Philippe Adrien

Philippe Adrien (born 1939 in Savignies) is a French stage director, actor, author and screenwriter.

In 1959 he appeared in the war film Green Harvest.

At the end of the 1960s, Adrien, already started a career as a playwright: La Baye, staged in 1967 by Antoine Bourseiller, with Jean-Pierre Léaud and Suzanne Flon —and thirty years later by Laurent Pelly—showed a taste for disorder that would later draw Philippe Adrien toward authors of irreverence such as Jarry, Gombrowicz, Witkiewicz, Cami or even Copi… As a director he would assert himself in the 1970s, through experimental workshops: L’excès adapted from Georges Bataille; L’oeil de la tête—effet Sade (who he would revisit in 1989 with Enzo Cormann’s text Sade, concert d’enfers), Le Pupille veut être tuteur by Peter Handke; La Résistance; as many questions and provocations targeting the theatre, its boundaries and its contents. It was in Germany that he first tackled Molière (Dom Juan and George Dandin), whose works he would never cease exploring—and to whom he would consecrate his 1979 play Le Défi de Molière.

The beginning of the 1980s was a pivotal moment. Jarry (Ubu roi and Ubu cocu) and Witkiewicz (La poule d’eau) extended his preceding cycle’s gestures of liberation and provocation; the theatre remained defined as the scenic transcription of thought processes. It was through the oeuvre of Kafka that Philippe Adrien would operate the shift, revealing a screwball, jubilatory dimension with Une Visite, adapted from L’Amérique, while Rêves de Kafka placed the act of dreaming at the heart of creation.

In 1981 Philippe Adrien was named Director of the Théâtre des Quartiers d’Ivry, replacing Antoine Vitez; there he presented Monsieur de Pourceaugnac (Molière, once again), Brecht’s Homme pour homme, his own La Funeste Passion du professeur Forenstein, and Heiner Müller’s La Mission.

Invited in 1983 at La Comédie-Française to direct Molière’s Amphitryon and Le Médecin Volant, he continued to work with the same troupe to produce: Jean-Claude Grumberg’s Maman revient, pauvre orphelin, Véronique Olmi’s Point à la ligne, Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s L’Incorruptible, Molière’s Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Werner Schwab’s Extermination du peuple, Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, and Genet’s Les Bonnes. During the same interval Philippe Adrien directed two productions of Tennessee Williams: Un tramway nommé désir, with Caroline Cellier, at the Théâtre Eldorado, then Doux oiseau de jeunesse, with Claudia Cardinale, at the Théâtre de la Madeleine.

...
Wikipedia