Michel Saint-Denis

Michel Jacques Saint-Denis, born in Beauvais on 13 September 1897 and also known by the pseudonym Jacques Duchesne, was a French actor, theatre director, and drama theorist. His ideas on actor training shaped the trajectory of European theatre from the 1930s onward. He died on 31 July 1971 in Westminster following a stroke, having contended with health problems for many years.

Saint-Denis entered the theatrical world through a direct family connection: his uncle was Jacques Copeau, who had established the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in 1913. After Copeau's troupe returned from a two-year residency in New York City, Saint-Denis joined them in 1919. Copeau's Ecole du Vieux-Colombier, which treated actor training as inseparable from the work performed on stage, became a formative influence on Saint-Denis, who rose to a position comparable to that previously held by Charles Dullin and Louis Jouvet as Copeau's principal collaborator. In 1924, Saint-Denis followed his uncle to Burgundy, where the troupe reorganized and gained recognition as les Copiaus.

By 1929, Saint-Denis had moved with several former Copiaus members to Paris, where, with Copeau's assistance, he established the Compagnie des Quinze. The company brought Copeau's theatrical principles to international stages and earned wide acclaim. In 1935, Saint-Denis accepted an invitation to London and co-founded the London Theatre Studio alongside George Devine and Marius Goring. The studio functioned as an actor training institution through which he introduced both Copeau's methods and his own concepts developed during his years in France. During this period he worked with actors including Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov, Michael Redgrave, John Gielgud, and Laurence Olivier, establishing his reputation as a director of note.

During the Second World War, Saint-Denis worked for the French Service of the BBC, known as Radio Londres, operating under the pseudonym Jacques Duchesne. He was a regular contributor to the broadcast programme Les Français parlent aux Français. Following the war, he founded a theatre school at the Old Vic, which operated from 1947 to 1952.

In 1952, Saint-Denis took up a position with the Centre Dramatique de l'Est, initially based in Colmar before relocating to Strasbourg in 1953, where he founded the Ecole Supérieure d'Art Dramatique at the Théâtre national. Health concerns led to his retirement in 1957, after which he joined the faculty of the Juilliard School in New York, where he established the Juilliard Drama School. He also served as an advisor to the National Theatre School of Canada. In 1961 he was appointed artistic advisor to the Royal Shakespeare Company, an organization he had previously co-directed. In 1966 he appeared on the BBC children's programme Jackanory as a storyteller, narrating across five episodes.

Saint-Denis authored two books: Theatre, a Rediscovery of Style, published by Theatre Arts Books in New York in 1963, and Training for the Theatre: Premises and Promises, also published by Theatre Arts Books in New York in 1982.