Lugné-Poe


Aurélien-Marie Lugné, known by his stage-name and pen name Lugné-Poe, was a French actor, theatre director, and scenic designer best known for his work at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, one of the first theatrical venues in France to provide a home for the artists of the symbolist movement at the end of the nineteenth century. Most notably, Lugné-Poe introduced French audiences to the Scandinavian playwrights August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen.

Life and career

At age nineteen he entered the Paris Conservatoire and joined the Théâtre Libre, a private naturalist theatre run by André Antoine. He adopted the stage name Lugné-Poe in homage to Edgar Allan Poe, to whom he sometimes claimed to be distantly related.
He organized a group of painters known as The Nabis, publicizing their work in a series of articles.
He created La Maison de l'Œuvre, also known as Le Théâtre de l'Œuvre, a private group of spectators and experimental theatre that went against the naturalist movement and contributed to the symbolist movement in theatre and to the discovery of new playwrights.
In 1895, Jakub Grein and the Independent Theatre Society invited Lugné-Poe and his troupe to present a season of Ibsen's Rosmersholm, The Master Builder, and Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist L'Intruse and Pelléas and Mélisande in London.

Works

;Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens
;Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord
;Nouveau-Théâtre
;Comédie-Parisienne
;Théâtre du Ménus-Plaisirs
;Salle de Trianon, Paris
;Théâtre Marigny
;Théâtre Grévin
;Théâtre Fémina
;Théâtre Antoine
;Théâtre du Palais-Royal
;Théâtre Malakoff, Paris
;Théâtre de l'Œuvre, Cité Monthiers
;Other Paris Theatres