From the 16th to the 18th centuries, Commedia dell ' arte performers improvised based on a broad outline in the streets of Italy and in the 1890s theatrical theorists and directors such as Russian, Konstantin Stanislavski and the French, Jacques Copeau, founders of two major streams of acting theory, both heavily utilised improvisation in acting training and rehearsal.

In 1942 the French composer and theoretician Pierre Schaeffer, began his exploration of radiophony when he joined Jacques Copeau and his pupils in the foundation of the Studio d ' Essai de la Radiodiffusion Nationale.

He married Danish-born actress Marie-Hélène Copeau ( 1902 – 1994 ), the daughter of the influential French writer, editor, and drama critic Jacques Copeau ( 1879 – 1949 ) and Agnès Thomsen.

Jacques Copeau was an important figure in terms of stage design, and was very keen to break away from the excesses of naturalism to get to a more pared down, representational way of looking at the stage.

* Jacques Copeau

Jacques Copeau ca.

Jacques Copeau ( February 4, 1879 – October 20, 1949 ) was an influential French theatre director, producer, actor, and dramatist born in Paris.

* Copeau, Jacques: Registres II, Molière ; Ed.

* Copeau, Jacques: Registres III, Les Registres du Vieux-Colombier I ; Ed.

* Copeau, Jacques: Registres IV, Les Registres du Vieux-Colombier II ; Amérique, Ed.

* Copeau, Jacques: Registres VI, L ’ École du Vieux-Colombier ; Ed.

* Rudlin, John: Jacques Copeau, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

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The sessions ended in June with a charade presented before Copeau and a few friends of the Vieux-Colombier which le patron found quite satisfying ( Registres VI, p. 225 ).

During the summer of 1913, Copeau took his troupe to Le Limon, his country house in the Marne valley.

Among them were ten plays from the first season in Paris but with a different casts since not all the original members of the troupe came to New York: Molière's La Jalousie du Barbouillé, L ' Avare and L ' Amour médecin, Musset's Barberine, the Copeau / Croué adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, and Nuit des rois, the adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night shared the stage with Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement (" The Carriage of the Holy Sacrament ") of Prosper Mérimée, La Surprise de l ' Amour (" Love's Surprise ") of Musset, and Poil de Carotte (" Carrot Head ") of Jules Renard.

In January, Copeau staged Henri Ghéon's Le Pauvre sous l ' escalier (" The Beggar under the Staircase "), the story based on the medieval tale of the life of Saint Alexis.

In 1940, Copeau was named Provisionary Administrator of the Comédie-Française, where he staged Pierre Corneilles Le Cid, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and Mérimée's Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement.

Along with Gaston Baty, Georges Pitoëf, and Charles Dullin, he founded Le Quartel des Quatre in 1927, a cooperative association that supported each other's offerings and, more importantly, set the highest possible standards of taste in their respective theatres in the tradition of Copeau.

On the Left Bank, on the rue du Vieux-Colombier, he rented the old and dilapidated Athénée-Saint-Germain, an unlikely venue for the utopian ideals of Copeau, but its location at distance from the commercial theatre district gave a signal that he intended to pursue a new path.

In the summer of 1916, Copeau received an invitation to organize a tour with the Vieux-Colombier in America, supposedly to counteract the influence of the German theatre in New York City, but also as a propaganda move to continue American support of the French cause.

Nevertheless, on November 26, 1917, the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier de New York opened its season on the stage of the renovated Garrick Theatre with an Impromptu du Vieux-Colombier, a piece written especially for the occasion by Copeau, and Molière's Les Fourberies de Scapin (" Scapin's Pranks ").

But Copeau was made aware that he needed to bow somewhat to popular taste if the Vieux-Colombier was to succeed financially.

By the end of February auditions were being held for the " Classes at the Vieux-Colombier ", an undertaking Copeau asked Suzanne Bing to organize.

Copeau called upon the generosity of the Friends of the Vieux-Colombier who helped fill its coffers.

The highly demanding Vieux-Colombier audiences were happy to see fine performances of classics under the deft direction of Copeau.

When the 1923 / 24 season opened, the Vieux-Colombier found itself in competition with former members of the company since Jouvet's and Dullin's theatre drew from the same public as Copeau.

Then, Copeau made the momentous decision to abandon entirely the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier.

Despite the offer of help from Jouvet to make the Vieux-Colombier both an artistic and financial success, Copeau chose his independence.

In effect Copeau at first tried to re-establish the school of the Vieux-Colombier in this new context.

In the 1920s, he had worked closely with his uncle, the renowned French theatre director Jacques Copeau, to revolutionize theatrical practice and training in France through the Vieux-Colombier troupe.