What a great idea to rebroadcast this draft of a portrait, a montage of extracts from Jean-Luc Lagarce’s Journal, in tribute to Lucien Attoun, who died on April 28. The latter was one of the most important supporters of Jean-Luc Lagarce and the creator of Théâtre Ouvert, in Paris, where was recorded, in 2008, this Draft imagined by François BError: “I am often asked to talk about Jean-Luc , the simplest thing seemed to me to be listening to him tell us for an hour and a half what his life was like, ”confided the director, friend and beneficiary of Jean-Luc Lagarce.
And to explain that through this Journal was taking shape the portrait of the one with whom he founded, in 1992, the editions Les Solitaires intempestifs. Portrait of a man who devoted his life to the theater. Series of his relations with Lucien and Micheline Attoun (whom he nicknamed “Attounette”). Of his stagings and their critical and public receptions. Of his doubts and questions. From his disease – HIV-positive, he died of AIDS in 1995, largely unknown even though he is today one of the most advanced contemporary playwrights (Just the end of the world, The Distant Country, Last remorse before oblivion , etc.).
Devastating humor
But let’s listen instead. In his Journal, started in 1977, Jean-Luc Lagarce talks about his work. Of his discouragement sometimes when he has to “sell [his] salads”. Of the death of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Genet. From his reading of My Parents, by Hervé Guibert: “It left me stunned, overwhelmed and reassured by the things read and said. In 1986, he promises us that, “if we are wise”, he will talk to us “about ass”. In fact, he talks about it, often, and well.
The year 1986 is also that of the death of Andrei Tarkovsky, whose The Sacrifice is one of the films that marked him the most. The following year, he read with passion and admiration Sorj Chalandon’s accounts of Klaus Barbie’s trial in the daily Liberation: “Trying to understand the human. And I don’t understand. »
And then there is this “Saturday, July 23, 1988, Paris, 11:35 p.m.: the news of the day, of the week, of the month, of the year as it was to be feared: I am HIV positive (…). Very difficult. The place of euphemism in the work of Lagarce,” he notes with that absolutely devastating humor that was his. In his Journal, he wrote the names of all those who died of AIDS, and first of all those of Jean-Paul Aron and Bernard-Marie Koltès. He says his exam batteries. His weight – still dropping, like his T4 cells, which HIV attacks. And then, in 1995, shortly before his death, he wrote this, which recalls certain texts by Hervé Guibert: “The disease is waking up having shit yourself on it (…). Terrible impression of the abandonment of one’s own body. »
To render his phrasing, his irony and his shopgirl emotion, as he said himself, it took all the talent of Laurent Poitrenaux, who was then awarded the Prix du Syndicat de la critique. With incredible accuracy, Poitrenaux embodies Lagarce, makes him heard and revived. It’s funny, moving and particularly well put in space and on the air.
