My interest in Strindberg’s theatre crystallised in the late 1970s, when I was teaching drama at the National Theatre School in Strasbourg. At that time, I was very attracted by the Ibsen-Strindberg perspective that Claude Petitpierre was developing in his performing work with students. In 1982 I opened the Training and Research Workshops of the Comédie de Caen (which he directed until 1991) with a cycle on Strindberg’s theatre, which continued for three more seasons. As a theoretical complement to those activities, also at the Comédie de Caen, I organised a seminar on Strindberg together with various specialists and translators. The event, which was complemented by the public presentation of The Road to Damascus, resulted in issue 73 of the journal Théâtre / Public.

My passion for Strindberg soon went beyond the strictly educational framework and became part of my activities as a theatre director and playwright. That was how, with the participation of the Jeune Théâtre National, I produced A Dream Play at the Comédie de Caen in 1988, an essential artistic experience for me. Other shows and adaptations followed, such as Harriet, a play about Strindberg's relationship with his third and young wife (published in Éditions Théâtrales), about love in theatre and the theatre of love.

While it is true that teaching and academic research have helped keep the Strindberg flame burning (for example, the book Théâtres intimes, Actes Sud, 1989), this flame has also been fanned by artistic experience, by a genuine multiform practice of Strindberg’s theatre. Even today, when I have just published Strindberg, l'Impersonnel ‒ an essay on Strindberg's theatre in relation to autobiographical accounts and self-fiction ‒, I am writing a new play, this time in dialogue with Opus 2 of Strindberg’s Chamber Plays, Burnt House...