Étienne Decroux

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Étienne Marcel Decroux (born July 19, 1898 in Paris , † March 12, 1991 in Boulogne-Billancourt ) was a French actor and pantomime . He is considered the father of modern pantomime and a co-founder of modern body theater.

Life

Decroux began his theatrical activity in 1923 with an apprenticeship at the school of the Vieux Colombier Theater under the direction of Jacques Copeau . From 1926 he was a collaborator and student of Charles Dullin and worked under the direction of Gaston Baty , Louis Jouvet and under Antonin Artaud at the Théâtre Alfred Jarry. At the end of the 1930s he founded his own pantomime school, which existed in rue Edouard Vaillant in Boulogne-Billancourt until 1987. However, he soon closed the school again because of the Second World War. As early as 1931 he made his debut with his first sketch La vie primitive, in 1940, 1941 and 1942 others followed.

In 1943 he became a pantomime teacher at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt and directed with Jean-Louis Barrault at the Comédie-Française . From 1947 to 1951 he toured various European countries, after which he had an engagement at Cabaret Fontaine des Quatres Saisons. In the 1950s he took on other teaching and, in some cases, staging activities under Giorgio Strehler at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, at the Actors Studio and the University of New York as well as in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Norway.

In 1954 Decroux received the professorship for pantomime at the Choreographic Institute (today's Stockholm Dance School ) in Stockholm, Sweden , the only pantomime training in Scandinavia organized as part of a state university. Since he was not very sociable among the students in his function as a teacher and taught pantomime much more scientifically than his charismatic student Marcel Marceau , the professorship ended a year later. In general, Decroux was often considered stubborn and stubborn; his outbursts were as feared as the self-taught man's intelligence and learning were admired. Decroux may have been bitter about the fame of his former students Marceau and Barrault.

As a film actor, Decroux was in the film Les Enfants du Paradis (German: Children of Olympus ), in which he embodied the father of the pantomime "Baptiste" (played by Barrault), and in many others.

His students and staff included Jean Soubeyran , who ideally embodied his "mime corporel", Wolfram Mehring , who later distanced himself from him and developed his own theory and practice of the actor, Daniel Stein and Andrea Clausen and his son Maximilien (actually: Edouard ), finally also his “master student” Grillon (ie Janine Grillon ), “a brilliant all-round artist, whose talent for playing reaches from Valerio to the miserly through all roles” and who later co-founded the Théâtre de la Mandragore with Wolfram Mehring and many masks and This group created costumes.

Decroux's son Maximilien continued his father's school during his stays abroad until father and son separated by mutual agreement due to the son's growing influence, and the latter founded his own school in Paris in 1960.

effect

Until the end of his life, Étienne Decroux developed a strict and comprehensive method of physical training that he called " Mime corporel dramatique ". He had thus attempted to give pantomime its own (and the art of acting a new) language with its own grammar. With his demand: “Un homme nu sur une scène nue” long before Grotowski, he was an advocate of a “theater of poverty” in which the (trained) actor is the focus and not the surrounding area. In addition, the study in his apartment on Rue de Gergovie in the 14th arrondissement of Paris was often a performance venue for his plays and a meeting point for the French literary and theater scene.

Quote

"Only if the actor refrains from coming on stage with his body will he be able to forego studying the art of the body."

Filmography (selection)

Works

  • Étienne Decroux: Paroles sur le mime. Gallimard, Paris 1963.

literature

  • Franz Anton Cramer: The impossible body. Etienne Decroux and the search for the theatrical body. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2001.
  • Daniel Dobbels: Le silence des mimes blancs. LMAC boutique, Montreuil / Paris 2006. (Book and video DVD)
  • Thomas Leabhart: Etienne Decroux. Routledge, New York 2007.
  • Roland Matthies: Paths to a new acting training - Paths to a new theater? From the Vieux Colombier school to the Etienne Decroux and Jacques Lecoq schools. Haag and Herchen, Frankfurt 1996, ISBN 3-86137-513-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The French Wikipedia speaks of the 1940s, the English of 1962 after his return from the USA; the page of his son Maximilien Decroux from late 1940.
  2. ↑ Del Teatro on Decroux ( Memento from August 13, 2007 in the web archive archive.today ) (Italian).
  3. ↑ See also: Theaterlexikon, Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft, Berlin 1978.
  4. ↑ See also the Wikipedia articles on Decroux and Maximilien Decroux in other languages, as before.
  5. ↑ See also Wolfram Mehring: "Pariser Staging" in Coins - Germans in Paris, Bollmann-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1991, p. 45 ff, and Jean-Louis Barrault: Memories for tomorrow, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1973 P. 77 ff.
  6. ↑ See the IMDb under web links.
  7. ↑ “[...] and his son Edouard. Decroux named his boy [...] Maximilien - Robespierre in honor. ”Barrault in memories for tomorrow, p. 79.
  8. ↑ Mehring in Coins - Germans in Paris, p. 53.
  9. ↑ See Del Teatro on Decroux.
  10. ↑ Mehring in Coins - Deutsche in Paris, p. 46 ff.
  11. ↑ Quoted from Jean Soubeyran: The wordless language. Textbook of pantomime. Zurich and Schwäbisch Hall, Orell Füssli 1984.
personal data
SURNAME Decroux, Etienne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Decroux, Étienne Marcel (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French theater and film actor, is considered the father of modern pantomime
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1991
Place of death Boulogne-Billancourt