André Barsacq

Born Jan. 24, 1909, in Feodosiia in the Crimea. French director and artist.

Barsacq studied at the School of Decorative Arts in Paris between 1924 and 1926. From 1928 to 1930 he worked as an artist in the Atelier Theater, becoming its director in 1940. He has staged many Russian dramas including Chekhov’s The Seagull (1940) and Three Sisters (1967); The Brothers Karamazov (1946) and The Gambler (1966) based on the novels by Dostoevsky; Gogol’s The Inspector-General (1948); and Mayakovsky’s The Bedbug (1959). He has also directed Romains’s Dr. Knock (1938), Anouilh’s Eurydice (1940) and Antigone (1943), Marceau’s The Egg (1959), and Gozzi’s The Dark Blue Monster (1965). Barsacq has continued to develop the progressive aspirations of the Atelier Theater’s founder, Charles Dullin, affirming a socially significant theatrical art. He has functioned as set designer in many of his productions and has written the comedy Agrippa, or Day of Madness, staged by the Atelier Theater in 1947. He has also adapted several literary works for the stage and written articles on the theater.