French Literature Reviews - 2026
C. Faivre-Zellner, Firmin Gémier
Theatre and Performance
Firmin Gémier
Catherine Faivre-Zellner
Published on: 02/09/2009
Publisher: Actes Sud
Series: Actes Sud-Papiers
ISBN: 978-2-7427-8490-5
EAN: 9782742784905
No. of pages: 92 pages
Publisher's price: 11.00€
Actor, director, and theater manager Firmin Gémier championed a vision of popular theater that led him to revolutionize stagecraft by breaking down the barrier between the stage and the auditorium.
By spilling beyond the confines of the stage, the performance makes it possible to "project the action into the audience, to transform the spectator into an actor." As the first director of the Théâtre National Populaire at the Trocadéro in Paris (1920–1930), he passionately defended the social function of theater, making it accessible to all audiences and open to all artistic forms. Gémier wrote militant essays in defense of certain artistic productions. Catherine Faivre-Zellner has brought together in a single volume a lecture originally published in 1919 and a 1921 article addressing the art of stage direction.
The book is enriched with biographical notes on the figures mentioned, as well as bio-bibliographical markers concerning Gémier.
(Firmin Gémier (1869–1933) began his acting career in neighborhood theaters in Paris.
In 1892, he joined André Antoine's Théâtre-Libre as a stage manager, assistant director, and actor. Gémier later became director of the Théâtre de la Renaissance in 1901, and subsequently managed the Théâtre Antoine from 1906 to 1919, where he alternated between hit plays and original productions. Always eager to innovate, he founded the Théâtre National Ambulant (1911–1912). In 1920, he was appointed director of the TNP.
To provide this project with the means to survive, Gémier vied for the directorship of the Odéon and secured it in 1922, where he staged productions performed simultaneously at the Trocadéro. Firmin Gémier resigned from the Odéon in 1930. He also acted in films and became a film director.)
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On the website Rue89.com, a review of this book can be found:
Have you read Firmin Gémier? By Jean-Pierre Thibaudat | Journalist | 12/01/2010 | 19:07
Firmin Gémier (1869–1933) remains relatively unknown. It is known that the small auditorium of the Théâtre de Chaillot bears his name—fittingly, given that he was the initiator and driving force behind a traveling Popular National Theater. We know he worked with the great Antoine, managed the Odéon, staged major spectacles at the Cirque d'Hiver (photographs of which still survive), and campaigned for an international theater movement. It is less well-known that he was a son of department 93 (Aubervilliers), or that at age 15 he worked as a professional claqueur on the Boulevard du Crime near the Ambigu theater, where as a child he occasionally caught a glimpse of the great actor Frédérick Lemaître.
Unlike Copeau, Dullin, or Jouvet, he did not leave behind an abundant literary legacy. There was a book of interviews compiled by Paul Gsell published under the title *Le théâtre* in 1925 by Grasset, which has long been out of print. But where can one read the complete text of his *New decentralization project concerning the provinces*, which Gémier submitted to the Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts in 1912, only for it to be immediately shelved?
"Firmin Gémier does not like to write. And theater history does not look kindly on those who do not like to write." Thus Catherine Faivre-Zellner opens the introduction to a small volume gathering two texts by Gémier, notably his remarkable lecture *La mise en scène au théâtre*. These texts complement those that Jean-Pierre Sarrazac compiled in *Théâtre populaire, acte I* in the "th XX" collection (2006, L'Age d'Homme).
Consider his definition of stage direction: it is the "art of externalizing the feelings, characters, and settings of a dramatic work." And this: "Instead of teaching elocution, we should teach how to think, how to retain thoughts, how to categorize them first without words; once you know the words, you do not yet know your role." Or again: "The greater the work of art, the closer it approaches the sublime, the less it needs scenery or pictorial staging; the spoken word carries its own scenery within itself."
“Firmin Gémier” collection Mettre en scène, Actes Sud Papiers, 96 pp., 11€
The volume edited by Catherine Faivre-Zellner brings together a 1919 lecture and a 1921 article focusing on the art of stage direction by Firmin Gémier. Alongside these writings, the publication includes biographical notes on mentioned figures and bio-bibliographical markers concerning Gémier himself. As an actor, director, and theater manager, Gémier championed popular theater, served as the first director of the Théâtre National Populaire, and wrote militant essays defending artistic productions. Readers interested in French theatrical history and the evolution of stagecraft may find this collection relevant.