Jacques Nichet was born in Albi in 1942. In 1965, he founded the Théâtre de l'Aquarium at the ENS, which he ran until 1968. In 1970, he brought together a group of artists (including Jean-Louis Benoît and Didier Bezace) under the same name. In 1973, the Théâtre de l'Aquarium moved to the Cartoucherie de Vincennes at the invitation of Ariane Mnouchkine. There, they invented a political theater that was both inventive and joyful(Marchands de ville, 1972; Le journal d'un homme normal, 1973; La jeune lune tient la vieille lune toute une nuit dans ses bras, 1976; Flaubert, 1980). In 1983, Jacques Nichet directed a feature film, La Guerre des Demoiselles. From 1986 to 1998, he directed the Théâtre des Treize Vents, Centre dramatique national de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, where he staged plays by authors as diverse as Federico García Lorca, Denis Diderot, Javier Tomeo, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Eduardo De Filippo, Giovanni Macchia and Serge Valletti. He presented Aimé Césaire's La Tragédie du roi Christophe at the Festival d'Avignon in 1996. In 1998, Jacques Nichet took over as director of the Théâtre national de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, where he continued his work directing contemporary authors (Serge Valletti, Daniel Keene, Daniel Danis, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Svetlana Alexievitch, Georges Perec, Dario Fo) and classical authors (Horváth, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Erdman, Leopardi). In 2007, he left the TNT, which he had directed since 1998. In 2008, he founded the L'Inattendu company and staged two shows, Le Collectionneur d'instants by Quint Buchholz and La Ménagerie de verre by Tennessee Williams.
Jacques Nichet died on July 29, 2019 in Toulouse.
