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Grand-Guignol: A Dwelling Place for Creativity and Fear,

part 1 of 2
By TANJA JURKOVIC | Published: JANUARY 29, 2013

Fear is an emotion, which appears during moments of anguish and unreal emotions of danger. The real fear is something like a
reminiscence of fantastic terrors of the past.
We constantly ask ourselves: why do we allow ourselves to be awestruck, why do we consciously give in to that unpleasant
feeling which encourages us to think about images and canvases of horror via books, movies and performances, as if we are
going to be more in touch with ourselves through fear omnipresent in our lives? The answer, with which most people agree,
although it is quite enough to quote one of the masters of horror in this case, is: . . .we imagine the horrors in order to help us
cope with the real ones. It is the escape from reality and from everyday horrors that surround us.
Nonetheless, it is easy to conceive horrors under the mask of movies, performances, make-up and costumes, because we know
deep inside that all that is not real. The theme of Grand-Guignol is not very different from the themes we encounter in most
slasher movies, like Friday the 13 th, but there are a few key differences: it was live, in-your-face and often all-over-yourclothes, a theatre created in a very intimate space, with only 280 seats.
I believe that Oscar Mtnier never imagined that the theatre, which he ran together with Andr Antoine, who founded the
theatre in the first place under the name of Thtre Libre in 1887, was going to become a cult theatre of horror in a few years
and offer a model for horror and gore movies of today. Thtre Libre first showed naturalistic performances in the style of Emile
Zola, who described this literary movement in his book Le Roman Experimental, based on the method of experimental
psychology, and jointly of the life in that period of time in Paris, known as comdies rosses.
Oscar Mtnier, formerly le chien de commissaire, met Andr Antoine in April 1887, and that was the moment when their
collaboration began. Andr Antoine preferred everything new, but the things en vogue at the moment of their existence and in
that period of time didnt offer anything new and therefore became subjects of boredom. Antoine was a person of great
reputation and a man who got bored easily, which led to saturation on his part. At the time, the undisputed master of dramatic
art was Andr Antoine, whether we talk about a play or an artist, his judgments were final, and his decisive veto; only one word
from him formed a reputation.
He was seduced by the pure naturalism in the works of Oscar Mtnier, and he produced some of his plays, for example En
Famille, La Casserole, Mademoiselle Fifi (after the work of Maupassant), but the problem of saturation appeared some time
ago. Mtnier bought the theatre in 1897, and became the first director of the Grand-Guignol Theatre, giving way to
performances of naturalistic concerns, while drawing the inspiration for his comdies rosses from the so-called faits divers. He
seemed like a bon vivant, who didnt buy the theatre just to triumph the truth, but also to make some money, according to
Agns Pierron. Oscar Mtnier was short, swarthy and petulant. As a police commissioner, he used his position to get his
occasionally ventured buddies out of state of boredom. . . and also to document his romans-feuilletons and his realistic plays,
Pierron said. In the evening . . . he would come all dressed in black, accompanied by two bodyguards, to describe to
spectators, with macabre details, a horrible crime which is about to take place.
The theatre was a great success in the beginning, so the real reason why Mtnier gave the direction of it to Max Maurey was
unknown, although there were few hypotheses regarding the case. After he directed the play Lui!, accidentally and quite
unaware of it, the founder of the Grand-Guignol theatre laid the foundation stone for building the grand-guignolesque
repertoire, which will last more than half a century. While he believed he was dealing with naturalism and moral, he created a
genre, Pierron said.
Maurey developed the theatre he got hold of into a modern, unique and successful theatre the theatre of fear. During his
management, which lasted for almost sixteen years, Grand-Guignol became a very popular theatre, with its own unique
program, representation, and performances. It gained faithful admirers, on stage as well as regarding the audience. Hidden
between decadence and filthiness of Pigalle along with its boorish men and prostitutes, in the shadow of the quiet cobblestone

