The Accidental Rebirth of Collective Creation

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, France witnessed the advent of a collective creation movement—derived in part from the commedia dell’arte—presided over by Jacques Copeau in its initial stage.¹ Although the form that collective creation took from the beginning is familiar to us from its later incarnations in the1960s and beyond, the concerns of collective creation à la Copeau were more theatrical than political. Its emergence was closely tied to education. Thus it is not surprising that Michel Saint-Denis and Léon Chancerel, Copeau’s two disciples whose careers concentrated on realizing his unfinished work, were educators. As is often the case with disciples, Chancerel and Saint-Denis had competing views of Copeau’s vision and how to achieve it. This chapter focuses on what might be called an accidental rebirth of collective creation under the auspices of its key players who struggled, each in his own way, to bring it into the world.