Jacques Copeau: Biography of a Theater. By Maurice Kurtz. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999; pp. 181 + illus. $34.95 hardcover.

Abstract

Maurice Kurtz's insightful study of the achievements of visionary actor, director, and teacher Jacques Copeau (1879–1949) is among the most welcome and important theatre books of the past year. Copeau's concepts have had a widespread and profound influence on theatre practice since the first days prior to World War I when Copeau revitalized the French stage. Kurtz offers a thorough and, at times, moving portrait of a singular artist devoted to the greater glory of the theatre. Copeau began his career as a Parisian drama critic before transforming himself into reformer and practitioner who relentlessly attacked the tired conventions of Europe's fin-de-siècle stage. At the same time, Copeau also aimed to offer an alternative to the rise of realism, epitomized in France by André Antoine's Thétre Libre. Seeking a foundation for a new kind of modern theatrical art, Copeau looked to what he regarded as the unchanging truths of the past to create an as yet unknown future theatre.