Strindberg, Antoine and Lugné-Poë: A Study in Cross-Purposes

Abstract

"A PLAY OF MINE HAD BEEN PRODUCED AT A PARIS THEATRE, the dream of all contemporary authors in my country, but one which I alone had realized. But now the theatre was repellent, as in everything that one has Attained…” So wrote Strindberg in later years, when the glamor of his Parisian success had tarnished. But the productions of his plays staged by the Theatre Libre and the Theatre de l'Oeuvre between 1889 and 1894 are cited in most textbooks of drama as the breakthrough that won the Swedish playwright the success and publicity that he deserved. Antoine and Lugne-Poe, their directors, are consistently extolled as daring innovators who championed the cause of unappreciated genius and whose productions perfectly embodied what Strindberg had in mind. The textbooks implicitly suggest that the road was now clear for Strindberg's triumphal chariot to travel unimpeded from one succes d'estime to the next, and that owing to the farsightedness of French experimental theatre, his place in world drama was henceforth assured.