Grand Guignol Theatre

Even if the Gothic romance may be considered as one of the predecessors of detective fiction, the world model proposed by the latter seems to exclude what was the essence of the former: the irrational underlying the proposed world model. However, some of detective novel writers deploy Gothic conventions in their texts, thus questioning the rational order of the reality presented there. Such a genological syncretism is typicalamong others-of the novels by John Dickson Carr. The paper is an analysis of Gothic conventions and their functions in four earliest novels by Carr, featuring a French detective-protagonist, Henri Bencolin. It concentrates on elements of Gothic horror, on the atmosphere of terror as well as the motif of the past intruding the present.

MONSTRUM 2 presents six feature essays, four in English, one in Italian, and one in French. Based on her Master’s thesis and a three-week course for the Montreal Monstrum Society (MMS) in the fall of 2018, Alexandra Dagenais' French-language essay addresses the motif of the possessed woman in the demonic possession subgenre as a manifestation of female sexuality repressed under the constraints imposed by the patriarchal order. Combining a psychoanalytic theoretical framework, from Robin Wood's notion of the return of the repressed, with Julia Kristeva's notion of abjection, as well as other feminist horror theorists, Dagenais explores how the spectacle of exorcism demonizes female sexuality. Ellen N. Freeman's essay extends from the research she did for the three-week course she conducted for MMS in the winter of 2018; it argues that Tom Six's controversial, excessive first two Human Centipede films offer a critical grotesque realism that can be traced to the Bakhtinian carnivalesque. In Freeman's analysis, The Human Centipede, First Sequence (2009) and Full Sequence (2011), are savvy reflections of spectatorial desire and horror's attractions-style presentation.  Erin Giannini's study of the hit TV series iZombie takes on the series' repurposing of the traditional association of zombies with consumption to investigate the sociopolitical and ethical dimensions of food sourcing and production. Significantly, Giannini points to the series' investment in class dynamics in the United States as a key factor in its important critical project.  As Will Dodson's memorial preface explains, we lost friend and colleague Jeff Jeske in January 2017. Jeske's essay, written in 2010, is presented here posthumously in honour of a friend who left us too soon. In it, Jeske highlights the mythical elements of Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the stripping of such qualities of cosmic dread in the stylistically self-conscious, but ultimately more thematically hollow, 2004 remake by Marcus Nispel. Jeske tracks the later film's failure as a postmodern retrospective reimagining of gender dynamics, stripped of the productive nihilism of Hooper's original, independent vision. Valentina Mazzilli's Italian-language essay argues that in his writings as a poet and theoretician, Pier Paolo Pasolini  deployed a critique of booming consumer capitalism in the Italy of 50s and 60s through a championing of the pre-industrial and archaic. She demonstrates that this theme is at the heart of his 60s cinema in Comizi d’amore (1964), Teorema (1968), and Porcile (1969). And Papagena Robbins looks at the proto-feminist call for personal redemption and critique of patriarchal forces in the voice recordings of a 1960s wife and mother in the experimental Gothic documentary Must Read After My Death. Robbins situates Dews' film's critical power within the Gothic mode's willingness to expose the "key epistemological impasses around the auto/biographical, female agency, and the evidentiary mediums themselves."

​Critical reviews of Gary D. Rhodes's The Birth of the American Horror Film (2018), Ruth Franklin's Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (2016),  and Abel Ferrara's 2014 film Pasolini (which is receiving a long-awaited North American release this year) follow. And, as part of MONSTRUM's continuing commitment to developing scholars,  the issue ends with Arielle Corriveau's discussion of the Soska Sisters' film American Mary as a work of feminist Grand-Guignol cinema.

MONSTRUM operates under the stewardship of co-editors Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare and Kristopher Woofter, and is supported by an editorial board of respected scholars in horror and related fields. We thank our collaborators, instructors, contributors and peer reviewers for making MONSTRUM possible.

Contributors: Arielle Corriveau, Alexandra Dagenais, Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare, Will Dodson, E.N. Freeman, Erin Giannini, Anne Golden, Jeff Jeske, Valentina Mazzilli, Papagena Robbins, Kristopher Woofter.

