Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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518

was organized as a state monopoly. The state

broadcasting corporation, the ORTF, grew

incrementally to manage three television chan-

nels by the early 1970s. After the Giscardian

reform of 1974 these channels became sepa-

rately constituted programme companies—

TF1, Antenne 2 and FR3—competing against

each other for audiences within the state sec-

tor. The monopoly was finally abolished in

1982 by the Socialist government of Pierre

Mauroy. This opened up the broadcasting sys-

tem to private competition. In 1984 a new ter-

restrial pay-TV channel, Canal Plus, was

launched under the control of Havas, which

at that time still enjoyed close links with the

state. In 1986 two new privately run commer-

cial channels, La Cinq and TV6 (later renamed

M6), came into existence. In the same year the

conservative government of Jacques Chirac

took the controversial step of privatizing the

main national channel, TF1, which thus be-

came the first public channel in Europe to be

hived off to the private sector. Only a few years

after the abolition of the state monopoly,

therefore, the balance in programme supply

between private and public sector channels

had shifted overwhelmingly to the benefit of

the former.

During the 1990s, however, public sector

provision has been strengthened, while that of

the private sector has been reduced. In 1992,

La Cinq went into liquidation and ceased

transmission. The privatization of TF1 had re-

sulted in too many channels competing for ad-

vertising revenue and La Cinq suffered accord-

ingly, failing to secure either a mass public or

a sufficiently upmarket audience to attract ad-

vertisers. In 1989, Antenne 2 and FR3, since

renamed France 2 and France 3, were linked

at the top under a single chairperson to im-

prove the running of public sector television.

In 1992 the Franco-German cultural channel

ARTE was launched with state support on the

terrestrial network vacated by La Cinq. Fi-

nally, in 1994 a public sector educational and

training channel, La Cinquième, was estab-

lished. It broadcast during the day on the same

network used by ARTE in the evening. In ad-

dition, private cable and satellite television

channels came on stream in the 1980s and

1990s, though their impact on the audience

was limited, as many viewers seemed content

with the output of the terrestrial channels and

disinclined to pay additional subscription

costs.

By the mid-1990s, the French television sys-

tem was highly diverse. Programming was de-

livered through the new technologies of cable

and satellite as well as via traditional terres-

trial transmission, while digital television was

beginning to make an impact by 1996. There

was a mix of public and private channels, with

the privatized TF1 securing the highest audi-

ence ratings. Different regulatory regimes were

in force, ranging from detailed public service

obligations in the case of France 2 and France

3, to a much lighter set of provisions for Ca-

nal Plus and the cable channels. A variety of

funding mechanisms existed (licence revenue,

advertising, viewer subscription and sponsor-

ship), with many channels being financed from

a mix of sources. Niche channels on cable

(film, music, sport, news) complemented the

mixed programme output of the terrestrial net-

works, while subscribers to Canal Plus en-

joyed a programme diet based largely on re-

cently released feature films and ‘live’ sport.

For a long part of its history French televi-

sion was subject to a high degree of political

interference. During the Fourth Republic (1946–

58), this had little effect on the public since tel-

evision had not yet become a mass medium.

However, during de Gaulle’s presidency (1958–

69) television news was censored and control-

led to further the interests of the Gaullist re-

gime, with considerable success in the early

years. Government censorship and direct con-

trol were relaxed during the post-de Gaulle

presidencies, largely because they were increas-

ingly ineffective as a means of audience persua-

sion. The expansion of the system also made

detailed control of news output impractical.

However, the tradition of a close relation-

ship between the state and television, espe-

cially the public sector channels, has never been

wholly relinquished. Appointments to top posts

in public television are still made in part on the

basis of political criteria. Moreover, the rapid

television

519

turnover in the composition and powers of

regulatory authorities in the 1980s was a stark

reminder of the continuing partisan

politicization of the audiovisual system despite

its economic liberalization.

In contrast, there is some evidence of a less

deferential attitude on the part of broadcast-

ers towards politicians than was the case in

the past. Satirical programmes such as the

Bébête-Show and Les Guignols de l’info,

which use puppet characters to poke fun at

political figures, demonstrate a change in jour-

nalistic culture. This in turn reflects a more

cynical public attitude towards politicans,

fuelled by several corruption scandals in the

1980s and 1990s.

