Modern theatre
It was not only in his choice of dramatic themes that Antoine was a revolutionary – the way they were performed was equally radical. He aimed to ‘liberate the stage’ and to make his sets as realistic as possible. Antoine was also the first to dim the house lights during performances, so that he would not be put off by disapproving looks from the audience.
Theatre programmes
Antoine had the idea of getting young avant-garde artists like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Henri Gabriel Ibels to illustrate his theatre programmes, so that each would become a work of art in its own right. Some of the lithographs – without the lettering – were collected in an album that could be bought separately, allowing programmes to be marketed as a deluxe collector’s edition.
Henri Gabriel Ibels, Figure of Antoine in Les tisserands (La silhouette d'Antoine dans Les tisserands), cover, 1894
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Theatre programme for Une faillite by Björnstjerne Björnson and Le poète et le financier by Maurice Vaucaire (Théâtre Libre, 8 November 1893), 1893
Further reading
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Gabriel P. Weisberg, Illusions of Reality. Naturalist Painting, Photography, Theatre and Cinema, 1875-1918, Amsterdam 2010
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Patricia Eckert Boyer, Artists and the Avant-Garde Theater in Paris 1887-1900, Washington 1998
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Geneviève Aitken, Artistes et Théâtres d’Avant-Garde. Programmes de Théatre illustrés. Paris 1890-1900, Paris 1991