street, there is a small theatre But this is not an ordinary theatre, it is the Theatre of Grand-Guignol, according to Pierron, a
place where violence meets eroticism, and fear and horror can be measured in great quantities.
When it opened on April 13, 1897, the theatre had only 280 seats, 123 of which included the orchestra seats, dressing rooms
and toilets. It was one of the smallest theatres in Paris, which was also very atypical: One can see the woodwork in Gothic
Revival-style, two large angels suspended above the orchestra. Dressing rooms are grilled, so to speak, which gives them an
appearance of confessionals. This is because it was not a theatre in the beginning; it was a chapel renown for sermons. . .
Maurey had wonderful creative ideas, and he had the potential and the resources to put them on stage. It was he who managed
to evoke what Stephen King calls these remarkable moments when the creator of a horror piece is capable to unite a conscious
and unconscious mind with a powerful idea.
Max Maurey is a juggler, says Pierron, out of a small box, he creates a kaleidoscope. You thought youd laugh, when he starts
his tour; suddenly, it seems that the artist has turned his wand upside down. It was he who appeared . . . a little man who walks
a little crooked, but the one who has adopted ideas and who says, righteously, everything to everyone. He is a small Antoine. . .
He does not use big words. . . He listens to his nerves, Pierron said.
This little man, this genius, the author of almost everything, from operettas to dramas, created a house of horrors and a place of
fears out of Grand-Guignol from 1898 to 1914. With Maurey, Grand-Guignol developed into a very popular theatre, with
audiences from all levels of society. His accomplishment lies in a concrete combination of the form and extraordinary use of
advertising tricks to create a mythological and theatrical genre.
Mtnier already created the reputation around himself and the theatre, and although Maurey didnt have that kind of reputation
created around him as a public person, he recognized that the success of this theatre lies in its public image. Through efficient
highlights he created the publicity of Grand-Guignol Theatre as the theatre of extreme horror, thus creating the myth along the
way. One of those tricks was mdecin du service, or doctor of the service, who was added to the standard team of the theatre
and was obliged to provide service to those people who werent feeling well during the spectacle, and those who couldnt
endure that anticipation of total horror present during the whole play.
Maureys great success with the public was in persuading the audience, as well as critics, that Grand-Guignol was a theatre of
physical violence, containing immense quantities of blood flowing all around, and also the description of intense horror and fear
because of which the audience fainted or ran out of the theatre before the end of the play. After all, he did all this, all those tricks
beyond what Richard Hand and Michael Wilson call the scope of production techniques, from dexterity in the public relations,
incidentally also buried in an exotic secret, in a way creating a plausible folklore around Grand-Guignol. And we know that there
is a pinch of truth in every legend and myth. Grand-Guignol was one of the most famous theatres of fear, inner and
inexpressible fear, write Hand and Wilson, which nibbled all around the soul and which evoked the forces one cannot control.
As Mtniers attention was focused on naturalism while he was the manager, the plays and the production in Maureys era had
a melodramatic aspect, although he did not forget the tradition of Mtniers naturalism. He improved the developments
imminent in Mtniers time. According to Hand and Wilson, Maureys legendary dexterity as an impresario and publicist
allowed him to recognize certain aspects of Mtniers naturalist experience to have a popular and commercial viability.
Maureys team researched and exploited contemporary fears, whereas Mtnier aspired to portrait bestial depth in which
humanity sank under post-industrial capitalism, with one difference between these two men, like Hand and Wilson say: Whilst
Mtnier was trying to create a theatre that dealt with social reality from a radical perspective, Maurey wanted to titillate and
frighten. He was also credited with establishing Grand-Guignol in five important domains, the one of programme, performance
style, production style, meaning the development of the tricks for the stage and special effects, importance of the playwright and
the installation of Grand-Guignol as the definitive theatre of horror and fear.
When talking about the programme, Maurey saw the importance of les douches ecossaises, or hot and cold showers, in other
words exchanging different types of theatre plays, among comedies and dramas, in one night of entertainment, a system
introduced by Mtnier establishing the exchange of comedies and obscure theatre plays . . . a cold and burning shower. . .
according to Rivire and Witkopp.
For the audience, it is a guide on an emotional voyage to the depths of horror and fear, from erotic drama, sexual farce and
back, entwined with a comic relief of the comedies. It is a valuable tension and the technique of liberation, used by almost all
horror writers and directors today. Maurey simply exploited it and created a characteristic formula of this theatre.
Stay tuned for part two where Jurkovi discusses Andr de Lorde, Paul Ratineau, Paula Maxa et L. Paulais, and the GrandGuignol today!
SOURCES:
1.
Agns Pierron: Le Grand Guignol, Le thtre des peurs de la Belle Epoque, d. Robert Laffont, S.A., Paris, 1995,
2.
Richard J. Hand, Michael Wilson: Grand Guignol: French Theatre of Horror, University of Exeter Press, 2002,
3.
Stephen King: Danse Macabre, A Berkeley Book, Everest House Publishers, 1981.

