André Obey

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André Obey (born May 8, 1892 in Douai , † April 11, 1975 in Montsoreau ) was a French playwright , essayist and novelist.

Live and act

From the beginning of writing

At the age of 20, André Obey won first prize at the Lille Conservatory in a piano competition . Despite his success as a pianist, he pursued a different professional goal: He studied law , graduated as a lawyer and earned a diploma in linguistics and literature .

In the First World War he fought as a soldier and suffered a serious head injury. In the hospital of Limoges , he wrote his first novel - a soldier . This was never published.

After the war he moved to Paris , where he earned his living as a journalist and chronicler : André Obey wrote short stories for literary magazines as well as music and theater reviews and worked for various daily newspapers.

In addition to this, he created four novels and produced other works of writing: In his essay In L'Orge du Stade , for example, André Obey reported with around 20 articles on the final competitions of the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris .

For his novel Le Joueur de Triangle , André Obey was awarded the Prix ​​Renaudot literary prize in the year his book was published (1928) .

The path to becoming a playwright

Parallel to his work as an author, journalist and chronicler, André Obey sought contact with stage professionals and in 1921 joined the Canard Sauvage ensemble . The ensemble consisted of young actors and authors who worked at the Nouveau Théâtre in Paris and who wanted to perform works by modern French authors in addition to their own works. In collaboration with playwright Denis Amiel , André Obey created his first dramas La souriante Madame Beudet, a play that was made into a film in 1923 , and La Carcasse . Kurt Tucholsky described in his article Der General in der Comédie - published on May 4, 1926 in Die Weltbühne - the scandal that the play La Carcasse had triggered:

“The authors have a good reputation - but this time they reached into the cider pot. A general is ridiculed in this play! "

- Kurt Tucholsky : The General in the Comédie

Two more followed, André Obey's first independent stage poems: Les Amis de la dernière Heure (1923), Trio (1924).

Of his four works, only two have been performed, and only occasionally. In his Programm de Loire , André Obey allegedly said that he had used his time with the Canard Sauvage Ensemble to get closer to the stage, and considered this approach as his internship.

During this time André Obey met the great reformer of the French theater Jacques Copeau , founder of the famous Théâtre du Vieux Colombier . In addition to his idea of ​​reforming the theater, Jacques Copeau pursued the plan to achieve the training of an actor of new character, for which he had opened the school Ecole du Vieux-Colombier . In 1925, Jacques Copeau closed his Théâtre du Vieux Colombier and moved to Burgundy . His students followed him, joined the Compagnie des Copeau and went on tour with their master. Five years after his first encounter with Jacques Copeau, André Obey met him again at a performance by the Compagnie des Copeau in 1929. André Obey was fascinated by the spectacle of the troupe, so he joined the Compagnie des Copeau . Shortly afterwards, Jacques Copeau applied for a position at the Comédie Française , which caused the ensemble to fall apart. In 1930 a new company was founded by Michel Saint-Denis , nephew and right-hand man of Jacques Codeau: the Compagnie des Quinze , which most of the members of the old troupe joined, including André Obey. This was now the official author of the troupe and pursued the same artistic ideals as their actors. He created his stage works in close cooperation with the actors. André Obey contributed six plays to the Compagnie des Quinze program , which became a worldwide success: Noé (1930), Le Viol de Lucrèce (1930), Bataille de la Marne (1931), Vénus et Adonis (1932), Loire (1933 ) and Don Juan (1933).

On January 17, 1931, the Compgane des Quinze appeared in the reopened Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier with Noé - a play in which André Obey reinterpreted the biblical story of Noah's Ark . The stage work was translated into twelve languages ​​and performed by well-known actors on well-known theaters not only in France , but throughout Europe and even the USA .

The fruitful collaboration with the ensemble represented a decisive turning point in André Obey's career: as a playwright, he found his breakthrough on the stage.

After three years of intensive and successful collaboration, the Compagnie des Quinze dissolved in 1933.

Members of the Compagnie des Quinze were Marguerite Cavadaski , Suzanne Bing, Marie Hélène Dasté, Marie Madeleine Gauthier, Auguste Bovério, Jean Dasté , Aman Maistre, Jean Villard . Michel Saint-Denis was in charge of it, while André Obey was the author.

Life as a playwright

After the Compagnie des Quinze was dissolved , André Obey devoted himself exclusively to writing plays: he worked on a number of classical texts and modern American models.

The time between the wars was difficult. The political circumstances of the time and the financial crisis after the First World War were omnipresent, and the general public was absent. André Obey's works were only published in limited editions, and not all of his adaptations of classical texts and modern American models were listed. André Obey stayed in contact with his great teacher Jacques Copeau, who maintained relationships with a wide variety of influential people from the stage scene of his time, including theater people, writers, well-known intellectuals and editors. Occasionally Jacques Copeau staged stage works by André Obey in the Comédie Française, such as Intruction au Cid : Through a kind of play, the work made the viewer aware of the author's doubts about the success of his work.

