If over the course of the last half-century or so the majority of Molière scholars have become increasingly convinced of the value of studying the plays in the context of their performance in the theatre, the task of analysing Molière in performance has itself grown considerably more complex during the same period, particularly with the proliferation of Molière productions following the Second World War. This proliferation was especially evident in France, where the decentralisation of state-supported theatre led to the creation of what has become, in effect if not always in name, a network of national theatres - a network in the sense that many productions tour from one state-supported theatre to another, and also in the sense that companies from time to time pool resources to make certain projects possible. Over roughly the same period, a decentralisation of theatre occurred in the United States, although not as a result of a consciously promoted government policy. The institutions that were created in the American process of decentralisation came to be called regional or resident theatres, although four decades or so after the majority of those decentralised institutions came into being, given the remarkable homogeneity of their season planning and the very small number of resident companies of actors these theatres house, they are now 'regional' and 'resident' in name alone. Despite this homogeneity of taste, however, there is very little networking of productions in the American theatre - touring remains the province of the commercial theatre.