THEATRE LIBRE, le'be (Fr., free theatre). The name of a dramatic enterprise founded in 1887 by Audit'. Antoine, then a young Parisian clerk. With some fellow amateurs of the Gaulois Club he arranged the production (March 30, 1887) of four new one-act plays at the Elysee des Beaux-Arts at Montmartre, and in the course of the year formed the association of the Theiltre Libre, to be conducted upon the following prin ciples: the season to consist. of eight different representations, one each month from October to June; no tickets to be sold to the public; the enterprise to be supported by subscribers who with invited guests should form the only audi ence. The design was to give authors a chance to try their strength; and also, for art's sake, to produce plays which for any reason, po litical or moral, might be forbidden by the cen sorship if undertaken at a public theatre. In an artistic way the Theatre Libre won success, though it excited much debate from the first. Its founder aimed to do away with all conventional ity and to attain a degree of realism often thought out of the question upon the stage. In
its first eight years, about 150 writers contributed works for its performances, and a considerable proportion of these previously unknown pieces were afterwards accepted and brought out by other theatres. At the same time such famous writers as Zola, the Goncourts, Mendes, Bergerat, Ibsen, and Tolstoy also found presentation here. Financially, however, M. Antoine found his dif ficulties accumulating, and in 1S94 he accepted a position as an actor at the Gymnase Theatre. For a short time he was a director of the Odeon (1896): then he resumed the direction of the Theatre Libre, for several years located in the Salle des Menus-Plaisirs and known since 1897 as the Thentre Antoine. To this the general pub lic is admitted in the usual way, though sub scribers still retain their special privilege at eight representations a year. The idea of the Thefitre Libre has been copied in the Freic Mine of Berlin, and in similar more or less ephemeral institutions in London and other cities.