Suzanne Bing - Later Life and Legacy

Later Life and Legacy

Although not working directly in the theater under Copeau, Bing continued her collaboration with him on a translation of the tragedies of Shakespeare published in 1939. She, like many theater actors of her generation, tried her hand at the art of the film in Le Calvaire de Cimiez (1934). Illness drained her energies, but not her spirit. Even during World War II, when she was forced to wear the hated star despite her conversion to Catholicism, she maintained her dignity. Although set up in a retirement home, by Copeau in 1947, she continued to work, giving elocution lessons and readings to foreign students at the Sorbonne. The French translations of the comedies of Shakespeare, her last collaboration with Copeau, were published in 1952.

She remained throughout her life the most ardent believer in Copeau's concepts of the theater. Without her it is unlikely that the École du Vieux-Colombier would have achieved its many successes, as can be seen in the influence her students exercised in the world of the theater between the two wars and after. She helped transform the formation of the actor in France—a tradition carried on subsequently by Jacques Lecoq and Ariane Mnouchkine.

Suzanne Bing died 1967 in Neuilly-sur-Seine.