Gémier Firmin

Gémier Firmin [ Firmin Tonnerre] (1869–1933), French actor, director, and manager, who played a major part in the theatrical revival of the 1920s. A pupil of Antoine, he made his first success as Ubu in Lugné-Poë's production of Jarry's Ubu Roi (1896). He was an inspired, if somewhat slapdash, actor, with great powers of rhetoric and ample gestures, and he had a remarkable ability for directing crowd scenes in which he also appeared. His interest in popular theatre was first shown in his production of Romain Rolland's Le 14 juillet (1902), and in 1911 he founded the Théâtre Ambulant—a scheme which entailed moving around France by rail the entire equipment of a 1,700-seat theatre. During the First World War he helped to cement the Franco-British alliance by producing Shakespeare in Paris, and his sense of public responsibility, heightened by an important meeting with Max Reinhardt, led him to attempt with the help of Gaston Baty a series of gigantic dramatic events at the Cirque d'Hiver. In 1920 he became manager of the first Théâtre National Populaire; at the same time he was managing the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, and from 1921 to 1928 the Odéon. During this last period he successfully directed spectacular performances of foreign classics by such authors as Gorky, Kleist, and Tolstoy, as well as Shakespeare, and presented for the first time an eclectic assortment of new playwrights. Towards the end of his life he left the Odéon and returned to his original idea of a travelling theatre. Much of his pioneer work later bore fruit in the emergence of a second Théâtre National Populaire under Jean Vilar and in the work of Jean-Louis Barrault.