Jacques Copeau

	Portrait of Jaques-Dalcroze

Copeau’s family belonged to French lower middle class. By hard work and prudent life, they managed to increase their social status and their welfare. This allowed Jacques Copeau, born in 1879, to enjoy an upperclass education at the Lycée Condorcet where he received lessons from, among others, the symbolist poet Mallarmé. He proved to be an excellent student and wished to continue his studies. His father wanted him to take over the family business, a factory in Charlesville but Copeau found absolute horror in the idea. He loathed middle class entrepeneur-mentality; his love was the world of art and theatre. As a child, his grandfather, who worked as a claque at the Comédie Francaise, had introduced him to the Paris leading acting company. At the Condorcet, the young Copeau had written a play that was performed and even got a positive remark from the severe critic Sarcey.

Because of his good prospects, Copeau was allowed to pursue higher studies. He left for Paris to prepare himself for the Ecole Normale Supérieure. Officially, he received lessons in philosophy and literature, but in fact, he spent more time in the theatres – he is said to have spent a lot of nights at the Théâtre Libre and the Thëâtre de l’Oeuvre.

Copeau went to Denmark in 1901, the year his father died. He married a Danish girl, Agnes Thomsen. He remained there for a while, teaching French. Copeau eagerly followed the cultural developments in his own country and whenever he had the oppurtunity, he travelled back to Paris. On these occasions, he proved to be an ardent visitor of the theatre. He was forced to return to France in 1903 and to take over the factory in Charlesville. The factory faced bankrupcy within two years time, so Copeau returned to Paris in 1905. He got a job at the Galerie Georges Petit and spent his days among artists, writers and people from the theatre. Among his close friends were such men as André Gide, Theo van Rysselberghe, Charles Dullin, Louis Jouvet and Roger Martin du Gard. During these years, he developed a strong vision on the art of the theatre.

Copeau was very critical of the contemporary theatre, the so-called boulevard theatre (venues located along Paris’ wide boulevards). In this type of theatre, the public was served ‘well made plays’ – the middle class drama of the nineteenth century, characterised by a tight storyline based on the logics of cause and consequence, and a strong moral  – in middle-class interior scenery. These well-made plays always confirmed the public values and opinions; they were a reflection of bourgeois society. Copeau loathed the practice of the theatremanagers who only ventured to please the audience – they served the public what it demanded. He found the public taste degenerate – there was an increasing interest for sensation on the stage, and sex and violence. He thought this was a highly hypocrite tendency: the public wanted to see what socially, and in the play’s endings, was condemned for being wrong and immoral.

According to Copeau, the theatre had to enlighten the human spirit, an idea vaguely reminiscent of Wagner. Producers and actors, said Copeau, had to look for a fundamental ‘human truth’ in their work. This certainly was not to be found in homely theatre that revolved around the pathetic problems of everyday life. The Truth was to be found in a new type of theatre: the naked stage, devoid of any refences to contemporary materialistic life. Art had to transcend the mimetic, the level of imitation. True art was autonomous.

The theatre Copeau criticised, was a typical product of the bourgeoisie. It reflected a way of life that promoted commercial, materialistic values over spiritual ones. It was a commercial venture produced by middle class entrepreneurs for middle class entrepreneurs. A performance had to raise profits, hence had to entertain the public, and consequently had to revolve around effect, sensation, and surprise. Above all, it had to be recognisable: the themes had to be understandable for a broad range of people. Copeau himself had something very different in mind. He wanted to found a theatre that would transcend the level of the senses and unite the performers and the spectators on a spiritual plane. It was an almost religeous vision he had: ‘to combine one’s substance with an axiomatic form, to join (…) an impersonal brotherhood’ (Brown, 1980, 194). The axiomatic form was the performance. The words of the drama were the core of the production but the director had to make use of every theatrical element to create harmony on the stage.

To Copeau, the realisation of this theatre would become a quest, a matter of the utmost importance and he would devote a big part of his life to it. He worked on different levels: to realise his ideas on acting, he founded a group of actors. At the same time, he wanted to build a new type of stage in order to present the new, pure drama he envisioned.

The actors he took to Limon, to rehearse in absolute solitude. They worked for three months in Limon while the search for a new theatre continued. It was found, eventually, on the left bank of the Seine in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. There he would create his new theatre, together with Jouvet and others. It was never easy and the success of the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier varied a lot. A year after the inauguration in 1913, the theatre acquired something of a reputation in France and the rest of Europe. They were invited to open the Neues Theater in Köln, Germany but couldn’t go through with it because the First World War broke out. Until 1919, the small theatre was to be abandoned while war raged through Europe. Europe was ruined and the male members of the company of the Vieux Colombier were sent to the front. The theatre served as a home for refugees and Copeau worked as an armyclerc for the Services Auxiliaires in Paris. After one year, he got pulmonary consumption and was dismissed from the army. This bothered him; he felt useless now, but on the other hand, it offered him an opportunity to travel. On his journey through Europe, he met some of Europe’s leading scenographers, Appia and Craig, among others. Their conversations helped Copeau to perfect his idea’s  - they had a lot in common. Copeau’s vision of the naked stage with a fixed, geometrical scenic structure was highly reminiscent of Craig’s idea of the scene as ‘cube whose interior would at his command, transmute itself into different patterns’ (Brown, 1980, 209). Copeau discovered that all over Europe, directors and scenographers had thoughts about the renewal of the theatre. He also discovered that there was a big gap between thought and action. He felt Craig had great ideas but was too vague. Craig was a genius but lacked the ability to act.

Copeau himself would be the first to actually realise the new scenography, be it on a modest scale in a small Paris theatre. ‘La solution est architecturale’, Copeau had told Appia and he would execute this principle in the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier with the help of Jouvet, in 1919. He also founded an acting school. It was an important venture in the history of the twentieth-century theatre but the financial difficulties of the Vieux Colombier were considerable and would end the projectafter a few years.

In 1924, Copeau decided to devote himself, and the available money, to the acting school. He left the Vieux Colombier and moved the school to Bourgogne. However, the financial situation grew worse and Copeau had to close the school down after one year. His nephew, Michel Saint-Denis, continued working with Copeau’s students, who were called the Copiau’s. They settled in Pernand-Vergelesses and performed according to the rules of Copeau’s ‘new comedy’; for example, they improvised a lot and often used masks in performance. They were not unsuccessful. In 1929, Saint-Denis founded the Compagnie des Quinze with some of the Copiau’s and former actors of the Vieux Colombier. The Compagnie des Quinze even returned to the Vieux Colombier for a few seasons.

Copeau left his small venue on the Rue du Vieux Colombier, but he never left the theatre. He kept on making productions all his life. He produced some open-air spectacles (in 1933, 1935 and 1938), and several performances for the Comédie Française. He published new works, among others Le Théâtre Populaire and a book on the life of Fransiscus of Assisi. The Second World War and his pulmonary infection weakened him considerably but did not stop him. In 1943, he produced another performance together with Barsacq (who also renovated the Vieux Colombier): Le Miracle du Pain Doré. Copeau died on October 20^th, 1949.