WHAT IS GRAND GUIGNOL?
Read The Molotov Manifesto - Acting Grand Guignol, Molotov-Style: What It Is, and What It Ain't
- Le Theatre du Grand Guignol opened its doors in 1897 on rue Chaptal in Paris' notorious Montmartre district. The opening of the theater also began the story of a new theatrical genre, "The French Theater of Horror," which would bear the new theater's name.
- Grand Guignol literally translates to, "Big Puppet Show," or, "Puppet Show For Adults." This nomenclature hints at the theater's sketchy location, adult audiences, carnival-like atmosphere, and grotesque subject matter.
- Though sharing many characteristics with its neighbor theaters in Montmartre, Le Theatre du Grand Guignol was different, which it gave it its notorious place in history.
- An evening of theater at the Grand Guignol was usually made up of several short plays. These plays alternated between the theater's signature horror plays and fast paced, bawdy sex comedies. This variety gave the effect of, "La douche ecossaise," or, "a hot and cold shower." The sharp contrast between the moods of the different plays helped to make the horror scarier and the comedy funnier in the same way that turning the water back and forth between very hot and very cold causes an intense reaction.
- Grand Guignol has been described as a combination of extreme naturalism, melodrama, pornography, and the Well-Made play. For example, a Grand Guignol play employs the Well-Made model of lots of exposition, calculated plot twists that build suspense, and ultimately lead to a climax which is located near the end of the play. However, in this structure, the action and dialogue progress in a fashion that is similar to pornography. We know what the ultimate result is going to be. It is just a question of when and how it will happen. This final result; namely, the Act of Horror illustrates the last two ideas. In a death scene, the victim would die a stylized and melodramatic death, but the means of death are as naturalistic as possible.
- Grand Guignol strives first and foremost for a visceral reaction, rather than a deeper symbolic, abstract, or political meaning.
- Grand Guignol steers away from the supernatural in favor of showing the "human beast." Its characters are sadists, not monsters.
- Grand Guignol is misanthropic, rather than misogynistic.
- Psychological motivations are directed by primal instincts and unpredictable insanity.
- Dark themes, such as death, sex, and insanity are compounded by grotesque coincidence and haunting irony.
- Grand Guignol exploited contemporary fears. Some of the most common are claustrophobia, infection, technophobia, exoticism, eroticism, infidelity, mutilation, and revenge.
Exerpted from Grand-Guignol The French Theatre of Horror by Richard J. Hand and Michael Wilson
(Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002)
GRAND GUIGNOL LINKS
GrandGuignol.com - A very informative website on the tradition of Grand Guignol.
Thrillpeddlers - The only other theatre company in the US that is dedicated to the preservation of Le Theatre de Grand Guignol.
Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror - By the pre-eminent scholars of Grand Guignol, Richard Hand and Michael Wilson.
London's Grand Guignol and The Theatre of Horror - Richard Hand’s second book on the Grand Guignol.
Vigor Mortis - Brazil's highly-respected Grand
Guignol theatre