Έγραψα αυτό το κείμενο για τον πόλεμο στην Ουκρανία με όρους θεατρικούς (δεν ήξερα πώς αλλιώς)  και με πρωταγωνιστή τον Θάνατο (όπως συμβαίνει σε κάθε τραγωδία), σε μια προσπάθεια να καταλάβω τι γίνεται, τι παρακολουθώ κάθε μέρα στις ειδήσεις. Στην πορεία της γραφής του κειμένου σκεφτόμουνα: πώς αλήθεια προσεγγίζει  κανείς τον ανθρώπινο πόνο όταν οι ίδιες οι λέξεις αδυνατούν  να τον συλλάβουν και να τον εκλογικεύσουν; Πώς μπορούμε να μιλάμε για τον θάνατο-πρωταγωνιστή του ανθρώπινου δράματος, όταν κανείς πεθαμένος  (στρατιώτης) δεν πρόκειται να  επιστρέψει να μας πει πώς είναι; Ένα κείμενο που ματαίως αναζητεί τρόπους να περιγράψει το απερίγραπτο.

In the late 1800’s in Paris, France there was an area of entertainment known as Pigalle. During World War II, Allied soldiers nicknamed the area “Pig Alley.” This was an area bustling with theatres such as the Divan du Monde and the ever popular Moulin Rouge. At the Moulin Rouge, there were often performers that would sing and dance, but there was one specific performer at this time that had a very special talent. This performer’s name was Joseph Pujol and his stage name was La Petomane. He would perform by controlling sounds from the air that came from his anus. Yes, Joseph Pujol was a Fartiste. This type of performance drove the French audiences absolutely wild and he was at the time, one of the top paid performers of the French Cabaret circuit.
This type of performance might sound somewhat crass to the average theatre-goer, but just down the street from the Moulin Rouge was another theatre that was nightly filled with performances that featured acts of murder, mutilations, and the madness of mankind. At the Theatre du Grand Guignol, each of these things were brought to life before the audience, taking place mere feet from their seats. While the term Grand-Guignol is often used as a term meaning grotesque, macabre, or gruesome, this theatre was called the Theatre du Grand Guignol.
Meanwhile in the mid 1920’s part way through the Theatre du Grand Guignol’s existence, a young frenchman by the name of Antonin Artaud was bursting onto the film, theory, and theatre scene in Paris. Artaud, was a theatre owner himself for a period of 4 years, as he owned and operated the Alfred Jarry Theatre. It was in this theatre that works by dramatists such as Roger Vitrac and August Strindberg were produced. Artaud wanted to produce his own work in the theatre but it never happened. After his time as a theatre owner, Artaud continued to work on his own manifestos for theatre and in his book The Theatre and Its Double, Artaud published his manifestos for The Theatre of Cruelty. This was a style suggested by Artaud, that was necessary, if the theatre, as an art form, wanted to continue. The Theatre of Cruelty will be discussed more in-depth later.
In the following pages, this paper will look at the dark naturalism of the French theatre of horror that existed within the Grand-Guignol and also at the work of Antonin Artaud within his theatrical theory of the Theatre of Cruelty. These two styles have some different thoughts on how theatre should happen, but at their core, they are both interested in looking at the dark side of human behavior to get to the heart of humans. There is an interest in applying the idea that there is a Dark Naturalism in the works and theories presented by Antonin Artaud in his Theatre of Cruelty and in the works of the Theatre du Grand Guignol. There will be an in-depth look at the history of the Grand-Guignol and a close read of two works of Grand-Guignol. There will also be a close read of Spurt of Blood by Artaud. After each piece of this jigsaw puzzle has been put into place, the hope is to be able to tie the theories of Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty to the works that were being performed at the Theatre du Grand Guignol and open up exploration of the idea that Artaud’s ideas were perhaps partially influenced by the aesthetic of the Grand Guignol.

