opportunity as director with Sophocles'Electra at the Maison de la Culture de Caen in 1966.

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Vitez' production ofElectra was successful and he continued directing with Russian and Greek repertoire, directingMayakovsky'sLes Bains in 1967,Eugene Schwartz'sLe Dragon in 1968, andChekhov'sLa Mouette in 1970. After this initial period, he began working more with French and German repertoire, directing works byRacine,Jakob Lenz,Goethe,Brecht andRené Kalisky. He later expanded his work to both traditional and classical theatrical repertoire, includingSophocles,Shakespeare,Marivaux,Molière,Jean Racine,Paul Claudel,Vladimir Mayakovsky,Pierre Guyotat,Jean Metellus andJean Audureau.

Vitez became a professor at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in 1968, and in 1972 he founded the Théâtre des Quartiers d'Ivry. In the same year, he founded the Ateliers d'Ivry workshop, where amateurs and professionals could share a common theatrical practice. He became director at the Chaillot National Theatre in 1981, and was appointed deputy head of theComédie Française in June 1988, a post he held until his sudden death in Paris in 1990.^[1] In 1978, Vitez' workshop sessions were recorded by film-makerMaria Koleva, who made five films on different workshop sessions.^[2]

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Vitez often presented his plays in locations with non-theatrical elements and without any descriptive function, employing an aesthetic of "free play" and "association of ideas," according to Georges Banu. Vitez' work required thought on the part of the audience, more than the reality of a set. He saw the theater as a "force field" and demanded an "elitist theater for all." He defended the great classical texts as "sunken galleons," works that were remote, archaic and mythological.

• Théâtre Antoine Vitez on the campus of theUniversity of Provence, nowAix-Marseille University is named for him.^[3][4]
• Théâtre d'Ivry Antoine Vitez inIvry-sur-Seine, is also named for him.

• 1930 births
• 1990 deaths
• French theatre directors
• Male actors from Paris
• Administrators of the Comédie-Française
• French male film actors
• French male television actors
• French male stage actors
• 20th-century French male actors
• 20th-century French translators
• 20th-century French poets
• French male poets
• 20th-century French male writers
• French male non-fiction writers

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