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THE PEOPLE'S THEATER

entirely new. Nor were actors wanting. There were sufficient for four companies at one time, recruited from among the audiences of the Coopération and the various troupes of people's actors who lent their aid from time to time, and the students from the Conservatoire who acted Horace with others from the Comédie-Française. This is a true People's Theater in the making; all that lacked was a larger and more accessible hall.

There was another attempt to form a People's Theater. The Théâtre populaire was opened in September, 1903, in the very heart of the workingmen's quarter in Paris: number 8, Rue de Belleville.

The director of this theater, M. E. Berny, is an intelligent and daring young man, part of whose inspiration was doubtless derived from the projects exposed in the questionnaire of the Revue d'art dramatique. The hall, which was provided with a single gallery, held between a thousand and twelve hundred spectators. In case the experiment had succeeded, it was planned to add two more galleries, which would have enabled the theater to accommodate between eighteen hundred and two thousand. The prices ranged from twenty-five centimes to one franc fifty. A subscription plan enabled the theater to risk a few rather daring experiments. These subscriptions were fifteen and twenty francs for twenty performances. The workingmen were allowed to pay for the subscriptions in weekly instalments. Block subscriptions were likewise offered to the various syndicates, workingmen's associa-