The
Grotesque, the Ugly, and the Exotic
A Look into the History of the Grand Guignol
Paul Well's definition of the Grand Guignol simply states "A highly theatrical, melodramatic style of performance, which foregrounds sadistic and apparently 'live' horror effects like eye-gouging, stabbing and hanging." (Redmond, 125).
Down
a cobblestone dingy alleyway, tucked in a corner of Montrmatre, into the "heart
of the sex district", lives a small 'Theatre of Horror'. Once a Gothic
Chapel, now The Grand Guignol, contributed a major impact in the look and development
of the B Horror movies of today. "The Grand Guignol's most significant
influence on world culture can be found in the popular sub-genres of the Hollywood
film. While the scary phantasmagoric style and primitive psychological thriller
existed from the very beginnings of the European motion picture industry…"
(Gordon, 40). Paris' Grand Guignol, which translates into "big puppet show",
would go on contribute to the formation of a "broad range of films of the
horror and thriller genres. This is without mentioning its influence on broader
popular culture from fiction and comics to radio and television drama"
(Hand and Wilson). "In a way, the Grand Guignol always existed. The impulse
to shock, to display the extremes of human behavior, and then to demonstrate
the divine punishments that follow for those individuals who violate society's
taboos may have been the original social function of all performances"
(Gordon, 4). Since the Greek plays there has always been violence in drama.
We see examples of it in Aeschylus, the middle Ages and Shakespeare. "Artaud
even included Shakespeare, Dekker, and Webster as charter playwrights in his
Theatre of Cruelty" (Gordon,7).
The
Theatre du Grand Guignol was founded in 1897 by a forum for naturalist drama,
Oscar Metenier. Metenier had worked as a Secretary to the Police Commissioner
in Paris. He had also worked with founder of Theatre Libre, Andre Antoine, by
providing him with numerous short dramatic pieces, rosse, or "crass"
plays that portrayed the lives of the squalor of Parisian underclass. "From
the time of the French Revolution to the 1930's, specialized French newspaper
and weeklies provided their readers with realistic gory accounts of true-life
crime stories and their frequently bizarre denouements" (Gordon, 7). When
Metenier opened the Grand Guignol he continued to play with and investigate
Naturalism and used Theatre Libre as a foundation for his upcoming success.
Violence
and sexuality reigned an evening of entertainment. It consisted of several plays
ranging from melodramatic to comedic. Two comedies and four dramas introduced
the concept of alternating different types of plays within a single evening's
entertainment. (link to
scripts) Metenier stated it to be and ideal evening suited for one-act
plays like 'a hot and cold shower'. "A performance at the Grand Guignol
strove to terrify and titillate the spectator through a mixture of horror, laughter,
and the erotic" (Hand and Wilson). A resident doctor was employed to treat
the numerous audience members who fainted and lost their dinner in the near
by alley each night of a performance. (see
illustration) "However, on the doctor's first night of duty
a spectator fainted and the ushers could not locate the doctor. When the victim
regained consciousness he meekly confessed that he himself was the doctor"
(Emeljanow, 168). Its architecture and location helped with the success of the
theatre. It became apart of the dark seedy environment of the community. One
spectator recalls, "Leaving the Metro at Place Pigalle and walking down
the narrow streets past the brazen display of the sex industry to the tucked
away venue, there was a sense of a journey into forbidden territory, into the
underbelly of Paris with its promise and danger of sex and violence" (Hand
and Wilson). There was an ambivalent nature to the theatre. It was a very significant
converted space erected originally in the late eighteenth century. It first
started as a Jasenist chapel, sacked and gutted in 1791 during the Reign of
Terror, then made into a blacksmith's workshop, a church again, an artist's
studio, before becoming the Theatre-Salon and the Theatre du Grand Guignol.
(Gordon 1997, 14).
With
in two years Grand Guignol had grew out of naturalistic experimentation but
never entirely removed from the theatre movement of that time, melodrama. Two
years after its opening Metenier turned the ownership over to Max
Maurey for reasons unknown. Metenier soon came up missing. Some suspect
he was murdered. Maurey re-claimed the Grand Guignol as the 'Theatre of Horror'
and invested creating special effects as realistic as possible. "Maurey
replaced Metenier's 'slice-of-life' plays with 'slice-of-death' plays, and he
decreed that the staple of the Grand Guignol was to be terror rather than naturalism.
By 1900 the Grand Guignol was a thriving enterprise" (Emeljanow, 167).
It was extremely important to accomplish the spectacle of the killing scenes
due to the space. The stage itself was no bigger than twenty feet by twenty
feet. "You could shake hands with the actors across the footlights and
stretch your legs out into the prompter's box" (quoted in Homrighous 1963,
4-5). This made the illusion an almost impossibility. (click
here for theatre plan). The stalls were arranged in six rows of between
fifteen and twenty seats. There were approximately thirteen boxes. The intimacy
of the space allowed an intensity to evolve between the actors and the audience,
giving it more a claustrophobic feel than anything else. The stage relied on
the strict proscenium setting for the effects to be executed effectively. Frequently
we find plays set in "prison cells, asylums, execution courtyards, lighthouses,
barbershops, opium dens, bedrooms in brothels, or operating theatres" (Hand
and Wilson). People have always loved been thrown into a simulated and shocking
experience. It is the thrill of being able to release their own sadism and/or
masochism. The Grand Guignol lasted for sixty-five years because of the violence
and the outrageous. (click
here for list of managers and history continued. See what famous
people attended the 'Theatre of Horror').