Imagine a grim February night, in the year
1919. You and a friend have travelled to the Pigalle district of Paris and have come to
the end of a narrow, dimly lit cul-de-sac. It’s the type of place that seems built
for a murderer’s ambush. The room you enter is small, the ambience suffocating. You find
yourself sweaty and dizzy, heaving for a breath of clean air. And yet.. you can’t leave.
You can’t run outside to the welcome lashes of freezing wind. Just a few feet away is a gaunt, pale man,
brandishing his tools as a priest would with his crucifix. He is standing over a slight
woman, tied to the bed, surrendered to her fate. As the first splash of red fluid splashes
and obscures your vision, you can only perceive your companion dropping to the floor, in the
corner of your periphery. Torture is unfolding in front of your very
eyes, but no bystanders intervene! Some scream, and some rush outside gagging; others have
simply fainted. A voice shouts for a doctor, but perhaps it’s too late for that. How
about a mortician? As the lights go off, you can finally exhale
… but, how are you going to drag your unconscious friend to Chez Polidor later for drinks and
oysters? Before that, you must congratulate the killer and his victim on their finest
performance in months. The premiere of this new drama was brilliant. At least seven people fainted, and five spectators
rushed outside before the end. There were three separate complaints to management about
how gruesome the show was. That’s not bad for a debut at the Grand
Guignol, The Theatre of Horrors in the heart of Paris. Pushing the Boundaries From 1897 until its closure in 1962, the Grand
Guignol theatre became a legendary foundation of Parisian culture, from the Belle Epoque,
to the early steps of Counterculture. The specialty of the house was a selection
of short plays centred around themes of violence, mental disorders, crime, revenge and explicit,
graphic torture. These plays were a shocking catalogue of stories conceived to shock audiences
to the core of their morals – and their digestive systems. It was a relentless, revolutionary
assault on the conventions of bourgeois drama and its values. It is not unsurprising, then, that the Grand
Guignol could count a handful of future revolutionary leader among its fans. Ho Chi Minh, who worked
in Paris as a pastry chef in his youth, enjoyed the theater’s work. So too did non-conformist
writer Anaïs Nin. Regular spectators also included members of the establishment, like
King Carol of Romania. But let me take it from the start. The venue later known as Théâtre du Grand-Guignol
was originally a chapel, built in the 18th Century as part of a convent. This incarnation was short-lived, as the French
Revolution came along, and the convent was assaulted by anti-clerical mobs during the
1791 Reign of Terror. The chapel was thoroughly sacked, gutted and converted for other purposes.
For a while, it became a blacksmith’s workshop. When Parisians tempered their animosity toward
organised religion, it became a church again … but not for long! Sometime in the first half of the 19th Century
the building was recorded as an artist’s studio, and finally it was converted into
a theatre. First, it was known as the Théâtre-Salon, purveyor of a more wholesome brand of entertainment,
before being rebranded as the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in 1897. The manager, Oscar Metenier, had somewhat
lofty ambitions for his theatre: the name roughly translated as ‘Big Puppet’ -- a
reference to a popular style of puppet show of the time, with strong political and satirical
undertones. A blend of political commentary and social realism were centre stage in Oscar’s
plans: the first show to premier at the Grand Guignol was ‘Mademoiselle Fifi’, by literary
master Guy de Maupassant. Based on his short story, this was a realistic
tale about the Prussian occupation during the war of 1870. The following choices were
equally grounded in reality, gradually moving towards the exploration of working-class issues. Méténier had received considerable attention
for his productions, which defied censorship and dared to focus on the undesirables of
society, like prostitutes or criminals. However, by 1898, he was already bucking under the
pressure of keeping the theatre socially relevant, night after night. Eventually, Méténier
decided to relinquish control of his theatre to a new owner, Max Maurey. It was this 32-year-old
director who shaped the Grand Guignol into the house of horrors that became recognised
the world over. Maurey was an outsider in the world of the
theatre, with little artistic background to speak of, but Max had two invaluable talents:
a shrewd sense of showmanship, and a knack for making loads of money. Through these talents,
he understood that the times were ripe for material that pushed the boundaries of what
was acceptable. He wanted his new theatre to focus on terror. Maurey continued the tradition of focusing
on the underworld, but he abandoned the social realist aspect and placed his bets on the
sensationalist aspect: his plays over-emphasised gore, shock, and scandal. According to legend, Maurey would measure
the success of a play by the number of fainting patrons; as an inspired PR stunt, he even
hired a doctor to treat audience members who were overwhelmed by shock and disgust. The publicity was effective, but what really
attracted the Parisian crowds was the plays which Maurey selected, edited and curated
for the Grand Guignol. Max adopted a ‘double-feature’ approach for each evening, featuring two short
plays, one horrific or gory, the other a bawdy comedy. This system of ‘hot and cold showers’
cemented the theatre’s reputation as both a house of horror and a house of loose morals.
