Al- Warsha Theatre Company
Egyptian troupe, founded in 1987 by Hassan El-Geretly (its artistic director). Al-Warsha (Arabic for ‘workshop’) was the first and most financially secure of the non-commercial, independent companies ...
André Breton
(1896–1966)French poet.Breton was born in Tinchebray, Orne. His early involvement with the dadaists revealed itself in such works as Mont de piété (1919); in the same year he co-founded the ...
Anthologie de l'humour noir
First published by Breton in 1940, forbidden by the Vichy regime, and republished in an augmented edition in 1966, this inventively titled collection brings together many of the Surrealists' ...
anti-play
A theatre work in which the creator sets out to subvert and counter the theatrical conventions of the day, e.g. by the use of long silences, inactivity, nonsequential plotting or ...
Antonin Artaud
(1896–1948)French actor, director, and drama theoretician, who originated the theory of the Theatre of Cruelty.Artaud was born in Marseilles and began his career as an actor. He became interested in ...
Aurélien-Marie Lugné-Poe
(1869–1940)French actor and director. His early acting carer was inauspicious, in Antoine's Théâtre Libre and Fort's Théâtre d'*Art; but at the latter he encountered the work of Maeterlinck, with ...
avant-garde
(Fr. ‘vanguard’).Term used in the arts to denote those who make a radical departure from tradition. In 20th‐cent. mus., Stockhausen may be regarded as avant‐garde, but not Shostakovich.
Cacá Rosset
(1954– )Brazilian director, actor, and television personality. With Luiz Roberto Galizia and Alice Vergueiro, Rosset founded Teatro Ornitorrinco (Platypus Theatre) in 1977. He became known for his ...
Czech Republic
A formerly communist country that had a ‘velvet revolution’ and a fairly painless transition to a market economyThe Czech Republic has two main geographical areas. The largest, to the west, is ...
Eugène Ionesco
(1912–94), playwright.The French‐Romanian playwright, an exponent of the Theatre of the Absurd, has been a favorite of Off‐Broadway companies and collegiate and regional theatres since the early ...
Fernando Arrabal
(1932– )Spanish playwright, novelist, and filmmaker. After a traumatic childhood and law studies, he moved to Paris, where he became linked with the theatre of the absurd through French versions ...
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
(1876–1944)Italianauthor best known as the founder of Futurism. He shot to international prominence when his short and provocative text ‘The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism’ was published on the ...
Gémier Firmin
(b. Aubervilliers, France, 21 Feb. 1869; d. Paris, 26 Nov. 1933)Actor, director and teacher who made his début with Antoine (Théâtre Libre, then Théâtre de l'œuvre, where he played ...
Guillaume Apollinaire
(1880–1918)French poet, prose writer, and art critic. He was a prominent figure in the avant‐garde in Paris in the years before the First World War, and an ardent supporter ...
International Centre for Theatre Research
Theatre company, founded in 1970 by Peter Brook and administrator Micheline Rozan. The centre is a multicultural theatre research and production group based since 1974 at the Bouffes du Nord ...
Jan Grossman
(1925–93)Czech director and critic, for the greater part of his life ostracized and persecuted by the communist regime. First esteemed for his intelligent criticism (including influential ...
Jean-Claude Grumberg
(b. Paris, 1939)Playwright, director and actor. Grumberg's plays combine formal experiment with social comment, exposing past and present racism and intolerance. Plays include Dreyfus (1973), En ...
Le Mercure de France
In 1724, following a government reorganization of publishing, this title was conferred on a publication whose previous names included Le Mercure français (1605), the forerunner of the periodical ...
Le Voleur
(1897).Novel by Darien. Its hero, Randal, is a bourgeois burglar, avenging crimes against his person (20 years of social programming in family, school, and barracks). Joining the criminal underworld ...
Maurice de Vlaminck
(1876–1958)French painter, who exhibited with the fauves.Vlaminck's parents were both musicians and he himself was a racing cyclist as a young man. In 1900 he met Derain and began to paint seriously, ...
