Romain Bouteille, in April 2017. – Henri Collot / SIPA
He was a figure of the beginnings of the café-theater in France. Romain Bouteille, co-creator of the Parisian Café de la Gare, died on Monday. He was 84 years old. He “died in the evening at Corbeil-Essonnes hospital. For some time he had had kidney failure. It was respiratory failure that prevailed, ”informed his wife, Saïda Churchill, herself an actress and cultural programmer from the city of Etampes (Essonne).
Born in 1937, Romain Bouteille was one of the heralds of libertarian and anarchist theater. He wrote around thirty plays and dozens of sketches performed in a troupe or solo. Comedian, Romain Bouteille has also appeared in numerous television series such as Green grapes by Jean-Christophe Averty and The Holy Darlings by Jean Becker with Micheline Presle.
“Neither real work, nor obedience”
In the cinema, Romain Bouteille shot around thirty feature films under the direction of Louis Malle, Jean Girault, Michel Audiard, Jules Dassin, Jacques Demy… In 2011, he was showing at the theater of All’s well That ends well by Shakespeare in a production by Pierre Beffeyte. “My artistic vocation took shape around 1955 from the angle: finding a job that allows you to get up at any time and does not require a diploma, no real work, or obedience,” he said in 2005.
The Café de la Gare, “the first and last theater in real anarchy” according to Romain Bouteille, opened in June 1969 in the premises of a former Passage d’Odessa factory, near the Montparnasse station in Paris. The team gathers around Romain Bouteille and the young Michel Colucci, who will know fame under the name of Coluche, a band of aspiring actors, many of whom will be successful, like Miou-Miou or Patrick Dewaere.
“What he didn’t teach me I stole from him”, said Coluche.
Having become too small, the theater moved in 1972 to a larger premises, rue du Temple. Coluche then left the “Café” and said of Romain Bouteille: “what he did not teach me, I stole from him”. “We are devastated to learn of the death of Romain Bouteille. Words fail us for the moment. They will undoubtedly come later. For now, our thoughts are with his wife Saïda and his son ”, tweeted Le Café de la Gare.
For Pierre Lescure, president of the Cannes Film Festival and former president of Canal +, Romain Bouteille was “a revolutionary creative, the perfect balance of the soloist who loves nothing as much as the troupe (…) an impeccable human being”. “Romain Bouteille was a kind of nonsense genius. He also had the one to give a damn about fame. I admired him a lot. And I am very sad ”, for his part
reacted Pierre Richard.