La publication du Portrait de l'artiste en saltimbanque, de Jean Starobinski, a mis en lumière un thème cultivé par les artistes depuis le Romantisme : le saltimbanque sert à attaquer l'honorabilité bourgeoise, en même temps qu'il figure le double grimaçant du créateur. L'attention de Starobinski s'est surtout focalisée sur les arts plastiques. Mais un univers avait échappé à l'attention des critiques : c'est celui de la littérature et, plus précisément, du roman. Sa richesse égale sans aucun doute l'importance des témoignages iconographiques, qu'il accompagne et qu'il complète. Car les romanciers, souvent amis des peintres fascinés par le cirque, furent autant qu'eux sensibles à la magie de la piste. Comme l'indique l'exemple de Gustave Kahn et de Gustave Coquiot (les premiers admirateurs, respectivement, de Seurat et de Picasso), le regard des artistes et celui des écrivains se conjuguent au point d'apparaître souvent indissociables. Remettre en lumière les plus beaux de ces romans revient donc à restaurer l'ensemble d'une sensibilité esthétique, qui connut son apogée entre la proclamation de la Troisième République et la Première Guerre mondiale. Depuis le Romantisme, les poètes affirment leur prédilection pour les saltimbanques, en qui ils reconnaissent leur double : Banville, Nerval, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Laforgue, Apollinaire, hantent les cirques et les fêtes foraines. Mais c'est entre les deux guerres de 1870 et 1914 que le cirque, comme tous les lieux de plaisir, devient un véritable objet de fiction.
Ce volume restaure l'ensemble d'une sensibilité esthétique : celle qui régna au début de la Troisième République, encore fiévreuse du désastre de Sedan et décidée à s'étourdir, dans Paris vaincu mais qui reste la capitale du cirque. Toutes les écoles littéraires se donnent rendez-vous autour de la piste pour encenser une représentation qui ne ressemble à aucune autre, et surtout pas au théâtre : entraînés par les déclarations de Théophile Gautier, des frères Goncourt, de Barbey d'Aurevilly, de Zola, de Mallarmé, les écrivains glorifient l'authenticité du cirque, ce lieu où les acteurs ne trichent pas et où la médiocrité se solde par la mort.
L'ouvrage est précédé d'une longue introduction sur la présence du cirque dans la littérature depuis le Romantisme, suivie d'une chronologie mettant en rapport, année par année de 1870 à 1914, les principaux événements du cirque avec les événements historiques et artistiques. Chaque roman est entièrement annoté et précédé d'une analyse spécifique. L'ouvrage comprend un index des noms de personnes.

El teatro, muy a menudo excluido en los estudios sobre géneros comúnmente llamados no miméticos (el terror, lo fantástico, la ciencia ficción), puede, sin embargo, aportar mecanismos que caen más allá del alcance de otros medios como el cine o la narrativa. En concreto, el terror puede beneficiarse de la ruptura de la cuarta pared y la integración del público en el ámbito escénico. El artículo rastrea, en la teoría y en la práctica, los grados de tal asimilación y las posibilidades que se siguen para la recreación del terror en las tablas.

En este texto defino las casas del terror como la forma escénica más propicia para la recreación del miedo. Ante las limitaciones del teatro convencional para este fin, se presentan las casas del terror como la opción más fecunda, llevando al límite la ruptura de la cuarta pared y haciendo intervenir al público en el espectáculo. Normalmente desechadas por la academia, en torno a  ellas no existe bibliografía científica. Comienza, pues, el artículo por definir el objeto de estudio y ofrecer ejemplos significativos. Pro-cede a continuación a legitimar su naturaleza enteramente teatral, vinculándolo con la línea posdramática; y en última instancia, toma en consideración el papel que juegan los elementos sobrenaturales en la respuesta emocional de los asistentes, lo cual sirve de base para entender el funcionamiento profundo de las casas del terror.

Gérard de Nerval rattachait directement le théâtre d'ombres aux atellanes latines : « Aussi bien Caragueuz lui-même n'est-il autre que le Polichinelle des Osques, dont on voit encore de si beaux exemplaires au musée de Naples ». Un demi-siècle plus tard, le grand helléniste Salomon Reinach faisait la relation entre les mimes du monde ottoman, leurs homologues italiens et ceux de l'Antiquité, via Byzance : « Il semble bien établi que le Karagà¶z turc a hérité du mime byzantin, comme aussi, par d'autres voies, la Commedia dell'arte et le théâtre des marionnettes ». Sans doute la filiation n'est-elle pas aussi directe. La continuité est frappante cependant : à  la différence de la tragédie antique, qui dut attendre la Renaissance pour être réinventée à  l'opéra puis au théâtre, la comédie et ses masques, relayés par les marionnettes, connurent une fortune moins illustre mais ininterrompue. C'est cette permanence que le volume souhaite illustrer, en privilégiant la portée familière du théâtre, qui dessine une nouvelle carte de l'Europe des spectacles. Sur cette carte, dans ce domaine comme dans tant d'autres, l'Empire ottoman se révèle une puissance de premier plan, bien intégrée au jeu européen. Les voyageurs ne manquent pas de s'intéresser à  ses silhouettes familières, où ils scrutent l'héritage des Anciens. Notre époque a considéré ces spectacles avec la condescendance réservée au pittoresque. Au XIXe siècle, les spécialistes de l'Antiquité et de l'Orient étaient mieux avertis de leur importance. Cet ouvrage, qui réunit des historiens de la littérature, du théâtre, de l'art et de l'archéologie, remet au centre de la scène une tradition injustement marginalisée.

