Lugné-Poë, Aurélien-François

Lugné-Poë, Aurélien-François (1869–1940), French actor, director, and theatre manager, who in 1893 took over the Théâtre d'Art from Paul Fort, renaming it the Théâtre de l'Œuvre. He remained there until 1899 and returned to it from 1912 to 1929. In his early years he continued Fort's reaction against the realism of the Théâtre Libre by staging poetic and Symbolist plays. His first production was Pelléas et Mélisande by Maeterlinck, several of whose later plays were also first seen at this theatre, and among the other foreign authors he presented were Ibsen, Bjørnson, Hauptmann, D'Annunzio, and Echegaray. In 1895 he staged Wilde's Salome, and he brought Claudel before the public with L'Annonce faite à Marie in 1912 and L'Ôtage in 1914. In 1896 he had been responsible for the riotous first performances of Jarry's Ubu-roi. Between 1919 and 1929 he introduced Shaw and Strindberg to Paris, and encouraged such new French playwrights as Achard. After he left the Théâtre de l'Œuvre he continued to direct elsewhere, being associated in 1932 with the production of Anouilh's first play L'Hermine, and in 1935 with L'Inconnue d'Arras by Salacrou. Himself an excellent actor, Lugné-Poë appeared in many of his own early productions, and in 1908 was seen in London in Jules Renard's Poil de Carotte.