Grand-Guignol: Creativity and Fear, part 2 of 2


By TANJA JURKOVIC | Published: FEBRUARY 4, 2013

If you missed Tanjas post from last week, shame-shame! You definitely owe it to yourself to check it out Grand-Guignol and
the people who made it famous are uniquely and unbelievably interesting! Here is part 2 of Tanja Jurkovichs feature article:
The importance of the playwright: a revelation named Andr de Lorde
It was during Maureys direction that Andr de Lorde got his first opportunity to write for the Grand-Guignol Theatre, starting with
a comedy Le Post Scriptum in 1900. He wrote a lot of his plays collaborating with other experts in the domain of science
writing, like Pierre Chaine, Eugne Morel, Charles Foley, Claude Roland, but the best-known collaboration was with Alfred
Binet, an acknowledged physiologist (of modern intelligence testing renown), who brought a lot of authentic details to his works.
This collaboration, unique in theatrical history and atypical for Grand-Guignol, is adequately exciting for the two persons, the
physiologist and the playwright, presented together, writes Agns Pierron. Andr de Lorde and Alfred Binet had a relationship
without rivalry, always friendly, and they were very similar to one another.
They created and developed a new theatrical genre, known as thtre mdical, a medical theatre, which Andr de Lorde
described in his own way: I think that thtre medical belongs to the dramatic art as much as the Rembrandt painting La Leon
dAnatomie, belongs to the art of painting because art resides in emotion as well as in color and all the critics in the world
can never stop my vocation which is to study les cas physiologiques, because of which, Pierron writes, our spirit is aroused,
frightened or revolted, and for me to look at them such as a doctor looks upon a sickness with painful curiosity, infinite pity at
all human suffering.
The works of Andr de Lorde include adaptations of fiction, cinema and historical events, from time to time, and the work
forming the general opinion on Grand-Guignol that it would always be a theatre of significant adaptation. He was also a
defender of the theatre, regarding the critics. Critics in that time, like today, in spite of total objectivity which is essential in their
line of business, had an impartial view intertwined with subjectivity, without having deeper researched on the subject, thus
imposing a negative image of Grand-Guignol to the public.
It is true that Grand-Guignol plays contained an immense quantity of special effects to portray the violence, but all these scenes
of violence and horror were based on faits divers, everyday events drew from newspapers in that period, to find inspiration in
the crimes that people committed, that is to say, in everyday life that surrounds them. So why negatively characterize something
so full of quality in all scenic and theatrical domains, when the events in everyday life are so much worse and more realistic than
Grand-Guignol plays? Where is the difference?
The difference lies in acceptance of everyday horrors as something normal, even finding excuses for them, whereas theatrical
plays show fiction inspired by reality, but with special effects for a more credible performance. The things we see are the things
we were waiting for, there is no room for excuses, but people dont have the courage to face their own fears. The purpose of
the theatre is to affect. Nevertheless, an emotion cant be separated from life in all its forms: it can be physical or moral; it is in
the distress of a betrayed lover, in the desperation of a mother weeping by her dead sons bedside, as well as in the fall of a
slate crashing on the pavement. Wherever there is pain, we find the elements of it, just like a great writer Emile Zola in all of his
works does nothing more than study and depict the dramas of maternal life, writes Pierron. And that is all the wisdom, without
any hidden motives.
Production style: the development of stage and special effects: Paul Ratineau
Special effects and their realization played an essential role in Grand-Guignol plays. A lot of time, effort and especially finances
were invested in creating realistic special effects. A person important in this area was Paul Ratineau. Ratineaus success as the
director of the stage can be attributed to his ability to adapt to others, to employ his old knowledge he gathered from the
perspective of an actor and apply it to develop the special effects. He had the ability to develop devices and accessories
invisible to the audience in this small and very intimate theatrical space. He had achieved that through an ingenious usage of
light and shadows.