Cet article étudie les représentations du médecin et de la médecine à l’oeuvre dans les pièces de théâtre grand-guignol nées de la collaboration du dramaturge André de Lorde (1869-1942) avec le psychologue Alfred Binet (1857-1911). Après être revenu sur les conditions de création de ce duo dramatique inédit, il dévoile la figure médicale duale qu’il a promue. Partagé entre soin des patients et progrès de la science, le médecin lordo-binetien incarne en effet le rapport ambivalent que la Belle Époque entretient avec une science et une profession médicales alors en plein essor et dont le pouvoir suscite alors autant d’espoirs que d’inquiétudes.



This paper focuses on the representations of doctors andmedicine in the grand guignol plays originating in the collaboration between the playwright André de Lorde (1869-1942) and the psychologist Alfred Binet (1857-1911). After explaining the context that led to the constitution of this original theatrical duo, the paper reveals the double figure of medicine it promoted. Torn between care for his patients and the progress of science, the lordo-binetien doctor epitomises the ambivalent relationship of the Belle Époque with a medical science and a medical profession then in rapid development and whose power was giving rise to as many hopes as anxieties.

On February 24, 1922, the troupe of the Grand Guignol Theater is preparing for the evening's horror show. The thespians fear the plans of an official from the police headquarters to censor their productions, and worry about the threats of a wholesale meat trader from the Abattoirs de la Villette, who covertly sold them ox blood for their gory plays, and from whom they want to distance themselves. They do not suspect that the threats of the evening will escalate to the point of plunging Paris into a terrible carnage. Will they be able to stop the force of destruction unleashed, partly by their fault, on the inhabitants of the capital?
Sang de boeuf (Bouchers et acteurs) is a historical horror epic in which the Grand Guignol meets La Villette's butchers, the Tiger Brigades and Austrian diplomacy, and in which theater is entangled with the history of horror and with a sinister plot of prostitution and drug trafficking, serial murders and First World War traumas, leading you on a tour of the dark side of the Roaring Twenties' Paris.
https://www.lespresseslitteraires.com/camus-cyril/

In recent years, there was a raised interest in the topic of Grand Guignol in the academic circles. From historical coverage, to tackling the importance of Grand Guignol plays as a form of violent entertainment, to more detailed account of the way the performance in Grand guignol plays was executed, it became clear that Grand Guignol’s importance in the world of different forms of media is vital in order to explain certain gaps that might have appeared when talking about film, theatre and other aspects that are a part of popular culture and media today.
More recent example of using Grand Guignol in this way is Showtime’s series Penny Dreadful (2014 - 2016), created by John Logan. From its first season, the series made clear that its creator’s intention was to reimagine the classical characters of Gothic literature and reintroduce them to the new generations as contemporary monsters that still have much to offer. Apart from the characters mentioned, Penny Dreadful series also tries to reimagine the controversial French theatre, Grand Guignol (1897 - 1962) and adapt it to the contemporary storyline of the Gothic, represented in the series. Although solely reimagined as space throughout the first couple of seasons of the series, that serves as a prop for the development of the characters’ stories, I would argue that the representation of Grand Guignol in Penny Dreadful Demimonde bears much more significance than simply being a space for the characters to dwell in; it subtly develops into a monstrous character of its own, serving more as an agent for the characters’ actions rather than just being a stage space where these actions occur.

This is a study of the practicalities of staging blood effects for horror performance with particular reference to the Grand-Guignol theatre. It explores the production challenges in several key examples of staging the Grand-Guignol and the balances between dramatic and logistics in the pursuit of horrific realism.

‘This is another horrible play, and it is almost incredible that in such dreadful times as these there can be any demand for artificial horrors’ (BL, LCP1915/17) wrote the Examiner of Plays, George S. Street, on 22 June 1915. His comments were in response to reading the new and anonymously written Sous la Lumiere Rouge, a Grand-Guignol to be performed at the Coronet Theatre, Notting Hill. The play featured the exhumation of the bloody body of a young woman who had been accidentally buried alive. At a time when soldiers were returning home maimed and disfigured, when stories were circulating in the press of brutal attacks on civilians in France and Belgium, and when British civilians were under attack from the air, Streets comments are understandable.

