The Théâtre du Grand-Guignol was founded in 1897 by Oscar Méténier, who planned it as a space for naturalist performance. … See more

Oscar Méténier was the Grand Guignol's founder and original director. Under his direction, the theatre produced plays about a class of people who were not considered appropriate subjects in other venues: prostitutes, … See more

In a typical Grand Guignol performance patrons would see five or six short plays, all in a style that attempted to be brutally true to the theatre's naturalistic ideals. The most popular and best-known were the horror plays, whic… See more

Audiences waned in the years following World War II, and the Grand Guignol closed its doors in 1962. Management attributed the closure in part to the fact that the theatre's faux horrors had been eclipsed by the actual e… See more

While the original Grand Guignol attempted to present naturalistic horror, the performances would seem melodramatic and heightened to today's audiences. For this reason, the term is often applied to films and pl… See more

Grand Guignol flourished briefly in London in the early 1920s under the direction of Jose Levy, where it attracted the talents of Sybil Thorndike, Noël Coward, and Richard Hughes (whose one-act play The Sisters' Tragedy ou… See more