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Jean-Gaspard Deburau


Jean-Gaspard Deburau (born Jan Kašpar Dvořák; July 31, 1796 – June 17, 1846), sometimes erroneously called Debureau, was a celebrated Bohemian-French mime. He performed from around 1819 to the year of his death at the Théâtre des Funambules, which was immortalized in Marcel Carné's poetic-realist film Children of Paradise (1945); Deburau appears in the film (under his stage-name, "Baptiste") as a major character. His most famous pantomimic creation was Pierrot—a character that served as the godfather of all the Pierrots of Romantic, Decadent, Symbolist, and early Modernist theater and art.

Born in Kolín, Bohemia (now Czech Republic), Deburau was the son of a Czech servant, Kateřina Králová (or Catherine Graff), and a former French soldier, Philippe-Germain Deburau, a native of Amiens. Some time before 1814, when he appeared in Paris, Philippe had turned showman, and had begun performing at the head of a nomadic troupe probably made up, at least in part, of his own children. When the company was hired, in 1816, by the manager of the Funambules for mimed and acrobatic acts, the young Deburau was included in the transaction.

He probably began his professional life there as a stagehand. Historians of both the mime and the Funambules agree that his debut as Pierrot came no earlier than 1819, perhaps as late as 1825. His "discovery" by the theater-savvy public did not take place, at any rate, until 1828, when the influential writer Charles Nodier wrote a panegyric on his art for La Pandore. Nodier persuaded his friends, fellow men-of-letters, to visit the theater; the journalist Jules Janin published a book of effusive praise, entitled Deburau, histoire du Théâtre à Quatre Sous, in 1832; and by the middle of the 1830s Deburau was known to "tout Paris". Théophile Gautier wrote of his talent with enthusiasm ("the most perfect actor who ever lived");Théodore de Banville dedicated poems and sketches to his Pierrot; Charles Baudelaire alluded to his style of acting as a way of understanding "The Essence of Laughter" (1855).


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