Before the end of the year he made his theatrical debut with Humulus le muet, a collaborative project with Jean Aurenche. Giraudoux was an inspiration to Anouilh and, with the encouragement of the acclaimed playwright, he began writing again in 1929. Jouvet had risen to fame in the early 1930s through his collaborations with the playwright Giraudoux, and together the two worked to shift focus from the authorial voice of the director (which had dominated the French stage since the early twentieth century) back to the playwright and his text. Though Anouilh's boss had happily lent him some of the set furniture left over from the production of Jean Giraudoux's play Siegfried to furnish his modest home, the director was not interested in encouraging his assistant's attempts at playwriting. Theatre work Īt the age of 25, Anouilh found work as a secretary to the French actor and director Louis Jouvet at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées. Determined to break into writing full-time, he began to write comic scenes for the cinema to supplement their income. Anouilh's growing family placed further strain on his already limited finances. In spite of this, Anouilh and Valentin had a daughter, Catherine, in 1934 who followed the pair into theatre work at an early age. According to Caroline, Anouilh had learned that his mother had had a lover at the theatre in Arcachon who was actually his biological father. The infidelity weighed heavily on the dramatist as a result of the uncertainty about his own parentage. She allegedly had multiple extramarital affairs, which caused Anouilh much pain and suffering. Anouilh's youngest daughter Colombe even claims that there was never an official marriage between Anouilh and Valentin. Though Valentin starred in many of his plays, Anouilh's daughter Caroline (from his second marriage), claims that the marriage was not a happy one. Supported by only his meager conscription salary, Anouilh married the actress Monelle Valentin in 1931.

Īnouilh's financial troubles continued after he was called up to military service in 1929. He liked the work, and spoke more than once with wry approval of the lessons in the classical virtues of brevity and precision of language he learned while drafting advertising copy. He earned acceptance into the law school at the Sorbonne but, unable to support himself financially, he left after just 18 months to seek work as a copywriter at the advertising agency Publicité Damour. Jean-Louis Barrault, later a major French director, was a pupil there at the same time and recalls Anouilh as an intense, rather dandified figure who hardly noticed a boy some two years younger than himself. In 1918 the family moved to Paris where the young Anouilh received his secondary education at the Lycée Chaptal. The Lycée Chaptal, at the corner of rue de Rome and the boulevard des Batignolles

He first tried his hand at playwriting here, at the age of 12, though his earliest works do not survive. He often attended rehearsals and solicited the resident authors to let him read scripts until bedtime. Marie-Magdeleine worked the night shifts in the music-hall orchestras and sometimes accompanied stage presentations, affording Anouilh ample opportunity to absorb the dramatic performances from backstage.

He may owe his artistic bent to his mother, Marie-Magdeleine, a violinist who supplemented the family's meager income by playing summer seasons in the casino orchestra in the nearby seaside resort of Arcachon. His father, François Anouilh, was a tailor, and Anouilh maintained that he inherited from him a pride in conscientious craftmanship. Life and career Early life Īnouilh was born in Cérisole, a small village on the outskirts of Bordeaux, and had Basque ancestry.

3.1 Original theatre productions: Paris.

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