Sounds like the perfect evening to me! As the Grand Guignol grew in popularity, it
attracted the attention of celebrity playwrights: even Gaston Leroux, author of The Phantom
of The Opera, wanted a guest spot. But the star writer and chief partner in crime for
Maurey was André de Lorde: The Prince of Terror who penned over 100 plays between 1901
and 1926. De Lorde had been obsessed with death since
his childhood and often enlisted his psychiatrist Alfred Binet as cowriter. Their partnership
produced some of the most controversial Guignol plays ever staged. For instance, the pair wrote ‘The System
of Dr Goudron And Professor Fether,’ an Edgar Allen Poe adaptation about an asylum
taken over by the criminally insane. Or ‘The Man of The Night’ a disturbing
tale of necrophilia, based on the real crimes of Sergeant Francois Bertrand, ‘the Vampire
of Montparnasse.’ After 16 successful years, Max Maurey went
into a well-deserved early retirement, having made the Grand Guignol one of the biggest
attractions in Paris. Haunting the Chapel The Théâtre du Grand-Guignol was, and is,
considered one of the most interesting performance venues in Europe, and not just because of
the nature of its repertoire. A big part is played by the location and the very structure
of the building. The Theatre was located in Rue Chaptal, a
cul-de-sac within the Pigalle district, under the shadow of the Montmartre hill. In the
19th Century, both areas made for less-than-reputable post codes, associated with licentious spectacle
and the sex industry. But Pigalle was also teeming with ateliers
and workshops, where the lowest strata of Parisian society mingled with artists who
fully embraced a bohemian lifestyle. Pigalle was also a district of dimly lit alleys
and coffee houses, where radical thought proliferated. It is not a coincidence that the 1871 Paris
Commune insurrection started in this area! Directors of the Grand Guignol in the late
19th and early 20th Centuries used the location to their advantage; even before the show started,
spectators would be fully immersed in an ambience of slight unease, fostered by the unusual
but exciting surrounding. The venue -- the building itself -- played
a great part, too. There are scant records and images of what
the Grand Guignol used to look like, but we are reasonably sure that its interior – a
deconsecrated chapel - still maintained a religious-like vibe. Up to the 1950s, patrons were overwhelmed
by the smell of candle wax and incense, impregnating the walls. A regular spectator of the time,
Madame Peche, wrote: [Pesh – rhymes with ‘mesh’] ‘Inside, there was a certain atmosphere
and smell . . . Being an old chapel, maybe the smell was incense or maybe wax—I don’t
know. It felt like plunging into a tomb. But the point was, it created a spooky atmosphere!’ If spectators looked around the auditorium
before lights went out, they could appreciate fine murals with a religious theme. If, after
the show had started, they lifted their eyes to the rafters, they would meet the blank
stare of two giant carved angels, glaring in the limelight. The already unsettled audience may have noticed
that these angels appeared to be weeping at times. This was not a result of a fiendish
special effect, but simply of poor maintenance. French actor and director Robert Hossein,
of ‘Les Miserables’ fame, was a Grand Guignol performer in his youth, and he remembers
that ‘the rain sometimes leaked through the roof.
