Grand Guignol
Oh UNF, some nice Victorian debauchery and depravity:
The good old Grand Guignol, with all the associated blood and gore and guts. Man, if I had a time machine, I'd so go back and see that.
More stuff on this website.
It was Maurey who, from 1898 to 1914, turned the Theatre du Grand-Guignol into a house of horror. He measured the success of a play by the number of people who fainted during its performance, and, to attract publicity, hired a house doctor to treat the more fainthearted spectators. It was also Maurey who discovered the novelist and playwright Andre de Lorde--"the Prince of Terror." Under the influence of de Lorde (who collaborated on several plays with his therapist, the experimental psychologist Alfred Binet), insanity became the Grand-Guignolesque theme par excellence. At a time when insanity was just beginning to be scientifically studied and individual cases catalogued, the Grand-Guignol repertoire explored countless manias and 'special tastes': Andre de Lorde and Leo Marches's L'Homme de la Nuit (The Man of the Night), for example, presented a necrophiliac, who strangely resembled Sergeant Bertrand, a man sentenced in 1849 for violating tombs and mutilating corpses.
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But what carried the Grand-Guignol to its highest level were the boundaries and thresholds it crossed: the states of consciousness altered by drugs or hypnosis. Loss of consciousness, loss of control, panic: themes with which the theater's audience could easily identify.
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If the Grand-Guignol was a popular theater in both meanings of the word--it was frequented by neighborhood locals as well as the higher-brow audience of the Comedie Francaise--it was not a public affair. Going to the Grand-Guignol was less a social act than a private one and certain audience members preferred not to be seen. Some witnesses reported that the iron-grilled boxes in the back of the theater encouraged a certain 'extremism,' especially during Monday matinees when women often prepared themselves for adultery by throwing themselves, half-dead with terror, into their neighbors' arms: flirtation, Grand-Guignol-style. The cleaning staff would often find the seats stained.
Oh, and house champagne for the richer patrons. Ngh. This is so where the Master takes Ten on their grand Victorian tour of evil, yes? YES. And one particular evening, the blood spilled on the stage and the screams of the actors appear somehow more realistic than usual, and the Master makes the Doctor watch the carnage, of course. Ten only notices halfway through because he's been ever so slightly distracted by what the Master's doing to him at the same time (those seats aren't nearly stained enough).
The good old Grand Guignol, with all the associated blood and gore and guts. Man, if I had a time machine, I'd so go back and see that.
More stuff on this website.
It was Maurey who, from 1898 to 1914, turned the Theatre du Grand-Guignol into a house of horror. He measured the success of a play by the number of people who fainted during its performance, and, to attract publicity, hired a house doctor to treat the more fainthearted spectators. It was also Maurey who discovered the novelist and playwright Andre de Lorde--"the Prince of Terror." Under the influence of de Lorde (who collaborated on several plays with his therapist, the experimental psychologist Alfred Binet), insanity became the Grand-Guignolesque theme par excellence. At a time when insanity was just beginning to be scientifically studied and individual cases catalogued, the Grand-Guignol repertoire explored countless manias and 'special tastes': Andre de Lorde and Leo Marches's L'Homme de la Nuit (The Man of the Night), for example, presented a necrophiliac, who strangely resembled Sergeant Bertrand, a man sentenced in 1849 for violating tombs and mutilating corpses.
--
But what carried the Grand-Guignol to its highest level were the boundaries and thresholds it crossed: the states of consciousness altered by drugs or hypnosis. Loss of consciousness, loss of control, panic: themes with which the theater's audience could easily identify.
--
If the Grand-Guignol was a popular theater in both meanings of the word--it was frequented by neighborhood locals as well as the higher-brow audience of the Comedie Francaise--it was not a public affair. Going to the Grand-Guignol was less a social act than a private one and certain audience members preferred not to be seen. Some witnesses reported that the iron-grilled boxes in the back of the theater encouraged a certain 'extremism,' especially during Monday matinees when women often prepared themselves for adultery by throwing themselves, half-dead with terror, into their neighbors' arms: flirtation, Grand-Guignol-style. The cleaning staff would often find the seats stained.
Oh, and house champagne for the richer patrons. Ngh. This is so where the Master takes Ten on their grand Victorian tour of evil, yes? YES. And one particular evening, the blood spilled on the stage and the screams of the actors appear somehow more realistic than usual, and the Master makes the Doctor watch the carnage, of course. Ten only notices halfway through because he's been ever so slightly distracted by what the Master's doing to him at the same time (those seats aren't nearly stained enough).