ABSTRACT
Several years ago, while researching my book Michel Saint-Denis and the Shaping of the Modern Actor, I went to the bilingual National Theatre School of Canada (co-founded by Saint-Denis) to observe classes and interview faculty and students. Standing outside the building named for Saint-Denis, a French acting teacher asked me, ‘C’était qui Michel Saint-Denis?’ (Who was Michel Saint-Denis?) As Saint-Denis’s biographer, the irony was not lost on me. During his lifetime, Michel Saint-Denis (1897-1971) was a peripatetic theatrical luminary whose work had a profound effect on the theatres of France, Canada, the US, and most especially England. Yet a generation after his death, Saint-Denis was slipping out of history. It is a commonplace that a theatre practitioner’s work is ephemeral, that unlike most other forms of art a theatrical creation is collaborative, ever changing, and lasts only as long as its run. And of all the artistic contributors to a theatrical production, the director’s work is perhaps the most diffi cult to recapture, evaluate, or even discern. Even today in a period of celebrity directors, reviews tend to focus more on the playwright and/or the actors, whose input may seem more salient.