The audience thought it was … raining blood!’ Raining blood, from a lacerated ceiling! Nice. Another distinctive feature of the auditorium
was the thirteen ground floor boxes. Normally theatre boxes are designed to allow for a
small party of spectators to have some privacy while they enjoy the show. In this case, the
privacy aspect was turned up to 11. These boxes appeared to be re-purposed confessional
booths, typical of a Catholic chapel. In other words, they were enclosed in wooden panels
and grills. These allowed for spectators to watch the show, without being seen. Accounts
of the early decades of the Grand Guignol mention that sometimes patrons inside these
boxes would get … busy … and I don’t mean they were crocheting or reviewing their
accounting books. Sometimes the … business … was loud enough to prompt actors to interrupt
performances with a cry of ‘Have you finished ?!?’ This most amusing anecdote illustrates another
ingredient of the Grand Guignol’s success: its sense of intimacy. The performance space
had a small, square, seven-by-seven meter space at its centre. That’s 23 ft each side. The stage was faced by an auditorium of about
100 seats, arranged in six rows. The auditorium was surrounded by three orders of stalls,
arranged in a semicircle, plus the 13 boxes I mentioned earlier. The theatre could sit
about 180 to 200 spectators, none of whom felt far from the performers. A theatre critic wrote that the Grand-Guignol ‘was so cramped inside that a front-row
spectator could shake hands with the actors as he stretched his feet into the prompter’s
box’. The diabolical playwrights and directors of
the Grand Guignol exploited this sense of intimacy to bring about its deranged, inbred,
locked-in-a-cellar cousin: claustrophobia. The limitations of the stage surface, and
the areas behind the ‘wings’ severely restricted the action that could take place
and the scale of locations that could be used. Most of the Grand Guignol plays were set inside
cramped, encroaching environments, emphasizing a sense of dread and suffocation. Places like
brothel bedrooms, opium dens, asylum cells, torture chambers, operating theatres, execution
courtyards. By comparison, my studio here feels like a
mountaintop gazebo. 1804 1/2 Max Maurey was succeeded by business partners
Camille Choisy and Charles Zibell. The latter was mainly concerned with the finances of
the theatre, leaving all artistic directions in Monsieur Choisy’s hands. Camille had
no previous experience in theatre management, but he was a seasoned actor with an in-depth
knowledge of stagecraft. During his tenure from 1914 to 1928, Choisy used this experience
to push the Grand Guignol toward more elaborate staging and complex lighting rigs. Most importantly,
he invested in special effects to simulate elaborate methods of torture and murder. During the Maurey years, Grand Guignol actors
were usually dispatched by sword, dagger, or strangulation. These killing methods appeared
tame, compared to the real-life horrors of the Great War, so Choisy cynically encouraged
his writers to get creative when it came to end a character’s life. These poor sods
would end up dissolved in acid, electrocuted, blown up to pieces or even torn limb from
limb and eaten by pumas (?!?!!!). Whatever flicker of social realism may have been inherited
from Oscar Metenier’s run... it was completely gone by now! Unless, of course, Pumas were
a grand metaphor for unchecked capitalism. Besides this untamed and joyous cavalcade
of gore, the biggest factor to Choisy’s success was the hiring of actress Paula Maxa
in 1919. The woman who often went by ‘Maxa’ soon became known as ‘the most assassinated
woman in the world’. Prior to Jamie Lee Curtis and her mother Janet
Leigh, Maxa was the original ‘Scream Queen’. She was reputedly killed on stage some 10,000
times, in at least 60 different ways. Over the course of her roles she called for ‘Help!’ exactly 983 times. She screamed ‘They are killing me!’ 1,263 times and ‘I’m being assaulted!’ Precisely 1,804 and a half times. [Caption: ‘I’m being assau-!’] The period from 1919 to 1926, during which
