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The Playwright in an Institutionalized Theatre: France1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Keith Gore
Keith Gore
Affiliation:
Fellow and Tutor in French at Worcester College, Oxford.
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Extract

To write of the situation of the dramatic author in present-day France is no easy task, since, inevitably, it involves making a largely negative report. Traditionally, the text in the theatre has been king; in schools and in universities, plays are above all read, and it is often – though perhaps not often enough – a revelation to those who study them to discover that the texts written by, say, Racine or Shakespeare, take on a different kind of existence when they are made flesh in the theatre. One of the qualities of such theatre is, of course, that it can be read and appreciated without any form of mediation, such as that provided, for example, by actors or directors. And it is perhaps odd that we may arguably derive as much from reading the plays of a Giraudoux, for whom the critical collaboration of his director, Louis Jouvet was crucial, as from seeing them performed. Could it be that the partnership of such a self-conscious writer with so committed a practical man of the theatre represents some kind of golden age in the relationship between the author and the director?

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , Summer 1990 , pp. 150 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1990

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References

Notes

2. Beckett, Samuel, Breath and Other Shorts (London, 1971), p. 9.Google Scholar

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6. Ibid., p. 20.

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32. Ibid., p. 54.

33. Ibid., p. 68.

34. The authors consulted by Vinaver were Hector Bianciotti, Michel Chaillou, Régine Desforges, Florence Delay, Jean Echenoz, Dominique Fernandez, Pierre Guyotat, Jacques Lanzmann, Michel Mohrt, Yann Queffélec, Catherine Rihoit, Angelo Rinaldi, Claude Simon, Philippe Sellers, and François Weyergans.

35. Ibid., p. 70.

36. Ibid., p. 70.

37. Ibid., pp. 56–9.

38. Some booksellers do make attempts to sell plays: see the chapter on ‘Les Librairies’ in Michel Vinaver's Compte rendu d'Avignon, ibid., pp. 35–40.

39. See Théâtre Ouvert à livre ouvert: de 1971 à 1988 (Paris, 1988)Google Scholar, and in particular the ‘Petit lexique récapitulatif des formules proposées par Thé’, pp. 139–40.Google Scholar

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48. Ibid., p. 70.

49. Ibid., p. 71.

50. Op. cit., p. 22.Google Scholar

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