Up until the abolition of the monopoly, the

programme output of French television was

strictly regulated to conform with obligations

laid down by the state and included in the op-

erating conditions (cahiers des charges) of the

programme companies. Since 1982, regulation

has been a key issue on the media policy

agenda, with the powers and composition of

the regulatory authority at the heart of the

political debate.

One of the innovations of the Socialists’

1982 statute (loi Fillioud) was the creation of

a High Authority for Audiovisual Communi-

cation. Headed by the well-known former

journalist, Michèle Cotta, the High Authority

symbolized the desire of the government to

attenuate its links with broadcasting. How-

ever, the role of the High Authority was lim-

ited and on certain key decisions, such as the

allocation of licences to La Cinq and TV6, it

was not consulted in advance. When the con-

servative government came to power in 1986

it introduced new legislation (loi Léotard)

which among other things abolished the High

Authority and replaced it with a National

Commission for Communication and Liber-

ties.

Sullied in the eyes of the Socialists because

of its overtly partisan decisions, this commis-

sion was scrapped in 1989 following

Mitterrand’s second presidential victory and the

subsequent election of a Socialist government.

Its replacement, the Conseil Supérieur de

l’Audiovisuel (Higher Audiovisual Council), has

survived the conservative parliamentary victory

of 1993 and Chirac’s accession to the presiden-

tial office in 1995. Composed of nine mem-

bers—three appointed by the president of the

Republic, three by the president of the National

Assembly and three by the president of the Sen-

ate—the Council ensures that regulations on

ownership, financing and programme content

are respected by the television companies, par-

ticularly those in the public sector.

It is impossible to generalize about the pro-

gramme output of French television. The

growth in the number of channels and the

banalization of television viewing have cer-

tainly amplified the role of the medium as a

vehicle for popular culture. In its early years

French television sought to elevate audience

tastes with a programme diet which contained

many worthy, serious and culturally demand-

ing programmes. During the early years of de

Gaulle’s presidency, for example, television

was intended to disseminate the best of French

high culture to the growing nationwide audi-

ence. In the 1990s, much of the output is

geared to mass taste, with the viewer regarded

as a consumer to be satisfied rather than a

pupil to be educated. Game shows, light en-

tertainment programmes, soap operas and

films fill the screen.

Yet, while a contrast is evident between the

mission of the television system in the 1990s

and that of the 1960s, it should not be over-

drawn. Game shows and low-quality pro-

gramming existed in the era of Malraux,

while government backing for ARTE shows

the commitment of the French state in the

1990s to serious cultural programming. The

essential difference between the formative

years and the present day is that in a

multichannel system there is bound to be

more programming catering for popular

tastes than in the early elitist years of a single-

channel state monopoly. The increasing con-

finement of high cultural programming to

specialist channels or the fringes of the public

sector networks is the consequence of a mar-

ket-oriented system replacing a paternalistic

state-dominated one.

television

520

Increasingly, French television is becoming

part of a wider European and even global au-

diovisual market. Technology has played a

part in this, with satellite transmission open-

ing up the French system to foreign channels

and vice versa. New patterns of media owner-

ship have reinforced this internationalization

of the medium. Canal Plus, for example, has

successfully exported its pay-TV format to

other countries where it has taken a stake in

subscription television. Pursuing a corporate

strategy based on vertical integration, Canal

Plus has built up a powerful domestic base in

the technological and production sectors from

which to move out and conquer foreign mar-

kets. In particular, Canal Plus is at the fore-

front of the development of digital television

in France and this experience will allow it to

be a major player at the European level in this

new form of broadcasting.

As national boundaries in Europe become

more permeable and major national actors are

transformed into transnational and global

media players, French television faces prob-

lems as well as opportunities. The growth of

television within France and elsewhere in Eu-

rope gives French production and programme

companies the chance to expand and promote

French output. But because of the size of the

domestic (and European francophone) audi-

ence, of necessity French television has to rely

on imports and the reproduction of foreign

programme formats for some of its content.

Regulatory quotas on programming may help

offset some of the undesirable consequences

of a free market in audiovisual goods and serv-

ices in the eyes of French elites. Yet the objec-

tives of greater consumer choice, high quality

output and the defence of French culture are

increasingly difficult to reconcile in a system

where an optimal relationship between state,

television and audience has never been satis-

factorily achieved.