manager Choisy, actress Maxa and playwright De Lorde were in force at the Theatre together,
all at the same time, became known as the ‘Golden Age of Guignol’. A prime example of a vintage Choisy-Maxa-De
Lorde production was ‘The Torture Garden’ of 1922, which is going to be our excuse to
explore what kind of horrific violence took place on stage at the Grand Guignol, and how
it was simulated. The play, based on an erotic novel by decadent
author Octave Mirbeau, opens like a spy story: French agent Jean Marchal is travelling to
China to undermine subversive activity. There, he becomes romantically involved with Clara,
played by our leading lady Maxa. Clara is an English femme fatale … who happens to
be a spy, a double agent, and a violent, sadistic bi-sexual predator who enjoys elaborate torture
rituals. Also, long walks on the beach! Swipe right! Clara takes the reluctant Marchal to witness
the forbidden pleasures of the Torture Garden. “It’s beautiful ! I’ve seen prisoners
hanged back in England . . . Anarchists garrotted in Spain . . . In Russia I saw a group of
soldiers flog a young girl to death . . . I’ve even seen a beautiful young woman fed to a
lion in a cage . . . But nothing is as frightening, so terribly beautiful as what they have here:
the Torture Garden!” Clara does not hide the effects of torture
on her being: “When I see the convicts being punished,
I don’t know what comes over me . . . I’m filled with such extraordinary desires, it
goes so deep into my body that I would love you so intensely tonight, I would be so wild
...” By the way, I trust you don’t have kids
around? Because it gets worse. Clara makes a move on Ti-Bah, a local girl,
but she rejects her advances. The femme fatale orders lead torturer Ti-Mao to punish her,
by slowly peeling away “ a long strip of skin just as you would
peel a piece of fruit . . .” This is how this punishment was simulated
on stage: before the actress playing Ti-Bah walked on stage, make-up artists affixed a
long, thin strip of adhesive plaster at the level of the actress’ shoulder blades. This
strip was dyed red on the bottom and flesh-colour on top. On stage, one of the ‘executioners’ pinned
Ti-Bah on the ground. The actor playing Ti-Mao then simulated making two slits in the girl’s
back, using a prop knife. In reality, he had bloodied her back with fake blood contained
in a small tube or vial, which he would then hide. When Ti-Bah’s back was exposed to
the audience, Ti-Mao would tear the plaster between the shoulder blades, revealing what
appeared to be red, raw flesh. At the end of the play, Ti-Bah has her revenge
by stabbing Clara’s eyes with two hot needles. Slowly, very slowly, the curtain closes to
the screams of the once-torturer, who is now a victim. We don’t have a record of how this trick
was achieved, but we know about other special effects that involved eye-gouging. In a typical scene, an attacker would appear
to press a sharp object into the eye of a victim, while in fact he or she was squeezing
a concealed bulb of red dye on the cheek of the actor. A moment later, the same victim
would scoop up a clump of thick vaseline and fake blood from under a table – or other
hiding place – slap it onto their cheek, and slowly drag it down the face with their
finger. What if the scene involved somebody eating
the freshly gouged eye? No problem, as manager Choisy had special deals with confectioners
in the area, who would bake deliciously sweet, edible eyes. By now, you may have realised that violence
targeting the eyes was a Grand Guignol favourite. As suggested by authors Richard J. Hand and
Michael Wilson, this may be related to early psychoanalysis. As described by Sigmund Freud: “A study of dreams, and phantasies and myths
has taught us that anxiety about one’s eyes, the fear of going blind, is often enough a
substitute for the dread of being castrated.” Curtain Call In 1926 financial partner Charles Zibell sold
his shares of the Grand Guignol to director Jack Jouvin. Choisy and Jouvin did not get
along well, and in 1928, Camille left to manage another theatre. Jouvin, quite the controlling
type, also got rid of Maxa, as she was too popular and overshadowed the rest of the enterprise.
