Why was acting frowned upon?

The distrust is far older than the Church. In Rome, actors were marked with infamia: a legal status that stripped them of part of their rights as citizens. Performing for money, making a spectacle of yourself and lending your body to someone other than yourself was considered unworthy of a respectable person.

Christianity took up that view and hardened it, for three reasons that recur in the texts for centuries:

  • Lying. Acting means pretending to be someone else, and stirring up passions in the audience that are not your own.
  • Morals. The stage showed love, jealousy and revenge, and brought men and women together in a place of entertainment.
  • Competition. Theatre drew crowds, sometimes at the hours of religious services.

From the fourth century, church councils barred theatre people from communion for as long as they performed. That position lasted through the Middle Ages and into the modern era.

Were actors really excommunicated?

The word is slightly too strong, and the nuance matters. In France under the Ancien Régime there was no general decree excommunicating every actor. But Church practice came to almost the same thing: actors were refused communion, religious marriage and Christian burial unless they renounced their profession. Many renounced it on their deathbed so they could be buried.

Molière's burial

The most famous case is Molière's. On 17 February 1673 he was taken ill while performing The Imaginary Invalid and died a few hours later at home, without having renounced acting before a priest. His parish priest refused to bury him. His widow, Armande Béjart, begged Louis XIV to intervene. On 21 February Molière was finally buried at night, around 9 p.m., in the Saint-Joseph cemetery, without ceremony, with two priests present.

The end of exclusion in 1789

On 24 December 1789 the French National Assembly made non-Catholics eligible for all civil and military posts and barred any other ground of exclusion. Actors were debated; they are not named in the decree but are implicitly included. It marked the beginning of their full citizenship.

And in Quebec: actors and the Catholic Church

Quebec kept that distrust much longer than republican France. In the nineteenth century the Catholic clergy regularly condemned theatre from the pulpit. The best-known episode took place in Montreal in December 1880: Sarah Bernhardt, the greatest actress of her time, performed at the Académie de musique, and Bishop Édouard-Charles Fabre of Montreal condemned her performances and forbade the faithful to attend. The houses filled anyway.

It took the twentieth century, and above all the Quiet Revolution, for acting in Quebec to become what it is today: a profession recognised in law, with a union, collective agreements and professional artist status.

Why green is bad luck for actors

It is the most persistent theatre superstition in France and Quebec: avoid green on stage. Two explanations circulate, and neither is proven.

  • The Molière legend. Molière is said to have worn a green costume when he was taken ill performing The Imaginary Invalid. The costume's exact colour is disputed, some sources say purple, but the legend won.
  • Poison. For a long time green dyes were made with verdigris, a toxic copper compound. Wearing a green costume under hot stage lights could have made actors ill.

Other superstitions survive backstage: French-speaking actors say « merde » rather than good luck before an opening, the word for rope is never said on a French stage, and English-speaking theatres avoid saying Macbeth in the building, calling it "the Scottish play".

Can comedians joke about anything?

The old question of where artists stand in society took a very precise legal form in Quebec. In 2021 the Supreme Court of Canada decided the case between comedian Mike Ward and Quebec's human rights commission, over jokes targeting Jérémy Gabriel, a young singer with a disability. On 29 October 2021, by five judges to four, the Court ruled in Mike Ward's favour.

What the Court said is narrower than the public debate: those jokes, however hurtful, did not amount to discrimination under the Quebec Charter of human rights and freedoms. It did not say you can joke about anything. Defamation, harassment and hate propaganda remain prohibited, for comedians as for anyone. The legal answer is: about almost anything, but not in any way you like.

In three centuries we went from an actor the Church refused to bury to a comedian who wins at the Supreme Court. The job did not change. Its status did.

Today: a recognised profession, and still a hard one

Acting is no longer frowned upon, but it is still precarious. If you want to know what it looks like today, our article on acting as a career in Quebec explains how actors are paid and how to go professional, and the guide to landing your first auditions answers with numbers from a survey of 148 local actors. And to find the casting calls that fit you, there is Castflow for actors.