The actor, director and playwright died on May 6 at the age of 95. In 1965 he founded the famous “popular theatre” in the city of Seine-Saint-Denis located northwest of Paris.
Director Gabriel Garran, writer, poet and actor, founder of the Théâtre de la Commune d’Aubervilliers and the Théâtre International de Langue Française, died at the age of 95, we learned on Saturday from his surroundings.
«The disappearance of Gabriel Garran leaves all those who proclaimed themselves orphans the children of Aubervilliers as well as several generations of artists who were able to find with the one who called himself a «archangelet» a deep artistic and popular filiation“, pay tribute to his relatives in a press release, written in particular by his administrator Jean-Jacques Hocquard. He died on Friday May 6 in Paris.
«Gabriel Garran was a great lord of French theater“, reacted on Facebook the former Minister of Culture Jack Lang, saying to himself”very sad to learn of his passing».
Real name Gabriel Gersztenkorn, Gabriel Garran was born in 1927 in Paris to a couple of Polish Jews. When war broke out, his father was deported to Auschwitz where he died. Gabriel Garran is forced to flee the Occupation with the rest of his family and to practice various trades under a false identity, according to those around him.
After the Liberation, he became an animator and discovered the theater. His meeting with Jack Ralite, elected communist mayor of Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis), inspired him to plan the first permanent popular theater in the suburbs, with the creation in 1965 of the Théâtre de la Commune d’Aubervilliers, promoted to Center Dramatique National, which he directed for 20 years.
In 1985, he then created the Théâtre International de Langue Française dedicated to French-language authors throughout the world, which he directed for 13 years, before creating his last company in 2005, Le Parloir Contemporain, with the aim of creating a meeting point between literature, theater and poetry, according to the press release.
Gabriel Garran wrote two plays, The color of bread et The Laughter of the Foolan autobiographical novel French Geographyan adaptation Tulip or the Protest and more than 1,000 poems, most of which are unknown to readers or published in the form of collections, recalls those around him.
Revealing through his staging of many talents, including in particular African, North African and Quebec authors and artists unknown in France, Gabriel Garran was awarded in 2015 the Great Medal of Francophonie by the French Academy.