Years later, the Scream Queen returned to the Grand Guignol, but her popularity was
waning. Apparently, years of blood-curdling screams had damaged her voice. Maxa’s decline coincided with that of the
Theatre as a whole. Some authors have placed the blame on Jouvin, accusing him of getting
rid of most of the back catalogue from the ‘Golden Age’. Jouvin, in fact, preferred
contents more focused on psychological and erotic menace, rather than the old recipe
of physical violence with a sprinkling of bawdy comedy and partial nudity. Maxa later stated that the decline was due
to Jouvin’s habit of micro-managing and multi-tasking, which led to bad decisions
and inefficiency. But it would be unfair to place all the blame
on him. Jouvin’s tenure coincided with the advent of the talkies, and especially of the
early horror movies, like James Whale’s Frankenstein of 1931. Let’s not forget that
times were changing, and how they were changing! After the trauma of WWI, Parisians had begun
to recover some of the confidence and joie de vivre of the Belle Epoque in the 1920s.
But by the following decade, the European stage was being darkened by the rise of dictatorial
regimes, and sabres were rattling behind the wings. Audiences were perhaps less in the
mood for an evening of deranged, mindless spectacle. Jouvin eventually quit his post in July of
1938, handing over the baton to Eva Berkson, an Englishwoman. Eva officially opened her
residency in February of 1939, but in June of 1940, she ran into a slight mishap: the
German invasion of France. Berkson had to flee to England, and the vacue
at the helm was filled by good ol’ Camille Choisy, who re-enlisted Maxa and packed the
programme with André De Lorde’s classics. The Grand Guignol recaptured some of its old
popularity, especially amongst the occupation forces. Apparently, even Hermann Göring
enjoyed the pleasures of this ‘degenerate art’! And if I may say so, Mr Tarantino, you may
have missed a trick here. Shoshanna could have been a stage manager at the Grand Guignol,
rather than a cinema owner, and the Theatre would have been a perfect setting for the
final showdown with the Basterds! But I digress. After the War, Eva Berkson returned in 1946
to reclaim her theatre, but the Grand Guignol was on a sunset trajectory. Berkson fled to
England again in 1952; this time, according to Maxa, she was not chased by panzers, but
by debt collectors. The theatre was then managed by one Charles Nonon, in partnership with
actor, writer, and director Eddy Ghilain. The two ferried the dying theatre into the
1960s, as well as the genre associated with it. Ghilain’s plays were celebrated by contemporary
critics, but audience numbers eventually are what mattered – and they were steadily haemorrhaging.
In November of 1962, the curtain of the Grand Guignol closed for the final time over the
agonising screams of a tortured character. On January 5, 1963, a sale of all props and
scenery drove the final wooden stake through the heart of Pigalle. There has been much debate as to why the Grand
Guignol petered out of existence. Again, the times may have been to blame. Anais
Nin recalled that ‘after the war and the concentration camps,
what the theatre presented seemed to be laughable and infantile’ Last manager Charles Nonon agreed when interviewed
by Time magazine in November 1962: ‘We could not compete with Buchenwald’ This makes sense … however, the same audiences
who were shocked by the horrors of WWII and the Shoah would still go to the movies, and
watch horror films … it may have been the explosion in popularity of this medium, and
this genre, that sealed the Grand Guignol’s casket. A Fleeting Experience The venue that once hosted the Grand Guignol
is still there, now home to the International Visual Theatre, dedicated to performing plays
in sign language. What of the essence, the spirit of the Grand
Guignol? Theatre is, by definition, ephemeral and fleeting.
A play may be published, performances may be photographed or even filmed, but none of
these media can accurately render the real experience of being there, bearing witness
to something exciting or terrifying happening on stage. However, some of the original magic of the
Grand Guignol has been at least partially captured by the genre that killed it: horror
films. Since the late ‘20s and early ‘30s, several Grand Guignol plays were adapted for
the screen, eventually influencing the aesthetic of cinematic terror. This tradition continues
even today, with the likes of the Saw and Hostel franchises surely owing a large debt
of gratitude to De Lorde and colleagues. And if you are still looking for a stage experience,
then several modern theatre troupes have revived the Grand Guignol repertoire, such as Molotov
Theatre Group in Washington DC or Thrill Peddlers in San Francisco. If you have been lucky enough
to attend some of these plays, please let us know your impressions in the comments. I hope you enjoyed our excursion into the
world of the stage, let me know what other theatre you would like to hear about. Until
then, stay safe, and thank you for watching.
