Page "André Antoine" Paragraph 8

Antoine's Theatre Libre dedicated itself more specifically to the Quart d ' heure or short, simple, free, episodic, one act play performances.

he concentrated on script development but advocated naturalistic, behavioral acting dependent on the interaction of actors and helping acting to find their psychological motivations.

Discussions on matters of interpretation and setting were a normal part of rehearsals with actors.

Antoine believed each play had its unique mood or atmosphere and he hardly ever reused sets and settings.

He also literally believed in the notion of removing the fourth wall.

With some plays he would rehearse in the space with four walls around the action, natural set and actors and then decide which fourth wall to remove and thus deciding which side or perspective to place the audience on. Plays performed at the Théâtre Libre were often " thin on plot, dense in social and psychological implication " ( Chothia, Andre Antoine ).

Productions rejected formal acting styles that were prevalent at the time and they built the " fourth wall.

" Despite being proponents of naturalism, they still adhered to some ideas of " playing for the audience " – there is no evidence that Antoine ever set any chairs facing away from the audience, and the actors still had to make sure that their voices could be heard to the back of the house — so, in a way, their " naturalism " was really just a higher level of illusion than theatre had been up to that point.