The Second World War broke out. André Obey processed the event between 1939 and 1943 in his drama La Nuit des Temps , which thematized the struggle of good against evil. Meanwhile, in 1941, André Obey wrote 800 Mètres , a piece that builds on one of his sports reports from Essey L'Orge du Stade , which André Obey had made about the final competitions of the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. Together with a revised version of Aeschylus' Suppliantes by Jacques Copeau and with the music of the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger , 800 Mètres was performed as part of an open-air event at the Stade Roland Garros . The conductor Charles Münch took over the direction .

In 1943 André Obey wrote Maria , which was controversial among the critics. At that time, André Obey held public offices: he was director of literary and dramatic programs on French radio ; he took up the post of director in the Ministry of Education; in 1945 he also held the office of administrative director at the Comédie Française . His involvement in public offices caused hostility. André Obey took a two-year career break as an author, which lasted until 1947. Because of health problems, he finally resigned as director of the Comédie Française . The year 1947 nevertheless offered him a display: André Obey was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor .

After the war, André Obey took up writing again and created a total of nine stage works up to the 1970s. His works have been translated into numerous languages, including English by Thornton Wilder .

For Les trois Coups de Minuit , on which André Obey worked for three years (1953-1956) and which is about an annual Christmas game by English villagers in the late Middle Ages, André Obey received the Prix ​​Pelman . The Pelman Institute of Paris presented him with the prize for all of his dramatic oeuvre. The aim of pelmanism was to create access to self-healing powers through mental training and to heal problems such as depression or phobias through targeted control of thoughts.

In his last play Trois Soldats Morts from 1974/1975 André Obey devoted himself to his main dramaturgical theme, death. The work contains conversations between three veterans. For the presentation of the play, André Obey planned a reading of the text with actress Marie-Hélène Dasté, eldest daughter of Jacques Copeau and member of the then Compagnie des Quinze . The reading was to take place on April 12, 1975. However, André Obey died the day before in his country house. He had left behind 27 plays, four novels, two anthologies and an unfinished work: Perséphone .

Awards

  • 1928: Prix ​​Théophraste Renaudot literary prize for his novel Le Joueur de Triangle
  • 1947: Knight of the Legion of Honor
  • 1958: Prix ​​Pelman for his play Les trois Coups de Minuit , (1953–1956) and the entire dramatic work.

Directory of literary works

Novels

  • ?: Soldier
  • 1918: Le Gardien de la Ville
  • 1920: L'Enfent Inquiet
  • 1923: Savreux Vainqueur
  • 1928: Le Joueur de Triangle

Edited volumes, essays

  • 1924: L'Orgue du Stade
  • 1926: L'Apprenti Sorcier

Plays from the period with Ensemble Canard Sauvage

  • 1921: La souriante Madame Beudet in collaboration with Denys Amiel
  • 1921: Carcasse in collaboration with Denys Amiel
  • 1923: Les Amis de la dernière Heure
  • 1924: trio

Plays from the period with the Compagnie des Quinze ensemble

  • 1930: Noé
  • 1930: Le Viol de Lucrèce. Original for the opera The Rape of Lucretia by Benjamin Britten (1946)
  • 1931: Bataille de la Marne
  • 1932: Vénus et Adonis
  • 1933: Loire
  • 1933: Don Juan

Plays from the Compagne des Quinze until the end of World War II

  • 1935/1936: Le Trompeur de Séville
  • 1937/1938: ultimatum
  • 1939: Revenu de l'Etoile
  • 1940: L'Arche de Noé reprend la Mer
  • 1940: Introduction au Cid
  • 1941: 800 meters
  • 1939/1943: La Nuit des Temps
  • 1943: Maria
  • 1945: Les Gueux au Paradis

Plays after the Second World War

  • 1947/1948: Prélude à and Faust
  • 1950/1951: Lazare
  • 1952: Un File pour Vent
  • 1953/1956: Les trois Coups de Minuit
  • 1958: La Fenêtre
  • 1969: L'Ascension du Sinaï
  • 1970: Les Retrouvailles or Le Jour du Retour
  • 1974/1975: Trois Soldats Morts

Unfinished works

  • Perséphone

literature

  • Joachim Kwaysser: Investigations into the structure of the early theater pieces André Obeys . Dissertation. Hamburg 2007 ( d-nb.info ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Smiling Madame Beudet in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  2. ↑ Edmund Stadler: Marguerite Cavadaski. Winner of the Hans Reinhart Ring in 1961 . In: Edmund Stadler (Ed.): Mimos. Announcements from the Swiss Society for Theater Culture . No. 1 . Bern 1962, p. 1 - 3 .
  3. ↑ La compagnie des quinze. In: Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. Retrieved May 2, 2018 (French).
  4. ^ Le Prix Pelman à André Obey . In: L'Avant-scène théâtre . No. 188-199 , 1959, pp. 18 .
  5. ^ Marie-Hélène Dasté (1902–1994): nom d'alliance. In: data.bnf.fr. Bibliothèque nationale de France, accessed on May 2, 2018 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Obey, André
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French playwright, author and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Douai , France
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1975
Place of death Montsoreau , France