The events of May, 1968, in France spurred a re-examination of the relationship between art and politics, of the function of the artist and the role of theatre in our society. After May, 1968, with its attacks on institutions for distributing a culture that is not a “culture in action sprung from life,” theatre artists sought a way to work outside the established structure, which they felt was separate from life and whose rigidity demanded a particular kind of production and hindered experimentation.

The desires to become more directly involved with life; to place the accent on the process of creation rather than on the final product; to establish a new kind of relationship with the spectators, considered on many different levels as“potential creators”; to insist on the actor's creativity; to rethink the role of the director as well as the role of the playwright resulted in new forms of political-popular theatre in France.