Théâtre-Libre
Probably the single most influential theatre of the 20th Century was founded by an amateur who made his living as a clerk in the Paris Gas Company. Andre Antoine (1858-1943), a one-time bookseller's clerk, had little formal education. He had been a supernumerary at the Comédie Francaise, and had been rejected for admission as a student by the Conservatoire. In 1886, he joined an amateur theatre group call the Cercle Galois, which was run by a retired military man who owned the building in the Place Pigalle in which the rather conservative group performed. It was an unsophisticated space, described by Jules Lemaitre as "very small and naively decorated," resembling, in his words, "a concert hall of a county seat." Seating only 343, with a "stage so narrow that only the most elementary scenery can be used on it," he concluded that "scenic illusion is impossible." Still, the Théâtre-Libre became world famous as the proponent of Naturalism.

Early in 1887, Antoine suggested that the Cercle Galois present an evening of plays by new playwrights. The group reluctantly agreed provided Antoine would be responsible for the production. Antoine quickly secured four one-act plays for the evening's bill including a dramatization of Emile Zola's Jacques Damour by Leon Hénnique. The inclusion of the controversial Zola's name on the bill cause the Cercle Galois to withdraw its support, so Antoine pressed on alone and persuaded the owner to allow him to use the building using the name Théâtre-Libre ("Free Theatre" from Victor Hugo's "Theatre Set Free") so no one would blame the Cercle Galois for whatever might take place. Working feverishly, Antoine took the lead role in Zola's play; he borrowed furniture from his mother and carried it in a handcart all the way across Paris; he saw to every aspect of the production. His work might have gone unnoticed had not one of the playwrights on the bill, Paul Alexis, been a newspaperman who touted the program in his daily column; Zola himself attended a rehearsal and decided to bring a circle of friends including some critics to the premiere performance on March 30, 1887. The evening was not an unqualified success-only Zola's play was well received-but Antoine was sufficiently encouraged to stage a second program in May.

In the fall of 1887, Antoine needed money to continue, so he quit his job with the gas company and decided to launch a subscription series and to run the Théâtre-Libre as a sort of private club. This enabled him to raise his productions costs before the fact and to sidestep any difficulties he might have in licensing certain plays the government might deem objectionable. These included a number of extraordinary plays that might not otherwise have seen the light of the stage. They include Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness, Strindberg's The Father, Ibsen's Ghosts and The Wild Duck, Hauptmann's The Weavers and plays by French playwrights Georges de Porto-Riche (1849-1930), François de Curel (1854-1929), Jean Jullien (1854-1919) and Eugène Brieux (1858-1932) as well as many others.

Antoine had envisioned an eclectic theatre in which plays of all sorts would be produced, but the Théâtre-Libre instead became known as the theatre of Naturalism, especially plays known as rosserie, that is, naturalistic plays that focused on utterly corrupt characters who assumed a veneer of respectability so that the playwright might expose their hypocrisy-what one critic described as "turning over a rock to expose the maggots underneath." A most extreme example of this genre (and perhaps a precursor to the "Theatre of Cruelty" and the plays of the hyper-realists like von Horvath and Kroetz) is August Linert's Christmas Story in which a child is murdered onstage and his body thrown to the pigs, all underscored by Christmas carols. Christmas Story shocked and offended even the Théâtre-Libre's audience and was later altered so that the murder took place offstage.

As important to the Théâtre-Libre's reputation for naturalism was Antoine's production style. Having seen the famed Meiningen Players when they visited Paris and been duly impressed, Antoine produced every play as naturalistically as possible regardless of its literary style. He sometimes went to extremes as in the setting for The Butchers in 1888 when he filled the set with real carcasses of beef; or the lighting for the council of war scene in The Death of Duke of Enghien which came entirely from lanterns on the table where the council sat. Antoine also insisted on a new naturalistic acting style, attacking the artificiality of the methods taught by the Conservatoire that had rejected him. He insisted that the actors ignore the audience and remain totally behind Diderot's "fourth wall." Actors were to turn their backs on the audience if it were appropriate-which practice audiences were quick to label "Antoine's back." Critics often complained (justly, perhaps) that crowd scenes often obscured central characters and naturalistic sound effects drowned out dialogue.

