Roger Vitrac
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Roger Vitrac
Vitrac, Roger (1899-1952). French playwright. He was a pioneer of Surrealism in the theatre and a collaborator with Artaud, with whom he staged his own plays at the Théâtre Alfred Jarry after they were both excluded from the Surrealist group. Probably the most gifted dramatist to emerge from the movement, in Les Mystères de l'amour (1927) Vitrac attempted to reproduce on stage features of automatic writing and disordered fantasies intended to break down the barrier between the everyday and the unconscious. Amid violent and grotesque scenes unfolding in a set reminiscent of Surrealist paintings, striking poetic passages occur. Victor ou les Enfants au pouvoir (1928), his most successful work, adopts the form of a fantastical spoof on drawing-room comedy; while Le Coup de Trafalgar (1934), moving towards more conventional techniques in a depiction of Parisian society, exploits farcical humour to satirize the bourgeoisie. Les Demoiselles du large (1938) represents a novel departure in the direction of tragedy, though with Le Loup-Garou (1939), situated in a mental hospital, the crazy dialogue shows Vitrac reverting to an out landish mocking comedy of a type which he continued to write, along with screenplays, until his death (Le Sabre de mon père, 1951).
[David Walker]
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Roger Vitrac
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Roger Vitrac
Roger Vitrac (1899– 22 January 1952, aged 52) was a French surrealist playwright and poet.
Born in Pinsac, Roger Vitrac moved to Paris in 1910. As a young man, he was influenced by symbolism and the writings of Lautréamont and Alfred Jarry, and he developed a passion for theatre and poetry. A year after his baccalauréat, he published a collection of poems, Le Faune noir.
During his three year long military service, he met Marcel Arland, François Baron, Georges Limbour and René Crevel, who together founded the literary revue, Aventure. Through the group, Vitrac met André Breton and Louis Aragon at Café Certa in 1921, where many Dada activities took place until it became one of the surrealist group's headquarters. In the early twenties, Vitrac joined the surrealist movement and contributed to the first few editions of La Révolution Surréaliste. Slowly segregated from the group along with Antonin Artaud, together they created the Théatre Alfred-Jarry in 1926, where they produced some of their most important plays such as The Mysteries of Love (Les Mystères de l'amour, 1927) and Victor, or Power to the Children (Victor ou les enfants au pouvoir, 1928), setting the tone for the Theatre of the Absurd, twenty years before Ionesco. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre describes The Mysteries of Love as a masterpiece of surrealist theatre. It is now considered a key play in 20th-century French theatre.
Vitrac joined Georges Bataille as one of the signaturies of Un Cadavre against Breton and contributed to Documents with articles on "Gaston-Louis Roux" (1929, issue 7), "The Abduction of the Sabines" (1930, issue 6) and a poem, "Humorage to Picasso" (1930, issue 3), dedicated to the artist. From 1931, he worked as a journalist while further exploring burlesque style playwriting, which often operated between boulevard comedy and intimate tragedy. His multi-thematic Coup de Trafalgar (1934) and Les Demoiselles du large (1938) gained as little recognition as his more slapstick plays such Le Loup-Garou (1939) and Le Sabre de mon père (1951).
Only after his death did Vitrac reached popular stardom status with Jean Anouilh's 1962 production of Victor, or Power to the Children.
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Oxford Companion to French Literature
The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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