ABSTRACT
The experiments made in the Vieux-Colombier School soon led away from the theatre as a place in which to make theatre. In the meantime Copeau's public work had been bound up with a building which, to most of his audience, was synonymous with it. His preference was forthe "amateur" who wentto see the Vieux-Colombier's
latest offering, rather than the follower of fashion buying a ticket for Cope au's latest show. At the Vieux-Colombier, the public could encounter poets through the medium of theatre, not Copeau via one of his productions. There would have been no probity in his demanding ensemble, ego-free performances from his actors in order to further the enhancement of his own reputation. As we have seen, his view of the actors currently available to the medium was not patient, but he made no attempt in his productions to disguise their shortcomings; to have done so would have been to compromise his own belief in honesty of presentation. His productions were, nevertheless, quite distinctive, and in chapter five I will attempt to reconstruct some of the qualities which made them so. First, some preliminary archaeological
observations need to be made. The Vieux-Colombier was small, not solely for reasons of economy, but because
Copeau had sought out a theatre with an architectural volume that would place the actor's body in spaces that were proportionate to it. The lines of force coming from the composition and movement of human bodies in the playing space needed to meet the actual architecture of the building in such a way that the spectator's eye would be brought back to the action rather than slip on to its background decoration. During his American exile he had reiterated one of the fundamentals of his first manifesto:
In 1922, two American scenic designers, Kenneth MacGowan and Robert Edmond Jones, made a ten-week tour through Europe to examine new developments in theatre. Their intention was not merely to admire the scenery, but to appraise the ideas which informed it. In search of inspiration for the future development of American theatre they made pilgrimages to wherever it might be found-even to a theatre which actively denied their own art except in its most elementary forms. Indeed, their visit to Paris centred on their attendances at the Vieux-Colombier. After
their peregrination round the state theatres of Germany they were immediately struck by the differences in philosophies of dimension:
52 JACQUES COPEAU
They understood the practical, not to say pragmatic, attitude that had informed Copeau's original choice of building, as a result of which he was now
They appreciated the financial constraints under which the Vieux-Colombier Company was working and, importantly, made the further perception that there was no question of virtue being made of necessity, rather of necessity itself becoming
recognised as the basis of the actor-spectator relationship. It was by virtue of this recognition that honest "presentational" ads of theatre were taking place:
This playing "to and with" was the basis of the style demanded of the actor by the
presentational nature of the auditorium to stage relationship:
The picture-frame had, much to the distress of the owner of the building, been
covered over in 1913 in order to blot out its gilded plasterwork. In 1919 it was ripped out altogether. Today that removal would be seen as a self-evident improvement to such a narrow building: indeed most directors and designers would regard it as an
obstacle to even those illusions for which it was intended. But in 1919 the field of vision left by its absence was in itself a manifesto, a constant visible reminder to actor
and spectator alike that they had business together. Whichever side of the nonexistel}t foot\ights you stood, an indelible impression was left on your sensibility:
The forestage as described by Michel Saint-Denis was not so large in the original
1913 conversion, nor was the whole stage open to view. It had been done by an architect, Francis Jourdain (a friend of Gaston Gallimard, the first editor of the NRF). The decision not to consult with a scenic designer was quite deliberate. For reasons of time, money, proprietorial caution and his own and Copeau' s inexperience, this first
conversion of the Athenee St-Germain did not aspire to be as radical as the second. They knew what they wanted to transform it from, but only in the light of actual experience of using it, and of encounters with other ideas and another space, did it
become evident to Copeau what it should be transformed to. In that first essay, the auditorium was shipped and the side boxes blanked off. Then a small forestage was added, flanked with arches in a black-painted framework, thus reducing the impact of the proscenium arch as frame to the action. The resulting effect was of severe, almost geometrical lines which demanded the complement of organic shapes and vivid colours-in other words, actors in costume. Further upstage, however, curtains were
still used to create spatial limitations: these too were to be disposed of in 1919, in favour of a fixed staging.
