Luc Bondy, director of the Odeon Theatre of Europe, died – The World

Le Monde | 11/28/2015 at 1:31 p.m. • Updated 29/11/2015 at 24:08 | By Brigitte Salino

The news came, Saturday, November 28, and a veil of sadness descended on the theater director Luc Bondy, director of the Odéon- Theatre of Europe, died of pneumonia, that morning in Zurich, to 67 years. We knew the sick, but the disease was part of her life, she accompanied him for so many years, and he overcame so it seemed like a phoenix, reborn always. In July, he had gone to Switzerland to heal.

He had to stage Othello , Shakespeare, from late January. He was pushed back to the next season the show he spoke beautifully, as always when he was preparing a creation. It was a bird with paradise of colors, in the words of his friend Peter Stein, with whom he worked at the Schaubühne of Berlin in the 1980s: a multiple man, changeable, bright, limpid and elusive. His theater like him twirling of life, eager to desire, tinged with fleeting shadows, one of which was that of History

Luc Bondy belonged to a Jewish family after the Mitteleuropa.. His grandfather, Fritz Bondy, had directed the theater in Prague. His father, François Bondy, journalist and intellectual, fled to Zurich to escape Nazism. This is where Luc Bondy is born, July 17, 1948. But it was in France that he spent most of his childhood and adolescence.

Glory the Schaubühne

After being trained in the school of Jacques Lecoq, he left for Germany in 1969 and began working in the theater. Witkiewicz, Ionesco, Fassbinder, Büchner and Goethe among the first authors he staged in Göttingen, Hamburg, Nuremberg or Düsseldorf. His style distinguishes him, his fame grew quickly. It leads to the early 1980s at the Schaubühne in Berlin, the largest stage in Europe.

The Schaubühne is a collective that brings together several directors, including Peter Stein and Klaus-Michael Gruber, two exceptional figures, with radically different styles, and actors of first magnitude: Bruno Ganz, Jutta Lampe, Edith Clever, Otto Sander, Angela Winkler … It is also, in the orbit of the Schaubühne, the playwright Botho Strauss, who writes for the troupe. It becomes a theater companion and a friend, Luc Bondy, who created several of his pieces ( Kalldewey , The Guide , Time and Room …) in the 1980
In those years, he made his debut in France, where the invites Patrice Chéreau, who heads the Theatre Nanterre-Amandiers. His first creation, Foreign Earth , by Arthur Schnitzler in 1984, is an event that marked the decade. Rediscovery of an author, finding a director

His appointment at the Odeon Theatre of Europe is controversial

From this point, Luc Bondy is divided between Paris and Berlin. Always between two planes, two projects, several lives. His friendships are many dating his thirst never dries up, its read appetite, fueled by insomnia is unquenchable: wherever he goes, he has a book in his hand, that he often gives, when the read. Sometimes the disease slows, he talks about it, puts it in life, he continues, is expanding its circle staged, cities, functions. From 1985 to 1987 he succeeded Peter Stein in the direction of the Schaubühne Berlin. From 2003-2013, he led the Wiener Festwochen, the prestigious Vienna Festival. In March 2012, the announcement of his appointment at the Odeon Theatre of Europe, in Paris, replacing Olivier Py, raises a big controversy.

Luc Bondy made front. It’s always forehead, in his way. Either by the attack, either by dodging. He’s keen intelligence, and he knows the strength of his art, making it one of the first directors in Europe, theater and opera, where he signed anthology productions, especially The Tour nut (Benjamin Britten music) or Julie ( Philippe Boesmans).

On his way in the years 1990 and 2000, there is Peter Handke, Ibsen, Guitry, Racine, Beckett, Yasmina Reza, Martin Crimp, Ionesco, Marivaux, Molière … Luc Bondy liked varied genres, and would have liked give a coat of arms to the theater says boulevard. We could stop at many of its stagings. Each had a color. All were based primarily on distributions, as Luc Bondy chosen with extreme care. He also said that when the choice of actors was done, 80% of the work was

This course was both true and false, as everything he said. Value its about standing at the moment in which he expressed them. They were ephemeral, like the theater, Luc Bondy was not looking to revolutionize. He lived in the manner of a house where everything vibrates, any noise, shouts or whispers, cries or love. This is what was beautiful in his staging. Hear and feel all palpitements of life

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