RAYMOND KUHN

Further reading

Barbrook, R. (1995) Media Freedom, London:

Pluto (a history of the French media which

uses different explanatory models based on

the concept of media freedom).

Bourdon, J. (1990) Histoire de la télévision sous

de Gaulle, Paris: Anthropos/INA (an excel-

lent detailed study of the relationship be-

tween television and the Gaullist presidency).

Franceschini, L. (1995) La Régulation

audiovisuelle en France, Paris: PUF (a short

legal study of broadcasting regulation).

Kuhn, R. (1995) The Media in France, Lon-

don: Routledge (the first full-length study

of the French media in English).

Michel, H. (1995) Les Grandes Dates de la

télévision française, Paris: PUF (a short his-

torical overview of the medium).

Thomas, R. (1976) Broadcasting and Democ-

racy in France, London: Crosby Lockwood

Staples (a part-historical, part-thematic ac-

count of the multifaceted relationship be-

tween broadcasting and democracy in

France up until the 1974 Giscardian re-

form).

television/spectacle guides

Television guides are France’s most popular

and profitable publications, with a dozen ti-

tles selling a total of 15 million copies per

week. The leading title, Télé 7 jours, created

in 1960, accounts for 3 million copies, with

Télé star, Télé Z, Télé poche and Télé loisirs

close on its heels. Télérama has a distinctive

upmarket reputation: in addition to the full

range of radio and television programmes, it

covers music, literature and especially cinema,

providing critical reviews for a discriminating

public. Weekly spectacle guides, primarily

L’Officiel des spectacles and Pariscope for the

capital, and provincial titles such as Lyon

poche, also devote large sections to cinema list-

ings, in addition to providing information on

theatre, concerts, exhibitions, museums, caba-

ret, festivals, restaurants, etc.

television/spectacle guides

521

PAM MOORES

Further reading

Boschetti, A. (1988) The Intellectual Enter-

prise: Sartre and ‘Les Temps modernes’,

Evanston: Northwestern University Press

(essential reading).

tennis

French tennis improved its world ranking

quite dramatically in the 1980s, with the emer-

gence of players such as Yannick Noah and

Henri Leconte. Indoor facilities in France are

vastly superior to those of the United King-

dom, and outdoors clay and hard courts are

the order of the day. The revamped Roland

Garros stadium in Paris stages the French

Open championships, where Noah became the

first French postwar champion in 1983.

IAN PICKUP

Further reading

Mauriac, C. (1980) Laurent Terzieff, Paris:

Stock (biography).

TF1

Television channel

The national television company Télévision

Française 1 (TF1) came into existence in 1975

as a result of the break-up of the state broad-

casting organization, the ORTF. The channel

remained part of the public sector until its pri-

vatization by the conservative government in

1987. Since then, it has established itself as

the leading mass-audience channel in France,

with an emphasis on entertainment program-

ming and news. Its principal shareholder is the

Bouygues construction group. The company

has diversified into programme production

TF1

522

and thematic channels, including ownership

of the rolling news channel on cable, La

Chaîne d’Information (LCI).

RAYMOND KUHN

See also: cable and satellite television; televi-

sion

theatre

Theatre in France has always been renowned

as providing a home and encouragement for

the avant-garde, and continues to do so to-

day, whether it be for Peter Brook’s experi-

mental theatre at the Bouffes du Nord in Paris

or in the new forms of writing evident in con-

temporary productions. Traditions and the

state attitude to theatre in twentieth-century

France have been markedly different from

those seen in English-speaking countries, with

active encouragement of the avant-garde in

recent decades, especially in terms of the de-

velopment of the director’s and actor’s input

into theatrical creation.

