ABSTRACT
When most directors ask “What play shall I produce?” or “What work of literature shall I adapt for the stage?” their primary job becomes the interpretation, elucidation, or elaboration of that text. Decroux, on the other hand, expelling literature from the theatre to develop exclusively the “actor art,” began with the actor on a bare stage. With the exception of two plays that he prepared in 1941, in a failed attempt to gain government subsidy (Benhaïm 2003: 252), Decroux always began without text. The author, he contended, lived in a “sitting down world” whose limited expectations could only inhibit the actor-citizen of the “standing up world.” Whereas the author works exclusively with words, the actor acts with words, without them, or, usually, in spite of them.
