François Darbon

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, André Clavé, who, like him, had been mobilized as a Reserve Officer Cadet. Their friendship was born through discussions about theatre, and at a time when André Clavé had temporarily set aside the troupe he had founded in 1936, the company Les Comédiens de la Roulotte, with Geneviève Wronecki-Kellershohn, Jean Desailly—then a very young amateur beginner—and 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 “simply as a writer,” and by Hélène 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, Clavé was then forced to leave his own company a year after joining a Resistance network, the Brutus network.