From the nineteenth century’s Parisian boul-

evard theatres, with their melodramas and light

(usually romantic) comedies, it might seem as

if nothing has changed much to this day, if one

takes into consideration the capital’s private

theatres, which advertise their star-laden en-

tertainment across town. However, in France,

they are under increasing threat from well-

funded public theatre, developed in France

since World War II. While theatres such as the

Comédie-Française date back much further

than the postwar period, it is during this time

that the nature of publicly funded theatre in

France has changed dramatically. Following a

markedly different line from the private thea-

tres, its brief today is to make theatre a public

service, providing France not only with a sta-

ple diet of well-produced classics, but also with

a home for experimental and contemporary

work. As part of the wave of decentralization

which swept France during the 1950s, there-

fore, a number of Centres Dramatiques

Nationaux (or CDNs; National Drama Cen-

tres) were set up regionally, to be financed with

a combination of state and local money. Jeanne

Laurent made funds available to the first of

these in 1946, the Centre Dramatique National

de l’Est in Colmar, and, a year later, to Jean

Dasté’s company the Comédie de St Étienne,

which moved to St Étienne, since Grenoble (its

home town) refused to help fund it as a re-

gional centre. It toured in its region with a lively

selection of fun, ‘popular’ theatre productions

intended both to encourage new audiences to

theatre and to return to popular performance

traditions. It became a model for other new

CDNs, such as the Centre Dramatique de

l’Ouest and the Grenier de Toulouse, both of

which became CDNs in 1949, and the Comédie

de Provence.

During this period, when public theatre

was mainly preoccupied with politicizing

theatre (such as the work of Vilar) by taking it

to the people, often to new, working-class au-

diences, the result was that on the whole di-

rectors stuck mainly with well-known clas-

sics, in an attempt to attract these audiences

and to appeal to their theatrical tastes, with

little opportunity for experimentation with

new ideas or contemporary texts. It was there-

fore in the small theatres of Paris’s Left Bank

that avant-garde authors such as Beckett,

Ionesco and Adamov were given their first

performances, which, while viewed at first

very much as avant-garde, quickly achieved

worldwide renown. By the 1960s, they had

been accepted as modern classics, and were

performed in Paris at theatres such as the

Odéon, under the direction of Barrault, as

well as worldwide. Their effect on French the-

atrical writing was profound in the decades to

follow, and they continue to influence many

contemporary writers, such as Philippe

Minyana, who freely acknowledges his fasci-

nation with Beckett’s work.

Meanwhile in the public theatre world, as

the number of CDNs grew, so did the power

of the directors running them, who were not

only in financial charge of running these thea-

tres, but also controlled creative decision-mak-

ing and practice. This factor is certainly one

of the main reasons for the extreme

theatre

523

importance the director has developed in the

postwar French theatre world.

Following on from the practices of Copeau

and the Cartel before the war, through to the

influence of Brechtian theatre upon the in-

creased importance of the director, and the

ideas of avant-garde theorists such as Artaud,

the role of director became an intrinsic one

not only in terms of choreographing the work

of the author, but also for his or her own ar-

tistic input. Today this role is considered in

many ways equal to, if not more important

than, that of the author: talk of Mnouchkine’s

Tartuffe or Chéreau’s Dans la solitude des

champs de coton (In the Solitude of the Cot-

ton Fields) is still common practice, referring

to the director as creator in much the same

way as in the cinema world.

Thus, from the 1950s onwards, the fact

that directors of CDNs were usually also re-

sponsible for directing artistic projects meant

that they had free rein to decide exactly how

state money should be spent creatively, and

used this position to mount productions on

which they were able to impose their personal

mark. As a result of state funding, they were

also more free to experiment with the bounda-

ries of theatre practice alongside the staple diet

of classics they presented, experimenting with

staging non-theatrical texts, adapted from

novels or other art forms, or simply mounting

classics upon which it was easy to impose their

own ideas and make their own mark. Some

directors such as Planchon, for example, were

criticized for using state money to fund pro-

ductions of their own plays.

The tradition of non-text productions was

further enhanced during the 1970s by prac-

tices such as collective creation, of which the

Théâtre du Soleil was one of the main propo-

nents. The company became renowned for its

revolutionary approach to performance, turn-

ing away from the text, experimenting with

performance traditions worked on collectively

by the entire company and focusing on the

actor and scene as much as on the spoken

word. The result was legendary productions

such as 1789 and L’Age d’or (The Golden

Age). Combined with collective creation and

the increased interest in actor, scene and non-

spoken means of communication, the power

of director’s theatre resulted in a severe lack

of contemporary texts being produced, par-

ticularly from the late 1960s to the end of the

1970s. With some exceptions, the 1970s were

a desert as far as playwrights were concerned:

if they wanted to see their plays produced, of-

ten the only way to do so was to mount them

personally.

