Suzanne Bing (March 10, 1885 – November 22, 1967) was a
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
actress. She was a founding member of
Jacques CopeauJacques Copeau was an influential French theatre director, producer, actor, and dramatist. Before he founded his famous Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in Paris, he wrote theater reviews for several Parisian journals, worked at the Georges Petit Gallery where he organized exhibits of artists' works...
's
Théâtre du Vieux-ColombierThe Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier is a theatre located at 21, rue du Vieux-Colombier, in the 6th arrondissement in Paris. It was founded in 1913 by the theatre producer and playwright Jacques Copeau. Today it is one of the three theatres in Paris used by the Comédie-Française....
in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
during the first season 1913/14. Later she worked with the troupe in
New YorkNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
from 1917 to 1919 and then again in Paris 1920 – 1924.
Early life and formative years
Suzanne Bing was born in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in the
2ième arrondissementThe 2nd arrondissement is one of the 20 arrondissements of Paris, the capital city of France. Located on the right bank of the River Seine, the 2nd arrondissement, together with the adjacent 8th and 9th arrondissements, hosts an important business district, centred on the Paris Opéra, which houses...
. When Bing joined the Vieux-Colombier in 1913, she came to the company with some experience in the artistic circles of Paris. She had married the composer
Edgard VarèseEdgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....
on November 5, 1907 after having spent two years at the Paris Conservatoire de Musique et de Déclamation where vocal training was more important than acting. She spent several years in Berlin where Varèse tried to make a living. After their daughter, Claude, was born in October 1910, she continued to act in various venues in Paris. But by 1913 Varèse and Bing decided they should pursue their respective careers, and they divorced.
At the Vieux-Colombier
During the first season of the Vieux-Colombier in Paris, Bing played several important roles, the most critically acclaimed of which was her Viola in an adaptation of Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night,
(Nuit des rois). When
warWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
broke out in August 1914, the second season was cancelled as most of the men either volunteered or were called up for service. Bing continued her collaboration with Copeau as he pursued his concept for a school for actors where his ideals of respect for the text and an acting style freed of rhetorical flourishes common during the era would be taught to young people drawn to a vocation in the theater. Bing, with her own acting experience and training, was an invaluable source of knowledge and support for Copeau. Their first efforts took place in November 1915 with a group of children ranging in age from six to fourteen years. Bing worked as an assistant to Copeau during these sessions, sometimes replacing him in his absence. Her ability to work with the youngsters in a relaxed and playful atmosphere contributed to the success of this undertaking and helped Copeau in his understanding of various techniques, such as improvisation and music-based movement, that he would incorporate later into a more elaborate curriculum.
After Copeau was excused from military service because of illness, the professional and intimate lives of Bing and Copeau became increasingly intertwined, as she worked with him to establish some basic guidelines for a school. They also collaborated on a translation of Shakespeare’s
The Winter's TaleThe Winter's Tale is a play by William Shakespeare, first published in the First Folio in 1623. Although it was listed as a comedy when it first appeared, some modern editors have relabeled the play a romance. Some critics, among them W. W...
, finished in 1916. In March 1917, while Copeau was in New York City for a series of lectures, Bing gave birth to their son, Bernard.
To New York and back
During the two-year stint of the Vieux-Colombier at the
Garrick TheatreThe Garrick Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Charing Cross Road, in the City of Westminster. It opened on 24 April 1889 with The Profligate, a play by Arthur Wing Pinero. In its early years, it appears to have specialised in the performance of melodrama, and today the theatre is a...
on 35
th Street in New York City, Bing reprised the role of Viola in
Nuit des rois, and seven other roles ranging from Elise in
MolièreJean-Baptiste Poquelin, mostly known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
's
L’AvareL'Avare is a 1668 five-act satirical comedy by French playwright Molière. Its title is usually translated as The Miser when the play is performed in English....
to Astolphe in
Alfred de MussetAlfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist.Along with his poetry, he is known for writing La Confession d'un enfant du siècle from 1836.-Biography:Musset was born on 11 December 1810 in Paris...
's
Barberine during the first season and some thirteen roles in the second season, including Cherubin in
Le Mariage de FigaroThe Marriage of Figaro is a comedy in five acts, written in 1778 by Pierre Beaumarchais.The play was first performed officially at the Odéon on 27 April 1784, after having been censored for many years. The play was at first banned in Vienna because of its satire of the aristocracy...
of
BeaumarchaisPierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, publisher, arms dealer, and revolutionary...
, Mélisande in
Maurice MaeterlinckMaurice Polydore Marie Bernard, Count Maeterlinck was a Belgian playwright, poet and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
's
Pelléas et Mélisande, and Mrs. Helseth in
Henrik IbsenHenrik Johan Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as the "father of modern drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre. His plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when Victorian values of family...
's
RosmersholmRosmersholm is a play written in 1886 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. In the estimation of many critics the piece is Ibsen's masterwork, only equalled by The Wild Duck of 1884...
. In a review, the magazine
The NationThe Nation is a weekly United States periodical devoted to politics and culture, self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865 at the start of Reconstruction as a supporter of the victorious North in the American Civil War, it is the oldest continuously published weekly...
wrote on March 29, 1919: "Suzanne Bing seems to be a flame of inspiration to the group, and one comes to look for her, in however humble a capacity, in almost every performance, ..."
More importantly she continued to collaborate with Copeau on his idea of a school for young actors. She participated in activities at the Children’s School founded by Margaret Naumberg,
Waldo FrankWaldo Frank was a prolific novelist, historian, literary and social critic. Most well-known for his studies of Spanish and Latin American literature, Frank served as chairman of the First Americans Writers Congress and became the first president of the League of American Writers.-Biography:Frank...
's wife, who put into practice many of the concepts of
Maria MontessoriMaria Montessori was an Italian physician, educator, philosopher, humanitarian and devout Catholic; she is best known for her philosophy and the Montessori method of education of children from birth to adolescence...
. Too, during the summer of 1918, while the troupe of the Vieux-Colombier was lodged at the estate of Otto H. Kahn in Morrisville, New Jersey, she and Marie-Hélène (Maiène), Copeau's oldest child, began to construct
maskA mask is an article normally worn on the face, typically for protection, concealment, performance, or amusement. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and practical purposes...
s and work on activities that included movement and masks.
Upon their return to Paris in 1919, Copeau did not immediately re-open the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, but the desire to open a school for actors remained ever-present. Again Suzanne Bing played an important role in both areas. The theater began its season with Shakespeare’s
Winter’s Tale on February 9, 1920 in the Copeau/Bing adaptation and acting classes for a group of adults began on the 1
st of March under the direction of Copeau and Bing. When it became obvious that a suitable locale for a theater school was not available, Bing started lessons with youngsters between the ages of fourteen and eighteen the following December in space above the theater. For the next four years Bing shared her talents between the theater and her young charges at the École du Vieux-Colombier, which now had its own space several blocks from the theater and a full-blown program of studies. Although Copeau thought it best to protect his students from the influence of the professional theater, he did allow them to participate to critical acclaim in a production of
André GideAndré Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
’s
Saul in which they played masked demons. Bing's work with her students was put on display in an adaptation of a
Noh play, or is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing both the male and female roles. The repertoire is normally limited to a specific set of historical plays...
,
Katan, which they presented in 1924 before an astonished Copeau and
Harley Granville-BarkerHarley Granville-Barker was an English actor, director, producer, critic and playwright.Born in London, Harley Granville Barker made his first debut and appearance onstage there at the age of 14. His acting work led to increasing discontent with the low standards of the commercial theatre...
.
The "Copiaus" and the Compagnie des Quinze
Abruptly at the end of the 1924 season, Copeau disbanded his theater company and, with those actors who were willing and some of the students from the school, moved to Burgundy. Thus began a fascinating saga in the countryside that was to last some five years. The motley group of some thirty-five students and actors first settled in Morteuil and then finally in Pernand-Vergelesse, a village not far from
BeauneBeaune is a commune in eastern France, a sub-prefecture of the Côte-d'Or department in the Bourgogne region.-Wine:The area around Beaune, the Côte de Beaune, is known for its Burgundy wines, with Beaune as the hub of the local wine business...
, deep in the wine-producing area of Burgundy. With the school abandoned because of a lack of funds in 1925, this odd mixture of actors and students, along with Copeau’s nephew,
Michel Saint-DenisMichel Saint-Denis , dit Jacques Duchesne, was a French actor, theater director, and drama theorist whose ideas on actor training have had a profound influence on the development of European theater from the 1930s on.Michel Saint-Denis was born in Beauvais, France, the nephew of Jacques Copeau, who...
, slowly formed themselves into a troupe that relied on the development of characters of their creation they developed through improvisation and mask work. The concept of a New Comedy that Copeau had developed much earlier during the war years came to fruition here with Bing, Maiène, St-Denis and
Jean DastéJean Dasté was an actor and theatre director.Although Jean Dasté is best known for his career on stage as both an actor and director in a variety of works including those by Shakespeare and Molière, he made his first appearance on screen in a 1932 Jean Renoir film , and 57...
, who would soon become Copeau’s son-in-law (he married Maiène). The masked characters, reminiscent of the commedia dell’arte, became part of their repertoire as they played in pieces written expressly for them by Copeau or that resulted from their improvisations. As they traveled from village to village putting on their plays in town squares, led by actors in costume and carrying banners, accompanied by drums and music, Burgundians began calling them the "Copiaus". The name soon marked them as progeny of Copeau’s concept of the theater—a theater reduced to its essence.
Bing’s influence here is not difficult to discern. Her interest in improvisation and masks grew into a devotion both to the development of her former students, Maiène, Jean Dasté,
Etienne DecrouxÉtienne Decroux studied at Jacques Copeau's Ecole du Vieux-Colombier, where he saw the beginnings of what was to become his life's obsession--Corporeal Mime...
, Jean Dorcy, and to the continuation of the concepts of Copeau, the man they all called "patron." As the transition from student actor to professional took place under Bing’s aegis, they developed new techniques based on their improvisations and mask work. The result was that the students of the École du Vieux-Colombier became themselves teachers and professional actors devoted to a well-honed craft.
In 1929 this small group left Burgundy for Paris to establish the
Compagnie des Quinze, under the direction of Michel Saint-Denis. Their first production,
Noé, written for the company by
André ObeyAndré Obey was a prominent French playwright during the inter-war years, and into the 1950s....
, was produced on the stage of the Vieux-Colombier in 1931. All the training of the actor’s instruments—body and voice—along with the highly developed use of the mask were put on display in this work in which most of the actors played masked animal characters.
Later life and legacy
Although not working directly in the theater under Copeau, Bing continued her collaboration with him on a translation of the tragedies of Shakespeare published in 1939. She, like many theater actors of her generation, tried her hand at the art of the film in
Le Calvaire de Cimiez (1934). Illness drained her energies, but not her spirit. Even during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, when she was forced to wear the hated
starThe yellow badge , also referred to as a Jewish badge, was a cloth patch that Jews were ordered to sew on their outer garments in order to mark them as Jews in public. It is intended to be a badge of shame associated with antisemitism...
despite her conversion to
CatholicismCatholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole...
, she maintained her dignity. Although set up in a retirement home, by Copeau in 1947, she continued to work, giving elocution lessons and readings to foreign students at the
SorbonneThe name Sorbonne is commonly used to refer to the historic University of Paris in Paris, France or one of its successor institutions , but this is a recent usage, and "Sorbonne" has actually been used with different meanings over the centuries...
. The French translations of the comedies of Shakespeare, her last collaboration with Copeau, were published in 1952.
She remained throughout her life the most ardent believer in Copeau’s concepts of the theater. Without her it is unlikely that the École du Vieux-Colombier would have achieved its many successes, as can be seen in the influence her students exercised in the world of the theater between the two wars and after. She helped transform the formation of the actor in France—a tradition carried on subsequently by
Jacques LecoqJacques Lecoq born in Paris, was a French actor, mime and acting instructor.He is most famous for his methods on physical theatre, movement and mime that he taught at the school he founded in Paris, L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq from 1956 until his death in 1999.-Life:Jacques...
and
Ariane MnouchkineAriane Mnouchkine is a world-renowned French stage director. She founded the Parisian avant-garde stage ensemble Théâtre du Soleil in 1964. She has written and directed 1789 and Molière , and in 1989, she directed La Nuit Miraculeuse...
.
Suzanne Bing died 1967 in
Neuilly-sur-SeineNeuilly-sur-Seine is a commune bordering the western limit of the city of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris. It is one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe....
.
Further reading
- Bing, Bernard: Le Souvenir de Suzanne Bing, in Revue d'histoire du théâtre, 1983(1); Paris: Société d'Histoire du Théâtre, 1983. ISSN 0035-2373.
External links
- Entre deux jardins - Le Vieux Colombier, documentary of France 3
France 3 is the second largest French public television channel and part of the France Télévisions group, which also includes France 2, France 4, France 5, and France Ô....
, 2004/05. In French. URL last accessed July 18, 2006.
- La compagnie des Quinze; in French. URL last accessed July 18, 2006.
- Picon-Vallin, B.: Le théâtre japonais sous le regard de l’Occident; in French. URL last accessed July 18, 2006.