Everything about The Grand Guignol totally explained
The
Grand Guignol (
pronounced [gʁɑ̃giɲɔl]) was a theatre (
Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol) in the
Pigalle area of
Paris (at 20
bis, rue Chaptal), which, from its opening in 1897 to its closing in 1962, specialized in naturalistic horror shows. The name is often used as a general term for graphic, amoral horror entertainment.
Theatre
Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol was founded in 1894 by
Oscar Méténier, who planned it as a space for
naturalist performance. With 293 seats, the theater was the smallest in
Paris. The building was a former chapel, and the theatre's history showed in the boxes, which looked like confessionals, and in the angels over the orchestra.
The theater owed its name to
Guignol, a traditional
Lyonnaise puppet character, joining political commentary with the style of
Punch and Judy.
The theatre's peak was between
World War I and
World War II when it was frequented by royalty and celebrities in evening dress.
Important people
Oscar Metenier was the theatre's founder and original director. Under his direction, the theatre produced plays about a class of people who were not considered appropriate subjects in other venues: prostitutes, criminals, street urchins, and others of
Paris's lowest class.
Max Maurey served as director from
1898 to
1914. Maurey shifted the theatre's emphasis to the horror plays it would become famous for and judged the success of a performance by the number of patrons who fainted; the average was two patrons fainting per evening. Maurey discovered
André de Lorde, who was to be the most important playwright for the theatre.
André de Lorde was the theatre's principal playwright from
1901 to
1926. He wrote at least one hundred plays for the Grand Guignol and collaborated with experimental psychologist
Alfred Binet to create plays about insanity, one of the theatre's most frequently recurring themes.
Camille Choisy served as director from
1914 to
1930. He contributed his expertise in special effects and scenery to the theatre's distinctive style.
Paula Maxa was one of the Grand Guignol's best-known performers. From
1917 to the 1930s, she performed most frequently as a victim and was known as "the most assassinated woman in the world." During her career at the Grand Guignol, Maxa was murdered more than 10,000 times in at least sixty different ways and was raped at least 3,000 times.
Jack Jouvin served as director from
1930 to
1937. He made a shift in the theatre's subject matter, focusing the performances not on gory horror but psychological drama. Under his leadership, the theatre's popularity waned, and after
World War II, it wasn't well-attended.
Charles Nonon was the theatre's last director.
Plays
At the Grand Guignol, patrons would see five or six plays, all in a style which attempted to be brutally true to the theatre's
naturalistic ideals. The plays were in a variety of styles, but the most popular and best-known were the horror plays, featuring a distinctly bleak worldview as well as particularly gory special effects in their notoriously bloody climaxes. These plays often explored the altered states, like insanity, hypnosis, panic, under which uncontrolled horror could happen. Some of the horror came from the nature of the crimes shown, which often had very little reason behind them and in which the evildoers were rarely punished or defeated. To heighten the effect, the horror plays were often alternated with comedies.
Le Laboratoire des Hallucinations, by
André de Lorde: When a doctor finds his wife's lover in his operating room, he performs a graphic brain surgery rendering the adulterer a hallucinating semi-zombie. Now insane, the lover/patient hammers a chisel into the doctor's brain.
Un Crime dans une Maison de Fous, by
André de Lorde: Two hags in an insane asylum use scissors to blind a young, pretty fellow inmate out of jealousy.
L'Horrible Passion, by
André de Lorde: A nanny strangles the children in her care.
Theatre closing
The Grand Guignol theatre closed its doors in
1962. "We could never equal
Buchenwald," said its final director, Charles Nonon, on the theatre's decline and fall. "Before the war, everyone felt that what was happening onstage was impossible. Now we know that these things, and worse, are possible in reality."
Legacy
Grand Guignol flourished briefly in London in the early 1920s under the direction of
Jose Levy.
Since
1991, a
San Francisco's Thrillpeddlers theatre company has been performing English translations of plays originally shown at the Grand Guignol. They currently perform at their custom-designed theatre, The Hypnodrome.
The
1963 mondo film ECCO includes a scene which may have been filmed at the Grand Guignol theatre during its final years.
Books
- Gordon, Mel. The Grand Guignol: Theatre of Fear and Terror. Da Capo Press, 1997.
- Hand, Richard, and Michael Wilson. Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror. University of Exeter Press, 2002.
Footnotes
Further Information
Get more info on 'Grand Guignol'.
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