Patrick Pineau
A man of the stage and head of a theatre company, Patrick Pineau has been by turns an actor and a director since he graduated from the Conservatoire national supérieur d'Art dramatique in Paris. After he began his career as an actor, with Jacques Nichet and Jean-Pierre Vincent among others, he joined in 1997 the troupe set up by Georges Lavaudant at the Théâtre national de l'Odéon. He was a member of the company until 2005, tackling classic works and contemporary writings with equal interest. He presented his first staging in 1992 with a text by Eugène Durif, Conversations sur la montagne, before taking interest in Mahmoud Darwich, Serge Sandor, Mohamed Rouabhi, Serge Valletti, Bernhard, Brecht but also Russian authors whom he felt very close to - Gorky, Chekhov and today Nikolai Erdmen. In each of his projects, he completely or partially surrounds himself with his own troupe of actors, gathering them according to casting needs.
Without these actors and friends - among them Anne Alvaro, Hervé Briaux and Sylvie Orcier -, he couldn't create the theatre he loves: a theatre based on the pleasure of acting, that blends the tragic and the comic. A generous, demanding theatre that Patrick Pineau already presented in 2004 at the Festival d'Avignon, where he premiered Peer Gynt by Ibsen in the Cour d'honneur du Palais des papes.
JFP, May, 2011.