In 1880, using plans by the architects Aimé Sauffroy and Ferdinand Grémailly, part of the rink became the Palace Théâtre and, after a further restoration in 1891 by Édouard Niermans, the Casino de Paris.

When Fort left the enterprise at the start of 1893, Lugné-Poe assumed control, renamed it the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, and pursued aggressively Symbolist programming to rival Antoine's more Naturalistic offerings.

Like Paul Fort before him, Lugné-Poe never had a permanent theatre to serve as his company's home stage for the entire run of its initial art-theatre experiment.

Lugné-Poe staged the first half of the season back at the Comédie-Parisienne, with a line-up that included Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved, Kālidāsa's The Ring of Shakuntalā, and Oscar Wilde's Salome.

Most notably, they premiered Ibsen's Pillars of Society (22-23 June 1896) and Peer Gynt (11-12 November 1896); Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi (9-10 December 1896); Bjørnson's sequel to Beyond Human Power (25-26 January 1897); Hauptmann's fairy drama The Sunken Bell (4-5 March 1897); Bataille's Your Blood (7-8 May 1897); Ibsen's Love's Comedy (22-23 June 1897) and John Gabriel Borkman (8-9 November 1897); Nikolai Gogol's The Inspector General (7-8 January 1898); and Romain Rolland's Aert (2-3 May 1898) and The Wolves (18 May 1898).

She produced among other works the French premiere of Maeterlinck's L'oiseau bleu in 1911 and successfully played her signature role of Madame Sans-Gêne by Victorien Sardou at the theatre.

The producer Léon Volterra bought the hall in 1918, and on 12 August 1919, he inaugurated the Théâtre de Paris, Réjane having stipulated in the sales contract that the theater could not retain her name.