ANDRÉ ANTOINE (1853-1943) Regisseur, Pioneer, Founder of the Théâtre Libre and the Independent Theatre movement

One of the most influential figures in the theatre of the twentieth century began as a frustrated amateur. In 1886 André Antoine was working at the Paris Gas Company when he became a member of a conservative Parisian amateur theatre group which called itself the Cercle Galois. Unhappy with the programming and production methods of the group, Antoine managed, after about a year, to get the group to agree to allow him to produce a program of new plays. But when they discovered that one of the plays on his first program was to include a play based on a novel by the controversial Emile Zola (famous for his participation in the prosecution of the Dreyfus affair), the Cercle withdrew its sponsorship. Undaunted, Antoine persuaded the building owner to rent him the space; he could afford rental for only a single performance, but he proceeded with his plan, and, like Shakespeare's Bottom, played the lead in one of the plays (the Zola Jacques Damour) and took on all the responsibility for production personally carting his mother's furniture across town for one of the sets. Calling his effort the Théâtre Libre, Antoine threw himself into the effort with the zeal of a passionate amateur. One of the "new" playwrights on the bill was Paul Alexis, a columnist for a Parisian daily, who publicized the program. Other papers followed suit. Zola himself attended a dress rehearsal and was sufficiently impressed to bring a group of friends to the performance March 30 1887. Only Jacques Damour was well received by the audience, but the critical response encouraged Antoine to continue and a second program which included a naturalistic one-act by Oscar Métenier called In the Family. The critics were impressed by the productions, though the plays were cooly received. Encouraged by the critical response, Antoine left the gas company for good.

In order to avoid censorship and be able to perform unlicensed and perhaps even unlicensable plays, the Théâtre Libre was a members-only, private organization. During its relatively brief existence, the Théâtre Libre presented one-hundred-eighty-four plays in sixty-two programs and introduced around seventy new authors. But financial ill-management born of artistic preoccupations doomed the project. During most of its existence, each program was performed only once. Even when the Théâtre Libre was most popular, no more than three performances were staged one of which was for a comped house. Since the theatres used were small (the largest was 800 seats), ticket revenues could never match the expenses of the high production standards demanded by Antoine and by the time he left the organization in 1894, it was in debt more than 100,000 francs. In 1897 he founded the Théâtre Antoine, where he repeated his artistic successes from the Théâtre Libre for 10 years. He was director (1906–14) of the prestigious Odéon in Paris and after World War I until his death he abandoned active production and became a critic, playing a sort of grand old man of the theatre holding forth on matters critical, dramaturgical and theoretical.

More an implementor than an innovator, Antoine led the way to popularize managerial methods and staging techniques which are still current. He trained his actors at the Théâtre Libre in his naturalistic style and sought to rid them of what he saw as the phoniness of those trained at the Conservatoire and the excesses of elocution. Though really an eclectic embracing diverse literary styles, his emphasis on naturalistic plays and technical theatre and illusionism was his most lasting legacy. He applied naturalistic staging to even verse dramas like Bergerat's Bergamasque Night which had been conceived in imitation of commedia dell Arte. Antoine's influence was very far-reaching. The Théâtre Libre became the model for the "independent theatre" movement, which spread across Europe and led to America's "little theatre" movement which evolved into our regional not-for-profit theatres. His diaries and critical writing became the blueprint for much of the staging of the twentieth century.