Alain-René Lesage
(1668–1747)French playwright and novelist. Lesage went to Paris about 1690, writing comedies adapted from Spanish plays by Rojas and Lope de Vega. His first real successes came in 1707 ...
Alfred de Musset
(1810–57)French poet and dramatist. The youngest and most original of the romantic playwrights, Musset was little performed in his lifetime. After the failure of La Nuit vénitienne (1830), many ...
Antoine Vitez
(b. Paris, 20 Dec. 1930; d. Paris, 30 April 1990)Actor, director and teacher. A student of Russian and Greek, he became a communist, wrote for Bref, the journal of ...
Armand Gatti
(1924– )French writer and director. Gatti at 17 was deported to a labour camp in Germany; the image of the concentration camp appears in several of his works. An ebullient ...
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 ...
Avignon Festival
Founded by Jean Vilar in 1947, as part of the decentralizing of French theatre. Vilar, director of the Théâtre National Populaire (1951–63), continued to develop the Festival until his death ...
centres dramatiques
Theatres throughout France that receive state and municipal funding so that the regions need not rely on touring companies bringing hits from Paris. The decentralization idea was encouraged by Gémier ...
Christian Schiaretti
(1955– )French director. A student of philosophy as well as theatre, Schiaretti was named director of the Comédie de Reims in 1991, the youngest director ever to administer a national ...
collectives and collective creation
Organizational structure for theatre companies and creative process for devising, both emphasizing group dynamics with a non-hierarchical structure. Theatre is at its roots a community and collective ...
Comédie-Française
The French national theatre (used for both comedy and tragedy), in Paris, founded in 1680 by Louis XIV, and reconstituted by Napoleon I in 1803. It is organized as a cooperative society in which each ...
Daniel Sorano
(1920–62),French actor, one of the finest of his day, who began his career with the Grenier de Toulouse, one of the Centres Dramatiques, which in 1965 celebrated its 20th ...
design
Dance is a visual artform and the design of the stage and of the dancers' costumes naturally plays a major role in establishing the style and tone of any work. Narrative works may depend heavily on ...
Dublin Theatre Festival
Created in 1957, this annual Irish event was fraught with controversy in its early years. Protests and arrests surrounded Alan Simpson's production of Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo at the ...
Edinburgh Festival
An international festival of the arts held annually in Edinburgh since 1947. In addition to the main programme a flourishing fringe festival has developed.
finance
Theatre has always been more than a performance by people for people: someone has to pay for the activity, with cash or its equivalent in gifts of time and labour. ...
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 ...
Gérard Philipe
(1922–59)French actor. Often considered one of the finest of his generation, and elevated to cult status after his untimely death from cancer, Philipe starred in many acclaimed films after ...
Independent Theatre
Private society founded by Grein in London in 1891. Its name advertised imitation of Antoine's Théâtre Libre (1887) in Paris and Brahm's Freie Bühne (1889) in Berlin. Like Brahm, the ...
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 ...
Jacques Lecoq
(1921–99)French teacher and theorist. Beginning as a teacher of physical education, Lecoq became one of the world's most influential theatre teachers in the second half of the twentieth century. ...
