The theater man, creator of the foundry in Le Mans, built a unique and poetic work, off the beaten track. He died on December 7 at the age of 64.
by Brigitte Salino
A great theater man is dead. Not one of those whose names everyone knows, but one of the rares who mark a deep scene the art of the scene, because they build a unique and poetic work, off the beaten track, far from fashion , in their world. This man was called François Tanguy, he was swept away by a septicemia, Wednesday, December 7, at the hospital of Le Mans (Sarthe) at 64, while his latest creation, by Autan, is presented at the Théâtre de Gennevilliers (Hauts -de-Seine), from December 8 to 17, as part of the fall festival. Marie Collin, artistic director of the Festival from 1980 to 2022, had supported him throughout her career, who was not one. It was a journey, and this journey had a base, the foundry, in Le Mans.
It would be necessary, if this has never been done, that a filmmaker films this place, installed in a former Renault garage, to leave a testimony to what the lair of a “theater angel” can be, To use Stanislas Nordey’s word. Four thousand square meters, workshops, kitchens, bedrooms and rooms with long tables and heterogeneous objects. It was there, in what he called his “port”, that François Tanguy welcomed you. Large, brown and beautiful, with an extraordinarily present look and a lively word, nourished by quotes that the director drew from the books that will have accompanied all his life.
The first was reported to him from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) by his aunt. He focused on Bertolt Brecht’s spectacle rehearsals, and there were photos. “I was watching that. I was 8 years old,” he said to us during a visit. Born in 1958, François Tanguy had a father secretary of a technical college in the Parisian suburbs, who was part, with his aunt, of an amateur theater group close to Jacques Lassalle (1936-2018), the director of the new studio- Theater of Vitry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne). The group repeated in the college cellar. “They did not do theater in the sense that we can hear it. They focused on a problem,” remembered François Tanguy.
Homage to the boards
He was not asked how he had formed. He was naturally director, and was definitely when he met the raft team, founded in 1977. It was in 1982. Three years later, the team settled in Le Mans, the city From the actress Laurence Chable, the soul of the troop. It was at the foundry that François Tanguy’s creations were born. Without establishing a calendar or yielding to production imperatives. The raft takes the time it takes to repeat, and leaves its “port” when a show is ready. In thirty years, there are about twenty: mystery food, Faust game, Woyzeck-Büchner Fraine Fragments, singing of the goat, choral, eleventh, passim… François Tanguy signs the staging and the scenographies. For some, he “cost the light and the sound”, as one of his loved ones nicely specifies.
You have 30.51% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.