ABSTRACT
Armand Gatti, French playwright, was born in Monaco of Italian parents in 1924. There his father, an anarchist, was killed in an incident with the police. Gatti left school at eleven. During the occupation he was sentenced to death for working with the resistance, escaped abroad from a German labour camp, and was parachuted back into France at Arnhem. After the war he turned to playwriting. His admiration for Piscator showed itself in his preference for an ‘exploded theatre’ that could explore social and political realities from numerous angles. The Imaginary Life of the Roadsweeper Auguste G. is not imaginary in the sense of fictitious. It draws on memories of Auguste Gatti, his father, and of Gatti’s birthplace, an immigrant workers’ shanty-town. It was first staged in 1962 at the Theatre de la Cité, set up in Villeurbanne, a working-class suburb of Lyon, under Roger Planchon, shortly to succeed Vilar as director of the Theatre National Populaire. It transferred to the Odéon in Paris, where 300 members of the roadsweepers’ union were invited to a performance. They left without comment. A week later, Gatti and company were asked back to the Trades’ Union Centre and given a presentation set of miniature implements. They pressed their hosts to say what they thought of the play. Gatti’s recollections date from 1987.
