French playwright and former entrepreneur Michel Vinaver died in Paris on Sunday at the age of 95, his daughter, actress Anouk Grinberg, told Agence France-Presse.
Son of an antique dealer and a lawyer, Michel Vinaver – Grinberg of his real name – has for nearly 30 years led a double life: executive then director of the Gillette group and playwright.
He first wrote two novels before coming to the theater in 1955, two years after his hiring at Gillette. “I had ruled out from the outset to depend on my literary production to live,” he confided to AFP in 2015.
His first plays Corean people — created by Roger Planchon in 1956 — and The ushershave nothing to do with the executive life of the father of four children.
“I had set myself a ban: not to talk about me and my work,” he told AFP. After a few parts, it’s the breakdown. “I came out of it by lifting this taboo. ” He writes Overboard : the story of the absorption of a French family company by an American multinational.
From then on, the company took a central place in the work of the man who would be nominated three times for the Molière (awards dedicated to theatre) and winner of the Grand Prix du Théâtre of the French Academy in 2006.
Thereby, Works and Days takes place in the service department of a coffee grinder manufacturer. In The job application, the main character is an unemployed executive. In the ordinarywhich entered the repertoire of the prestigious Comédie-Française in 2009, the president of a multinational, his wife, his secretary and four vice-presidents survive a plane crash in the Andes mountain range.