Baty, Gaston

Baty, Gaston (1885–1952), French director, who in 1930 opened the Théâtre Montparnasse under his own name. Here he put on an imposing series of old and new plays, many of them foreign classics, and several dramatizations of novels, of which the best were probably his own version of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and his own play Dulcinée (1938), based on an episode from Don Quixote. Baty was sometimes accused of subordinating the text of the play to the décor, which led him to substitute pictorial groupings for action; but this resulted in some fine work, most noticeable in his productions of Gantillon's Maya, Lenormand's Simoun, and J.-J. Bernard's Martine. In 1936 Baty was appointed a director of the Comédie-Française, where his erudition and impeccable theatrical technique helped to reanimate the classical repertory. In the year of his death he was instrumental in founding the Centre Dramatique du Sud-Est.