ABSTRACT
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 or elaboration of that text. Decroux, who wanted to exile literature from the theatre to develop exclusively the “actor art,” contrarily began with the actor on a bare stage. With the exception of two plays he prepared in 1941, in a failed attempt to gain government subsidy (Benheïm 2003: 252), Decroux always began without text.The author, he contended, lived in a different world, a “sitting down world,” while the actor inhabited a “standing up world.” The limited expectations of the former could only inhibit the latter. While the author worked exclusively with words, the actor acts with words, without them, or, usually, in spite of them.
