François Darbon
Acting
François Darbon is a French actor, director, and writer. In 1938, François Darbon began his first theatrical experiences in Tunis. With a company of amateur actors, he performed for three evenings at the municipal theatre. The following day, nostalgic for those nights on stage, he decided to make it his profession. In September 1939, during his military service near Biarritz, he met the man he would never leave, AndrĂ© ClavĂ©, who, like him, had been mobilized as a Reserve Officer Cadet. Their friendship was born through discussions about theatre, and at a time when AndrĂ© ClavĂ© had temporarily set aside the troupe he had founded in 1936, the company Les ComĂ©diens de la Roulotte, with GeneviĂšve Wronecki-Kellershohn, Jean Desaillyâthen a very young amateur beginnerâand a few others. François Darbon would meet them again in September 1940 to perform La paix chez soi. The following month, the troupe joined the Jeune France movement, and they finally began a life as professional actors. They were joined in February 1941 by Jean Vilar, who agreed to come to La Roulotte âsimply as a writer,â and by HĂ©lĂšne Gerber, both students of Charles Dullin. Thanks to financial support from Jeune France, the troupe went on a theatrical tour through central France during the summer of 1941. In the summer of 1942, La Roulotte set off again, touring Brittany and central France, but this time without subsidies, as Jeune France had been dissolved at the end of winter. For security reasons, ClavĂ© was then forced to leave his own company a year after joining a Resistance network, the Brutus network. François Darbon used the final years of the war to study under Charles Dullin. After the war, he reunited with AndrĂ© ClavĂ©. Having returned from the Nazi camps of Buchenwald and Dora, ClavĂ© was asked in 1946 by Jeanne Laurent to reconstitute his troupe, Les ComĂ©diens de la Roulotte, to conduct exploratory tours. She later asked him to replace Roland PiĂ©tri as director of the Centre Dramatique de lâEst in Colmar. Darbon took part in all these ventures until the end of December 1952, when Michel Saint-Denis replaced ClavĂ©. Darbon and ClavĂ© then founded the ClavĂ©-Darbon Company together and performed in France and Germany until 1955, when AndrĂ© ClavĂ© was forced to leave the theatre to pursue other paths. François Darbon then followed a more solitary path, working from production to production and film to film. He would nonetheless cross paths with ClavĂ© againâboth men bound by unwavering loyaltyâwhen ClavĂ© asked him to train African radio announcers in diction at the school he directed, the Studio-Ăcole (a school created by Pierre Schaeffer in preparation for decolonization). At 25, Darbon married the lovely Nathalie Manoyloff, of Russian origin. They had a daughter, Sophie. Sophie Darbon is an author, actress, and director like her father. She recently published a childrenâs tale, Sotisette Planplan et la clĂ© des fĂ©es, with Edilivre, dedicated to her parents.
