This is indeed a work in progress. In front of you (it's easier to store the files here.) One day it'll be a proper site. But this is not that day.
read my notes if you must, but..
at least you know it isn't AI slop.
It was a theatre. It began as a vehicle for its then owner's fascination with true life crime, then it evolved into a scandalous mixture of horror and comedy. It began in 1897 as dazzling and transgressive, a scoundel amongst theatres, it ended sadly, in 1962, as a curio, aping its glory days for tourists.
In its heyday though it was a glory and a disgrace. It pioneered gruesome practical effects still used in horror today. It pushed boundaries, skirting closure by the police. It toured internationally. It inspired other theatres that would produce early stars of screen horror. It became a legend that lives on today, more than sixty years after it closed for the final time.
If you have the slightest interest in horror then the Grand Guignol is in your blood. It's your great great great grandparent. Through its different incarnations, through its many, many nights of maiming and brutalising actors on its tiny stage, through the screams and the faintings it inspired in the audience, the littlest theatre in Paris touched the world. It helped create the language of performed horror; first on stage and then, through its alumni and those it inspired, on screen and radio. If you have any interest in performant horror then this is the foundation of it all.
On Tuesday the 13th April 1897 the writer and aspiring producer Oscar Méténier started his own theatre. From its modest beginnings it would grow to change the language and the world.
Why?
To answer that we have to go back further.
In Brussels in 1887 apparently, according to this link. There is no record of the Meiningen-Company playing Paris, possibly because of tensions after the Franco Prussian War.
The Meiningen-Company was revolutionary. Duke Georg II wanted absolute realism and was willing to spend to get it. Casts were big and drilled. Acting was naturalistic. It was clearly a revelation, both for Constantin Stanislavky in Moscow, and for André Antoine in Paris. Both men started theatres founded in realism; the Moscow Art Theatre, and the Theatre Libre.
"In 1887, the French theatre was entirely in the hands of an illustrious trinity; Augier, Dumas, and Sardou had been reigning for twenty years, at the Comedie-Francaise as well as elsewhere. Perrin, who had just died, was always quick to say: "I need no new authors; one year Dumas, another year Sardou, a third, Augier - that is enough for me."
That may have been enough for Perrin, it wasn't enough for Antoine. The Theatre Libre was opened on the 30th March, 1887.
On the 30th May 1887 the Theatre Libre presents a play "En Famille", by Oscar Méténier.
The journey to the Grand Guignol has begun.
Past this point it's notes.
The second, we need to talk for a bit about the Meiningen Company
"The company’s first public performance took place in 1874 at Berlin. In 1881 the Meiningen Company went to London, where it presented three plays by Shakespeare and a number of German and non-German classics. Thereafter, the ensemble performed in more than 35 European cities, including Moscow and Brussels. In 1890, feeling that the company had accomplished its objectives, the duke closed it."
There's a good intro to the Meiningen Players at this link
This is really good. This one's giving me link envy - link here.
Today I learned that pretty much the entirety of modern theatre owes its existence to a morganatic marriage. Not a pleasant discovery.
Context: Paris, fin-de-siècle, origins of the theatre.
Overview of plays, themes, and genres staged.
Key writers, directors, and landmark productions.
Practical effects, gore illusions, and audience reactions.
Parisian society, censorship, and contemporary responses.
Influence on cinema, horror theatre, and modern performance.
Good intro to the Meiningen Players at this link
This is really good - link here.
Today I learned that pretty much the entirety of modern theatre owes its existence to a morganatic marriage. Not pleasant discovery.
So did the Theatre Salon.
Méténier grabbed the opportunity and started his own Theatre Libre in the (presumably) cheap little chapel where the Salon had been. He calls his theatre "The Grand Guignol".
It's important to note that at this stage it's not a horror theatre. The opening programme has two silly comedies by George Courtaline, two pieces by decadent Queer writer Jean Lorrain, and then, finaslly, at the end of the evening, potentially after midnight, two true life crime dramas by Méténier himself.
(actually it's likely that we don't have the original running order - there are press reports of the police closing the Grand Guignol down in 1897. They manage to stay open by putting Madame Fifi on last. (who told me that? I'm assuming Pierron), and the programme I have puts Madame Fifi last, so logically it's after the change. Therefore not the original programme. Pity.)
A year later he hands it on to ... Max Maurey. I'm not sure where Maurey fits in yet, his business manager?
Max Maurey built it into a fantastically profitable little enterprise. In his 1933 book Camillo Antoni-Traversi tells us it was making 800,000 old francs a year in profit. In her 1965 interview Paula Maxa tells us it was pulling in 100,000 old francs a week in box office. I don't currently know if it ever closed. I suspect it didn't, although I am currently assuming that they would at least have had to close on Sundays (there's a set of posters over on the rather excellent https://bizzarrobazar.com/ (image here) which advertises a matinee on Sunday and no show on Monday. This is from the very end of the Guignol's life but it might be an indicator of standard practice. They got Monday off.) , so that's somewhere around 3 million old francs a year, with a profit margin somewhere around 30%. This wasn't some plucky little underdog. At its height this was a money power house.
But it died. It died a weird, shrivelled, inglorious death. It's interesting to speculate when it died. Max Maurey created it and made it a legend. His artistic successor Camille Choissy dialled it up to eleven and took it through what we can loosely term its glory years, 1914 - 1930. After that it almost looks to have had a death wish. What killed it? Jacques Jouvin's 1930 seeming contempt for the past? Clara Bizou's 1938 indifference to it? The theatre's 1940 decision to not only stay open during the nazi occupation but to pander to the occupiers? Or the Grand Guignol's 1950s seeming acceptance of its place as nothing more than a tourist novelty? What looks to have been its utter failure to innovate in any way?
By 1958 Anais Nin is visiting the Grand Guignol as a tourist novelty, not a theatre. By 1962 it's gone. It didn't die by accident. Even after 60+ years there are warnings in there for all of us who love theatre.
Oscar did not create the spectacle, but he did create the soul. Sadly one can argue that its soul, blessed with so much potential, never grew.
This is clearly a work in progress. More to come.
I've just seen this on a phone. Oy. Solid wall of text. Bootstrap I think. Bootstrap fitted.
breakout pages:
