Jacques Copeau

Abstract

In his much-cited book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn examines the nature of revolutions in scientific paradigms and the people who make them. Kuhn says that people thoroughly schooled in old paradigms are unable to distance themselves enough from them to see their flaws and inconsistencies. Hence it is often the amateur, the non-specialist or the outsider who has the objectivity needed to incorporate new information into a new world-view. Jacques Copeau was one of these outsiders and he knew it. He knew that when renewal had come to the theatre in the past it had often been thanks to the work of one who, at least at the beginning of his career, did not work in the mainstream theatre of the day.

Are we the representatives of a lost past? Are we, on the contrary, the precursors of a future which can hardly be discerned at the extreme limit of an ending era? (Jacques Copeau)