Of course, great part of merit in this domain went to the virtuosity and the artistic performance of actors, who had a very difficult
task to faithfully present these same special effects, at the same time playing the roles given to them, in front of an intimate
audience. Henri-Ren Lenormand, a temporary playwright in the Grand-Guignol Theatre, described the art of Paul Ratineau:
He knew more than anyone else in Paris about the technique of horror effects. He was an expert in stage weaponry, blood
stains, acid burns, pestilent ulcers and severed heads, and he had the composure of a highly experienced stage manager, a
wicked Henri-Ren Lenormand sense of humor and a memory which contained, in astonishing detail, everything about the
theatre of fear, Hand and Wilson write.
We also must not forget to mention the music and sound effects, which were processed with a great gravity as a whole in
Grand-Guignol. Music was a common way used to convey the meaning in the melodrama in the 19th century. It is omnipresent
and became close to the cinema. It is visible in horror movies, where the original music for the film is used for communication,
the atmosphere and to support certain actions and events, but there is no solid evidence that music was used in that way in
Grand-Guignol, like Hand and Wilson say, Ratineau:
[D]iscovered the further away the sound source was from the audience, the more effective (or chilling) it was. This was a theatre
that was not working so much to a fixed set of rules as making those rules and generic conventions up as it went along. It is
clear from anecdotal evidence, as much as anything else, that the creative use of sound was a crucial part of the Grand-Guignol
experience, and effects such as Ratineaus seagulls became classics in their own right.
Performance style: Paula Maxa et L. Paulais
It wasnt easy to be an actor in this theatre, especially because the Grand-Guignol drama is a form of realism on the stage,
which reflects itself considerably in the performance style of actors. The actors must contend with two primary opposing
problems in order to pull off the moment of violence, write Hand and Wilson. They must completely inhabit the psychology and
physicality of the violence as though it is real. At the same time, they must disengage from the moment, in a sense, in order to
execute the technical demands of the stage violence (performing elaborate stage-fight choreography; bursting blood bags on
cue; manipulating blood-rigged knives and other specialty props, etc.). While doing all this, each actor must maintain the arc of
the play and remain aware of and open to the other actors on the stage.
This stage was small, approximately 77 meters. That was a normal model of the stage in naturalistic theatres in general, where
one could shake hands with actors on the stage if one was sitting in the first row of the theatre, and there was still room for
elementary scenic attempts on it. The audience was so close to the stage, which formed an illusion of impossibility, but the thing
more important than that was the intimacy of the theatre. This level of intimacy in naturalistic theatres greatly influenced the
plays, creating the intensity and the atmosphere characteristic for the style, which was developed in the Theatre of Horror. A
mixture of horror and moralistic themes, eroticism and psychology formed a subtle line between the intimate atmosphere and
claustrophobia, which penetrated the minds of the audience during the plays, which seemed to be the general aim.
Moreover, a crucial thing in the performance of the actor is the moment of violence, which can be examined physically, as we
can read in the book by Hand and Wilson. It can be touching and give the actor a dramatic context, because in that way he or
she can better understand the events and the situation in which their characters live, they have to have an intense feeling where
the violence best suits the movement, the energy and the rhythm of the play. There is also a moment when the audience
participates in this moment of violence, and that was the greatest risk that Grand-Guignol theatre chose to accept.
It was an eye-to-eye contact with the spectators, who in that way became participants in the act and voluntary witnesses. It is
an acknowledgement by the actor that the violence on stage is not an abstract violence that exists in some fantastic realm far
away from our everyday lives, write Hand and Wilson, but is an action by a de Lordean monstre virtuel, which we are all, at
any given moment, but a step away from (whether as potential victims or potential killers). This serves to intensify the horror by
suggesting that the audience itself is, at least partly, responsible for the violence enacted on stage.
But, according to Hand and Wilson, just a word or a phrase delivered a little too quickly, a little too harshly, could cause
laughter. It required millimeter precision . . . If the atmosphere was broken; it had to be recaptured, which was at times very
difficult and often impossible.
The two cult actors of the Grand-Guignol theatre knew their job very well, and they dominated the scene for a very long time
during the 1920s. L. Paulais, proclaimed the Mounet-Sully (a famous theatrical actor in that period) of Grand-Guignol, had many
memorable roles during his career; he played a big role in the developments of naturalism, characters and action in this theatre.
He was capable to demonstrate a vast range of facial expressions, stylized gestures, eyes wide open and many other things.
Paulais, in an interview, described his experience and the way in which he provoked fear when acting: While trying hard always
to be sincereAnd this is really difficult to be, tirelessly, with all the necessary differences during an hour. . . One needs to play
along and that requires, from our point of view, a nervous tension which sometimes during that one hour condemns us.
Paula Maxa was its protagonist and the most famous of all the actors in Grand-Guignol. A plump girl, in a healthy body of a
country girl, she appeared for the first time in Rue Chaptal in 1917, in Le Poison noir, by Jean Bernac. During the period of ten
years, her name became a synonym with Grand-Guignol performance, and she got many well deserved names like Sarah
Bernhardt of the Rue Chaptal, Princess of Horror, according to Pierron, because the amazing thing about this young brunette
with black eyes, is a discrepancy between her good health, the joy of living and her practice on stageTo her skill and
extravagance she adds one dimension: pleasure, according to Pierron.
She was a good professional, she knew how to get into the spirit of things, and she really loved Grand-Guignol, of which she
said: My agony, everything that I experienced on the stage of Grand-Guignol, like Chinese tortures, very complicated and very
perfidious, came out again, in a way, from a secret calling because of which I developed a morbid fascination after having a
gentle and happy childhood. The female artist, the female creator of a special genreit seems to me that I could not personify
any other character than the one of a bloody victim of all the dramas of human passion. She was the most assassinated
woman in the world, she was shot, scalped, hanged, guillotined, cut up with scalpels, bitten by a scorpion, poisoned with
arsenic, devoured by a mountain lion and tortured in many other unique ways in this theatre, and after all that, she was happy
and with a smile on her face, a magic and pale face with black eyes, which reflected, with some help of professional make-up,
real fear in the mirror of the Grand-Guignol performance.

