It is a great servant of the public theater who went away on tiptoe, in the discretion to which the disease constrains those whom it pushes out of the scene of the life. Didier Bezace died at home, after months of scraping with the camarde.
Born February 10, 1946 in Paris to parents stockbrokers, he was sent as a nanny to a village in Burgundy to avoid the deprivations of the post-war period. Back in the capital, his schooling will take place between a boarding school for Marist fathers and a box with a bin under the iron of the son-in-law of Bergson.
Reading bulimics, the theater, when it discovers its magic, offers an outlet for its adolescent dissatisfactions. Didier Bezace finds his way, in the excitement of May 68. He takes part in the demonstrations of the Latin Quarter, mixes with the occupants of the Odeon and meets Jean-Louis Benoit and Jacques Nichet. The trio founded the Aquarium theater at the Cartoucherie de Vincennes, in the shadow of Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil. With three trowels, the three accomplices transform a building abandoned by the army into a theater.
A protest breeze
For nearly thirty years, the Aquarium Theater, which operates on a self-managed basis, has given rise to a protest breeze. It is also a laboratory of new forms and a place for fun meetings. The performances end with a picnic on the meadow in front of the theater doors.
In line with the real and the social, preceded by investigative work in the field, the shows are linked (City merchants, 1972, on real estate speculation; The young moon holds the old moon all night in her arms, 1976, on the working condition). Didier Bezace also adapts short stories and novels: Miss else, by Arthur Schnitzler, The trap, by Emmanuel Bove; The woman turned into a fox, by David Garnett.
Didier Bezace, the theater of the Republic
The trio slowly undoes. Jacques Nichet goes into exile in Toulouse. Jean-Louis Benoît remains alone on board when, in 1997, Didier Bezace responded favorably to Jack Ralite, the communist mayor of Aubervilliers (Seine Saint-Denis), who asked him to relaunch the Théâtre de la Commune. For sixteen years, the new director transformed this National Dramatic Center into a home for all audiences, and created thirty memorable creations (such as Pereira claims, by Antonio Tabucchi, or Browning’s Version which will earn him two Molières awarded by the profession), which attract a large audience. In 2001, he directed L’Ecole des Femmes, in the Cour d’Honneur of the Palais des Papes at the Avignon Festival.
He also made forays into the cinema under the direction of Claude Miller (in The Little Thief), by André Téchiné (The thieves), by Bertrand Tavernier (policeman steeped in humanity in L 627 ; educational inspector jabbering in It starts today)
The renovator of a demanding form of popular theater
He left Aubervilliers, in 2013, with a last show, The Last Snow, by Hubert Mingarelli (who died on January 26, 2020). He resumed his activity as an actor and director, edited texts by Marguerite Duras (Marguerite and the President, Savannah Bay, Le Square). He also appears a lot in TV movies. His last appearance on stage dates back to last month with his show on Aragon, There will be youth to love.
Tall, handsome, solid and charismatic, the serious verb, light irony in the play, sober and sharp, Didier Bezace was a great actor, at ease in all registers, from Feydeau to Emmanuel Bove, in love of his art.
This moralist was also the renovator of a demanding form of popular theater. “ I always feel the same emotion at the approach to representation “, he declared in 2013 in The cross, “When consciences are made to become, at the most beautiful moments, a collective consciousness gathered around a story, a meditation, through the wildest laughter, the most bitter tears”.
– .
