Michel (Jacques Duchesne) Saint-Denis

Theatre director, actor, and teacher, born in Beauvais, N France. In 1931 he founded the Compagnie des Quinze, and directed numerous influential productions. When this company disbanded, he settled in England, founding with George Devine and others the London Theatre Studio (1936). His influence on British theatre continued with his work for the Old Vic (1947–52) and later with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he became a director in 1962. He was appointed director of the Comédie de l'Est in 1952.

Michel Saint-Denis (1897 – 1971), dit Jacques Duchesne, was a French actor, theater director, and drama theorist whose ideas on actor training have had a profound influence on the development of European theater from the 1930s on.

Michel Saint-Denis was born in Beauvais, France. He joined Copeau's troupe in 1919, after their return from New York, where they had performed for two years. Saint-Denis was greatly influenced by Copeau's approach to theater taught at his Ecole du Vieux-Colombier, which embraced not only the play on stage but also the actor training itself.

In 1929, Michel Saint-Denis together with some other members of the Copiaus and with the help of Copeau, moved to Paris and set up the Compagnie des Quinze, transporting Copeau's teachings on international stages to wide acclaim. In 1935, he accepted an invitation to London, where he founded the London Theatre Studio together with George Devine and Marius Goring, an actor school where he introduced Copeau's and his own concepts from his earlier experience in France. After the war, Saint-Denis founded a new theater school at the damaged Old Vic that existed from 1947 to 1952.

In 1952, Saint-Denis accepted a call by the Centre Dramatique de l'Est first at Colmar, and then—since 1953—at Strasbourg, where he founded the Ecole Supérieure d'Art Dramatique. After his retirement for health reasons in 1957, he taught at the Juilliard School in New York, where he instituted the Juilliard Drama School, and served as an advisor to the Canadian National Theatre School.

Having suffered from health problems for a long time, Michel Saint-Denis died in 1971 in London from a stroke. Saint-Denis, M.: Training for the Theatre: premises and promises, New York, Theatre Arts Books;