From that first season until 1896, the Théâtre-Libre produced about seven programs a year of mostly one-acts, sometimes with up to three performances each. By the time it was necessary to cease operations in April of 1896, the Théâtre-Libre had presented 184 plays by about seventy different authors, many of which went on to more munificent careers with theatres that were better run financially. Antoine himself left in 1894 under a staggering load of debt and three years later, founded the Théâtre Antoine. He went on to head Paris' famed Odèon from 1906 until the outbreak of World War I. When the war ended, he became a critic, really the grand-old-man of the theatre, a role he filled happily, dispensing advice on matters artistic and managerial until his death nearly thirty years later.

The Théâtre-Libre spawned a spate of "independent" imitators, principal among them being:

Die Freie Bühne
Founded by an academic, Otto Brahm (1858-1912), the Freie Bühne ("Free Stage"), was formed in 1889 precisely to further cause of naturalistic drama and naturalistic acting. Brahm, who had earned a doctorate in 1879, soon enlisted the help of Emanuel Reicher, who was hailed as the "father of modern German acting." Unlike the Théâtre-Libre , the Freie Bühne utilized professional actors by performing only on Sundays when the professional theatres were dark. Freie Bühne first produced the early naturalistic works of Gerhart Hauptmann. It was absorbed into the "mainstream" when Brahm was named artistic director of the Deutches Theatre in 1894.

The Independent Theatre
Founded in London by Jakob T. Grein (1862-1935), a Dutch immigrant, with the expressed purpose of giving "special performances of plays which have a literary and artistic rather than a commercial value." Consciously patterned on the Théâtre-Libre and the Freie Bühne, the Independent mounted its productions on Sundays in Regular Theatres (which were dark on Sundays) and employed professional actors.

Ibsen's Ghosts had been refused a license for production, so the Independent Theatre decided to open with a production of it. When it opened on March 13, 1891, the resulting storm of controversy gave the group infinitely more publicity than it could have had any other way. Next on the bill was Zola's Therese Raquin, which was likewise greeted with much abuse.

The Independent Theatre was able to produce unlicensed plays because, like its European forebears, it had a subscription audience, so in a legal sense, it was not staging "public performances."

The most significant thing the Independent Theatre did was to launch the playwrighting career of George Bernard Shaw who was working as a critic in London at the time. In 1892, Grein, in desperate need of material, appealed to Shaw for a play. Shaw gave him Widower's Houses which he had begun in 1890. It premiered at the Royalty Theatre, establishing Shaw as a major new voice in the English-speaking theatre.

The Independent remained in existence until 1897, producing twenty-six programs of mostly foreign works.

The Incorporated Stage Society
To fill the vacuum left by the demise of the Independent Theatre, banker Frederick Whalen and a "circle of friends" founded the Incorporated Stage Society. Its first production was Shaw's You Never Can Tell (1899). It gave first performances of Shaw's Candide (with a youthful Harley Granville-Barker as the tortured young poet), Mrs. Warren's Profession and Man and Superman. It also produced a number of foreign works by authors including Tolstoy, Gorki, Chekhov, Turgenev, Brieux, Curel, Hauptmann and, of course, Ibsen.

Better run financially than its predecessor, ISS was very popular attracting 1500 odd annual subscribers by 1914. This success necessitated the addition of Monday matinees. When it finally folded in 1939 due to the War, it had presented over 200 programs.

Other similar groups included:

· Pioneers, founded in 1905. It premiered the work of John Masefield.
· New Century Theatre, which included classical works in its repertory
· Play Actors' Society, founded in 1907. PAS was analogous to the Equity Library Theatre of our own day
· The Provincetown Playhouse, which gave us Susan Glaspell and Eugene O'Neill
· The Theatre Guild, which also published the plays it produced and set up satellite theatres in several American cities.

This "independent" mindset is also responsible for the American "little theatre" movement (See
The Washington Square Players) that gave rise to our amateur "community" and professional "regional" theatres in operation in major American cities today. Many of today's regional theatres, such as the Cleveland Play House and the Pasadena Playhouse began as amateur operations and became professional as local demand made such a move feasible. This shift was partly due to the shifting theatre scene. When the Cleveland Play House was launch in 1915, for example, there were 30-odd commercial theatres in downtown Cleveland. Today, there is only one small cabaret theatre downtown. Were it not for touring productions, LORT (League of Regional Theatres) productions by CPH and the Great Lakes Theatre Festival and forty-odd not-for-profit "little" theatres, there would be no live theatre in Cleveland. In most of the country, "Commercial" theatre has been replaced by the "Independent" theatre.