Grand-Guignol Today
Today, nothing indicates, in those cutthroats (coupe-gorge) of Pigalle, the existence of Grand-Guignol. The theatre also lost its
name: it is now a Theatre 347, because it has 347 seats. After 1980, it was used as a rehearsal room for students of lEnsatt
(Ecole nationale suprieure des Arts et des techniques du thtre.). Grand-Guignol has incredibly influenced todays cinema
and literature, as we can see in many contemporary works, like in the sequel of the classic novel of Bram Stokers Dracula,
named Dracula the Undead, by D. Stoker and I. Holt. The authors, following the story of the famous count, presented to the
public a chronology of events very important for that period of time, the turn of the century. For example, we can find characters
like Jack the Ripper and Andr Antoine, the director of Thtre Libre, the partner of Oscar Mtnier, the first director of GrandGuignol Theatre; his physical features were described, as well as his role in the story. As it was mentioned earlier, he was one of
the most influential persons in the rich history of Grand-Guignol Theatre. They also mentioned a lot of important characters
connected to horror cinema and literature.
Although we dont use it very often, today the term Grand-Guignol stayed in the language in the form of an expression grandguignolesque, an adjective form; it means excessively bloody, in focus to achieve the grotesque, and as a repercussion, and
comic. The word is used mostly to describe fait divers, parts of everyday news, according to Pierron. Cest du Grand-Guignol,
indicating the meaning Its horrible! as Pierron says, the expression is today used in Latin America, a trace left from a big tour
in 1922, by the district of Pigalle, while in Brazil it means the lack of credibility of corrupted political milieu. Surely, the influence
this theatre made on film and theatres today is immense.
Let us mention the theatre Vigor Mortis, the only one of this kind in Brazil, and a couple of more theatres making homage to
this phenomenon from the beginning of the 20 th century, presenting the plays of the original repertoire of the Grand-Guignol
Theatre, like Thrillpeddlers from San Francisco, and Molotov Theatre Group from Washington, DC. One of the most notable
representations is the musical by Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a story that Tim
Burton used to make his own vision in gothic manner, with violent imagery of Grand-Guignol, completely capturing the
atmosphere of London in this period, emotions of the protagonists and the story itself, imbued with tragic grand-guignolesque
love, at the same time showing the spectator the pure essence of this theatre.
Grand-Guignol theatre is essentially a theatre of horror, where people confront themselves with everyday fears, and all other
dark desires that live inside them, they know that the monster responsible for the terror surrounding them is the monster, which
lives in all of them. This theatre shows us that the sentiment of fear is a great part of our lives and of human nature, a feeling
that fascinated scholars throughout the centuries.
It also gives insight in the way the people connected to this theatre were loyal to their job and how much love they put into
performances on stage. Their incredible effort to represent the scenes of fear and violence entwined with tragic love, but at the
same time with a lot of humor, was so impressive that the film, as a form of art, the appearance of which was one of the possible
reasons for the fall of this theatre, took over the mimicry and a great part of special effects, as we can see in almost every horror
and thriller movie, especially in classics like Les Diaboliques (1954), by Henri-Georges Clouzot or Les Yeux sans Visage
(1959), by Georges Franju. It would be a great shame if something so valuable as the spirit of the Grand-Guignol, today
appreciated by the connoisseurs of the horror genre (George Romero, Mario Bava, Tim Burton, for example), fades away in the
mist of the modern world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TANJA JURKOVIC
Tanja Jurkovi is 30 years old and lives in Zadar, Croatia. She is a professor of English and French language and literature and a
freelance translator. Her main research interest is French Theatre of Horror and horror genre in general. She is also a reviewer of
horror ebooks and she writes articles, mainly on the Grand-Guignol Theatre and its influence on horror movie genre. She is also
a photographer, focusing primarily on horror/dark art and emotive photography. Combining all that, she creates a world of her
own, full of imagination, creativity and dark desires.

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