Vieux-Colombier, Théâtre du

Vieux-Colombier, Théâtre du, Paris, originally the Athénée, built in the early 19th century close to the dovecote of the former Abbey of St Germain. Until 1913 it was no more than a suburban playhouse for travelling companies; but it was then taken over by Jacques Copeau as an experimental playhouse for the production of new and serious plays. With the help of his stage-manager Louis Jouvet, Copeau redesigned the auditorium. Originally an oblong with a stage at one end, it was adapted so as to do away with the curtain (for the first time in the modern French theatre) and integrate the proscenium arch into a series of platforms and openings surrounding the audience on three sides. On a small scale—the theatre held only 200, and the stage mostly remained bare—Copeau tried to use features of the Elizabethan stage to involve the audience in a total experience of theatre. He opened with a translation of Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness, and from 1913 to 1914 and again from 1919 to 1926, when the theatre became a cinema, he presented memorable productions of Shakespeare, Molière, Goldoni, and Musset, and also introduced his predominantly intellectual audiences to Claudel, Ghéon, Romains, and Gide. In 1930 the Vieux-Colombier again became a theatre, when a group of Copeau's disciples, the Compagnie des Quinze (see SAINT-DENIS), re-established the tradition of intellectual experiment. After the departure of the Compagnie several notable events took place, including the production of Sartre's Huis-Clos, Vilar's production of T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, and first performances of plays by García Lorca and Claudel; but successive managements found the theatre difficult to run successfully, and it finally closed in 1972.