Christian Biet (1952–2020)

It is with immense sadness that we announce the sudden passing of the president of the Hybridités France-Chine Association: Christian Biet. A specialist in 17th-century literature, the history of theater, and the performing arts, he was a professor in the Performing Arts Department of the University of Paris-Nanterre and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. Since 2013, Christian had traveled regularly to China—to Beijing (Central Academy of Drama of China, China Art Institute, Communication University of China), to Shanghai (Shanghai Theatre Academy, Fudan University, Shanghai Normal University), to Nanjing (Nanjing University), to Wuhan (Wuhan University), and recently to Hong Kong (Hong Kong Baptist University)—for conferences, seminars, debates, and theater workshops. He watched performances, attended rehearsals, and met with artists. He created exchanges between French and Chinese universities: student exchanges between the two countries and co-supervision of dissertations. He edited two issues devoted to Chinese theater in France: Contemporary Chinese Theater in the journal Théâtre public in 2013, and Chinese-Language Theaters, Contemporary Perspectives in the Revue d’Histoire du théâtre in 2016 (following the international conference on Chinese-Language Theaters in Paris). He founded the Hybridités France-Chine association in France in 2014. He has taught Chinese theater with Wang Jing in the Non-European Theater course at the University of Nanterre since 2015. He had been a member of the artistic committee of the Wuzhen Festival in China since 2019. The last conference he organized on China was “Dialogues between East Asian Theater and European Theater (1): 17th-Century Performance in China and Europe”; this conference was scheduled for May 2020 at the Comédie-Française and was postponed because of COVID… His principal works: – Droit et littérature sous l’Ancien Régime, le jeu de la valeur et de la loi (Champion, 2002). – Le Miroir du Soleil (Découverte Gallimard, 1989 and 2000), – Œdipe en monarchie, tragédie et théorie juridique à l’Âge classique (Klincksieck, 1994) – Racine ou le Passion des larmes (Hachette, 1996), – La Tragédie (Armand Colin, 1997; repr. 2010), – Henri IV, la vie, la légende (Larousse, 2000), – Cartouche et les voleurs et de Legrand (Lampasque, 2003). – Qu’est-ce que le théâtre ? (Gallimard, 2006; with C. Triau) – La question du répertoire au théâtre (Littératures classiques, no. 95/2018) – Tragédies et récits de martyres en France (late 16th–early 17th century), with Marie-Madeleine Fragonard (Classiques Garnier, 2009) – Théâtre de la cruauté et récits sanglants. En France (16th–17th century) (R. Laffont, 2006).