André Antoine - From Théâtre-Libre / The Free Theatre (1890)
1984 - the Future is Now (1984)
As the hoped-for emergence of a new generation of dramatists and dramatic works takes place, it may be affirmed that this rebirth will necessitate new means of expression. For works that are all observation and study, actors are needed who are spontaneous and authentic, in touch with reality through and through.
These long-awaited works, conceived according to a more spacious and flexible aesthetic and no longer circumscribing their characters; this new
theatre, no longer based like its predecessor on five or six agreed types who are always the same, reappearing again and again under different names, in different plots, in different milieux; one can’not doubt that in this new theatre the multiplicity and complexity of the stage characters will bring about the rise of a new generation of actors flexible enough to take on any role. Young leading players, for example, will no longer all be cut from the same cloth, but will become in turn good, wicked, elegant, common, strong, weak, valiant, cowardly—in short, they will become living beings, diverse and variable.
The art of the actor, then, will no longer depend, as in previous repertories, on physical qualities or natural gifts; it will gain its life from truth, observation, and the direct study of nature…. Since the theatrical style of the new plays tends to keep close to daily conversation, the actor must no longer ‘speak’ in the classic theatrical sense; he must talk—which without doubt will be just as difficult.
What is meant at present by the phrase the art of speaking, consists solely in endowing the student with an exaggerated articulation and
concocting a voice for him: a peculiar specialised organ quite different from the one he really has. For sixty years, all actors have uniformly spoken
through the nose, solely because this way of speaking has to be adopted for them to be heard by the audience in our theatres, which are either much too big or have poor acoustics; and also because this nasal voice is resistant to the passing years and does not age.
In present-day theatre, all the characters gesticulate and express themselves in the same fashion, whether they are old or young, sick or healthy. All the actors, by speaking well, renounce those infinitely numerous nuances which can throw light on a character and give it a more intense life….
The same transformation must be carried through in other areas of dramatic art: once the scenery is scaled back down to the dimensions current in contemporary milieux, the characters will express their emotions in credible settings, without continually concerning themselves to strike pictorial poses and form tableaux. The audience will enjoy an intimate drama, with natural and fitting moves, and with unaffected gestures and movements appropriate to a modern man, living our normal daily life.
Moves that are part of the blocking will be modified: no longer will the actor continually come out of his frame to pose in front of the audience; he
will move around among the furniture and props, and his acting will be filled out with the thousand nuances and thousand details now indispensable to the establishing and logical composition of a character.
Purely mechanical movement, and effects of the voice, along with flamboyant and redundant gestures, will disappear with the simplification
of theatrical action and its return to reality; and the actor will revert to natural gestures, and replace effects made only with the voice with a
composition of elements: his expression of things will gain support from familiar, real objects, and a pencil revolved or a cup tipped over will have as much significance and as intense an effect on the audience as the grandiloquent exaggerations of the romantic theatre.
Translated by Richard Drain and Micheline Mabille
These long-awaited works, conceived according to a more spacious and flexible aesthetic and no longer circumscribing their characters; this new
theatre, no longer based like its predecessor on five or six agreed types who are always the same, reappearing again and again under different names, in different plots, in different milieux; one can’not doubt that in this new theatre the multiplicity and complexity of the stage characters will bring about the rise of a new generation of actors flexible enough to take on any role. Young leading players, for example, will no longer all be cut from the same cloth, but will become in turn good, wicked, elegant, common, strong, weak, valiant, cowardly—in short, they will become living beings, diverse and variable.
The art of the actor, then, will no longer depend, as in previous repertories, on physical qualities or natural gifts; it will gain its life from truth, observation, and the direct study of nature…. Since the theatrical style of the new plays tends to keep close to daily conversation, the actor must no longer ‘speak’ in the classic theatrical sense; he must talk—which without doubt will be just as difficult.
What is meant at present by the phrase the art of speaking, consists solely in endowing the student with an exaggerated articulation and
concocting a voice for him: a peculiar specialised organ quite different from the one he really has. For sixty years, all actors have uniformly spoken
through the nose, solely because this way of speaking has to be adopted for them to be heard by the audience in our theatres, which are either much too big or have poor acoustics; and also because this nasal voice is resistant to the passing years and does not age.
In present-day theatre, all the characters gesticulate and express themselves in the same fashion, whether they are old or young, sick or healthy. All the actors, by speaking well, renounce those infinitely numerous nuances which can throw light on a character and give it a more intense life….
The same transformation must be carried through in other areas of dramatic art: once the scenery is scaled back down to the dimensions current in contemporary milieux, the characters will express their emotions in credible settings, without continually concerning themselves to strike pictorial poses and form tableaux. The audience will enjoy an intimate drama, with natural and fitting moves, and with unaffected gestures and movements appropriate to a modern man, living our normal daily life.
Moves that are part of the blocking will be modified: no longer will the actor continually come out of his frame to pose in front of the audience; he
will move around among the furniture and props, and his acting will be filled out with the thousand nuances and thousand details now indispensable to the establishing and logical composition of a character.
Purely mechanical movement, and effects of the voice, along with flamboyant and redundant gestures, will disappear with the simplification
of theatrical action and its return to reality; and the actor will revert to natural gestures, and replace effects made only with the voice with a
composition of elements: his expression of things will gain support from familiar, real objects, and a pencil revolved or a cup tipped over will have as much significance and as intense an effect on the audience as the grandiloquent exaggerations of the romantic theatre.
Translated by Richard Drain and Micheline Mabille
