Lugné-Poe

Aurélien-Marie Lugné (27 December 1869 19 June 1940), known by his stage and pen name Lugné-Poe, was a French actor, theatre director, and scenic designer. He founded the landmark Paris theatre company, the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, which produced experimental work by French Symbolist writers and painters at the end of the nineteenth century. Like his contemporary, theatre pioneer André Antoine, he gave the French premieres of works by the leading Scandinavian playwrights Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.

==Early career== In 1887, at age 17, Lugné-Poe and friend Georges Bourdon created an amateur theatre group called le Cercle des Escholiers, which sought to perform "unpublished or, at the very least, little-known works." As he prepared to audition for the Paris Conservatory, he changed his name from Lugné to "Lugné-Poe" in homage to Edgar Allan Poe. While the Conservatory rejected his audition in fall 1887, they accepted him in fall 1888; days later he joined André Antoine's Théâtre Libre, a subscriber-based Naturalist independent theatre. After appearing in the first play of that season under his own name, Lugné-Poe adopted the stage names "Philippon," "Delorme," and "Leroy" for the duration of his association with Antoine's company.