Grand Guignol
Grand Guignol [gʁɑ̃ giɲɔl] comes from French and means "big puppy ". The Guignol is the French counterpart to the puppet figure.
Grand Guignol is also a generic name for grotesque - trivial horror and horror pieces .
The Grand Guignol continued the theater of sensibility developed in the 18th century in the spirit of the Enlightenment with more direct and rabid means.
Théâtre du Grand Guignol
The Théâtre du Grand Guignol in Paris’s Pigalle entertainment district was a unique theater on Rue Chaptal from 1897 to 1962 . The former chapel was the smallest theater in Paris with 293 seats . It specialized in horror. He gave impulses to the “unleashed theater” of the modern age as well as to the splatter and horror film of the USA.
In addition to the popular horror pieces, the theater also showed various other styles. Five to six short pieces were shown every evening, including exciting thrillers and, to loosen up, mostly crude comedies, which, due to their content, were mostly considered extremely offensive for the time.
"The theater director and writers, half coquettishly, might object to being committed to a" Grand Guignol "genre, and occasionally assert that their theater is not only that of horror but also that of laughter: the comic play, the Farce, the humorous dialogue have obviously never been more than the necessary intermezzo in this theater to free the audience from the impotence of fear to the extent necessary to awaken their desire for a new dose of strong emotions. "
The playwright Oscar Méténier founded the Grand Guignol in 1897, inspired specifically by the Theater Libre by André Antoine and naturalism in general. In one evening, for example, murders and rape, ghost apparitions, epidemics and suicides were staged in detail. Max Maurey took over the management from 1898 to 1914. It was he who made the theater famous for its selection of exciting and shocking horror pieces - on average two people passed out in one performance. Maurey hired André de Lorde , a writer influenced by the psychologist Alfred Binet . Pieces like L'Homme de la Nuit , about a necrophile , or L'Horrible Passion , about a child murderer, were the result.
Paula Maxa was considered the most famous actress of the Grand Guignol . In her career from 1917 to the 1930s, she mostly played victim roles - in addition to over 3,000 rapes, she was murdered more than 10,000 times in 60 different ways.
Camille Choisy, who attached great importance to visual and acoustic special effects, directed the theater from 1914 to 1930. The play Le cabinet du Dr. Caligari , known as a film since 1919, premiered here in 1925. Jack Jouvin, director from 1930 to 1937, focused again on psychological abysses. In this interwar period, the theater experienced its best time.
When the theater had to close in 1962 due to falling attendance, the last director, Charles Nonon, said: “ We were never able to catch up with Buchenwald . Before the war, everyone knew that what happened on stage was incredible. Today we know that such things - and worse - can be true. "
While the Grand Guignol was still in bloom, British producer José Levy attempted to import the style to London. In 1920 he took over the Little Theater and showed there both translations of original pieces (including The Hand Of Death by André de Lorde) as well as independent productions. For the well-known actress Sybil Thorndike , appearances on Levy's stage marked the start of a great theater career. However, after just two years, Levy had to end his dream. The censorship by Lord Chamberlain made the project impossible, many pieces were not approved or significantly changed. Although unsuccessful, Levy received the Légion d'honneur in 1934 in recognition of his efforts to spread the Grand Guignol .
Modern Grand Guignol groups
The oldest theater group that has recently performed plays in the style of the Théâtre du Grand Guignol were the Thrillpeddlers in San Francisco, which were active for over 20 years until 2017.
The Hamburger Horrortheater , an independent theater group that has been in existence in Germany since 2011 , produces not only Grand Guignol, but also serious horror dramas, radio plays and readings.
literature
- “Maerz” (Axel Estein): “Grand Guignol”, pp. 214–228, in: Thomas Gaschler, Eckhard Vollmar: Dark Stars. 10 directors in conversation. Belleville, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-923646-50-X .
- Mel Gordon (Ed.): The Grand Guignol. Theater of Fear and Terror. Revised edition. Da Capo Press, New York NY 1997, ISBN 0-306-80806-4 ( English ).
- Richard J. Hand, Michael Wilson: Grand-Guignol. The French Theater of Horror. University of Exeter Press, Exeter 2002, ISBN 0-85989-695-1 ( English ).
Web links
- private side to Grand Guignol (English)
- Spiegel Online: Parisian horror stage - house of 1000 screams
Individual evidence
- ↑ Karin Kersten , Caroline Neubaur (ed.): Grand Guignol, the pleasure of dying a thousand deaths. France's bloody theater (= Wagenbach's pocket library. Vol. 17). Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-8031-2017-9 .