Yet this was not the only Grand-Guignol to be licensed that year. 1915 also saw the production of Le Poison Hindou (Coronet, 30 June 1915) La Fugue de Madame Caramon (Garrick, 23 July 1915), Compiègne 28 Aout 1914 (Garrick, 16 August 1915), and Stafford and Myer’s The Man Who Came Back (Camberwell Empire, 11 October 1915) which featured a man whose face has been half blown off in an accident.

Examining this spate of Grand-Guignols, this paper will consider the demand for these ‘artificial horrors’ in the context of the war, arguing that their popularity was in response to, rather than being in spite of the war. Examining these plays in relation to the wider context of the war, the paper will show how the representations of death, disfigurement and claustrophobia central to these plays served to articulate and mediate contemporary anxieties and traumas. At the same point, it will argue that the experience of watching these works of horror also had a cathartic function for a society undergoing mass trauma.

Al calor del auge que viven los estudios sobre lo fantástico en la universidad española, se propone mi charla indagar en una zona apenas explorada: el terror en el teatro escrito y representado en nuestro país. Hablaré tanto desde una perspectiva histórica como teórica, en la convicción de que solo si tenemos claro a qué nos referimos cuando decimos teatro de terror, es posible pasar a contemplar casos concretos y proyectar los cimientos de una hipotética historia del género. Mi enfoque comparte elementos con las investigaciones sobre lo fantástico –al fin consolidadas también en el terreno del drama–, pero trasciende el ámbito de lo sobrenatural, abriéndose a todo aspecto destinado a generar una reacción de espanto en el receptor. Se nutre, en este sentido, de las aportaciones del psicoanálisis, la filosofía y la sociología, entre otras disciplinas. En cuanto al plano teatral, pretende abarcar desde los espectáculos más convencionales –sometidos a la cuarta pared– hasta aquellos que entran en diálogo directo con el espectador, exigiendo su participación activa en la representación. De todo ello veremos ejemplos elocuentes, tomados de la cartelera española de los dos últimos siglos y no limitados a los escenarios habituales; abiertos a otros espacios, así como a formatos rara vez considerados desde un prisma académico.

From 2002, at the forefront of the vibrant but intermittent alternative cabaret scene in Parisian nightclubs and bars, the French performance troupe Kisses Cause Trouble created New Burlesque shows en decalage — a term for distortion or deviation that I shall position as a specifically French version of queering. Kisses Cause Trouble1 (aka ‘Kisses’) interpreted and interpolated New Burlesque acts through and with the French national theatrical form of Grand Guignol, and its highly culturally and politically Influential ‘Ninth Art’ of the bande dessi/tee (comic books, strips and graphic novels).

In the theatre we are familiar with how rehearsal and collaboration can lead to a number of unintended discoveries that can cause a production to change tack. At the heart of this thesis is discovery- of oneself as an artist, as part of community collaboration and as part of a story told on stage. Using carnival as a frame for the space we work in, accepting that the ʻtricksterʼ cultural figure can be a manifestation of the carnival, it should be possible for the role of trickster to be taken on by someone in the rehearsal process. This is often but not always the director. These ʻhappy accidentsʼ can in fact arise through the directorʼs deliberate disruption of the community. At times, problems that raise their heads are solved through this creative process. Misrule is my definition of this and I offer my experience of this within the process of bringing Saint Punch, a carnivalesque/ Grand Guignol show, to the stage. I compare this with some other practitionersʼ experience of this process of disruptive imagination as defense of my position. By recognizing it in both theory and practice through a critical analysis my aim is to seek a synthesis intended to enrich the theatrical experience of the audience.

Forthcoming chapter for  Queer Instruments: Local Practices and Global Queernesses. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015):

"In this chapter Pearlman explores the Parisian‘Trash Burlesque’ troupe Kisses Cause Trouble (‘Kisses’) via their 2009 theatrical show Le Vrai Spectacle. Pearlman considers the ways in which Kisses’ use of French artistic forms Grande Guignol (horror theatre) and Bande Dessinée (comic books, strips and graphic novels), and their subversion of ‘universalist’ French identity through Angela Stukator’s ‘unruly’ fat female body creates a New Burlesque en décalage – a term for distortion or deviation that in this theatrical context become a specifically French version of queering."