Jean-Luc Lagarce

Jean-Luc Lagarce was born on February 14, 1957 in Héricourt (Haute-Saône); he spent his childhood in Valentigney (Doubs), where his parents worked at the Peugeot-cycles factory. In 1975, to study philosophy, he moved to Besançon, where he also attended the regional drama conservatory. In 1977, together with other students, he founded an amateur theater company, the "Théâtre de la Roulotte" (in homage to Jean Vilar), in which he took on the role of director, staging plays by Beckett and Goldoni, as well as his own first texts.
In 1979, his play Carthage, encore was broadcast by France Culture as part of the "nouveau répertoire dramatique" directed by Lucien Attoun, who regularly recorded his texts. In 1980, he obtained his master's degree in philosophy, writing Théâtre et Pouvoir en Occident. Following his meeting with Jacques Fornier, the Théâtre de la Roulotte became a professional company in 1981, where Jean-Luc Lagarce staged 20 productions, alternating between new works by classic authors, adaptations of non-theatrical texts and stagings of his own texts. In 1982, Voyage de Madame Knipper vers la Prusse Orientale was directed by Jean-Claude Fall at the Petit Odéon, programmed by the Comédie-Française (his first text to be staged by a director from outside his company and published as a typescript by Théâtre Ouvert). Jean-Luc Lagarce will see only four of his texts staged by other directors - after 1990, none will be - but he will not feel an "unhappy" author, he is a recognized author and his plays are accessible, read, even staged or published.
It was in 1988 that he learned of his HIV-positive status, but the themes of illness and disappearance were already present in his work, notably in Vagues Souvenirs de l'année de la peste (1982), and he would always refuse the label "AIDS author", asserting like Patrice Chéreau that it's not a subject.