The outstanding development in the French theatre of the twentieth century has been its liberation from the dead hand of literary regulation, which had dogged it since the Académie Française first delivered its judgement on Corneille's Le Cid in 1638. In the century that runs from the founding of the Théâtre Libre by André Antoine in 1887 to the appointment of Antoine Vitez as head of the Comédie-Française in 1988, theatre (i.e. a live performance given in front of an audience) succeeded in establishing itself as an art form in its own right, and freed itself from dependency on the literary text. Conditions for dramatists in France thus changed more radically in the twentieth century than they had in the preceding four, leading today's writers to develop entirely new strategies.

In addition to this, professional playwrights had to cope with threats coming from other directions as well. First came the threat of the cinema, quickly seen to present a challenge to the drama, especially to the naturalist drama that sought to recreate the conditions of real life, since these could be captured so much better on film. The next challenge came from theatre practitioners themselves: each of the many ‘reformers’ of theatre, from Jacques Copeau onwards, sought to emphasise the non-verbal means of expression available to theatre, and some explicitly condemned written dialogue. The most prominent of these radical innovators was Antonin Artaud, whose vision came to be seen as prophetic in the years following the Second World War.