It was only in the 1980s that theatre found

itself returning to texts as a basis for produc-

tion. Many theatre companies had become dis-

illusioned with the impracticalities of collec-

tive creation, but, having learned valuable les-

sons about staging, the role of the actor and

nontext-based performance from their experi-

ments, their renewed work on text was in

many ways enriched. Good examples of this

include Ariane Mnouchkine’s Shakespearean

cycle and her collaboration with feminist play-

wright Hélène Cixous, both projects relying

on influences from Eastern theatre tradition.

During the 1970s, despite the predominant

lack of interest in text, a new generation of

playwrights had nevertheless emerged, loosely

banded together under the umbrella term the

Théâtre du Quotidien, although each adopted

a very individual approach. Influenced in some

ways by the playwrights of the Theatre of the

Absurd, works such as Wenzel’s Loin

d’Hagondange (Far from Hagondange) and

Michel Deutsch’s Convoi (Convoy) returned

the emphasis to language, using it to highlight

the alienation of the protagonists, and using

fragmented structure to pinpoint the confu-

sion of the world in which they were forced to

forge their existence. However, at the same

time, inheriting in some part the tradition of

performance-led work, the plays of the

Quotidien also relied heavily on performance

to convey their message, leaving plenty of

scope for actors and directors to interpret the

language and fragmented structure.

Michel Vinaver is perhaps the most famous

playwright of the 1970s, and continues to

write today. Like the playwrights of the

Quotidien, Vinaver also experimented with

structure and particularly viewpoint in works

theatre

524

such as Overboard (Par-dessus bord) and Por-

trait d’une femme (Portrait of a Woman), and

his plays have proved influential to many

young writers.

During the 1980s, the works of Bernard-

Marie Koltès, perhaps the best-known play-

wright in the contemporary repertoire, became

known through their stagings by star director

Patrice Chéreau. Koltès, who died in 1989,

could be considered (alongside Vinaver) to be

the best-known contemporary playwright in

the 1990s and his plays enjoy regular perform-

ance in France today.

The theatre-going public as a whole, espe-

cially in Paris, is not a purely bourgeois and

conservative one; there exists today a divide

in the theatre world between the boulevard

theatres of the private theatre sector, still ca-

tering to this bourgeois ‘market’ as they did in

the nineteenth century, and the audiences of

publicly funded theatre, which, thanks to gen-

erous subsidies during the Mitterrand years,

has been able to experiment and explore the

possibilities of theatre as a medium, attracting

an intellectual audience in the process.

Despite spending cuts by the Chirac regime

in 1996, the extent of funding in France makes

the French theatre scene a markedly different

one from that of the United Kingdom. In France,

public theatre has, during a period of substan-

tial financial support, found itself the home to

huge, spectacular (but frequently loss-making)

productions, and with the resources to house

experimental and contemporary works. Thus

the avant-garde in some ways could be consid-

ered now to have moved into the very estab-

lishment which it once sought to undermine:

the private theatres today are under such finan-

cial constraints that it is they who resort to sure-

fire successes, often with stars in their line-up,

in a bid to cover their costs at least.

Public theatre, at least for the time being, is

well resourced, and continues to stage a var-

ied mixture of productions, both text- and

nontext-based. Today in France there are 33

Centres Dramatiques Nationaux, 6 of these

devoted to youth theatre. Each consists of a

theatre venue with a permanent troupe at-

tached to it, with 44 per cent of costs met by

the state, 20 per cent by local government and

the rest (36 per cent) engendered by the thea-

tres themselves through either sponsorship or

revenue, according to 1994 Ministry of Cul-

ture statistics (Direction du theatre et des spec-

tacles 1994). In addition to the CDNs, there

are also 9 Centres Dramatiques Régionaux

(Regional Drama Centres) with specific local

missions, and 61 scènes nationales, formerly

maisons de la culture, which have a wide,

multidisciplined brief aimed at cultural devel-

opment and the search for new audiences, and

prioritizing contemporary works. These are

financed half by the Ministry of Culture and

half by local government.

ANNIE SPARKS

See also: arts funding; Avignon and summer

arts festivals; circus; mime; Theatre of Cru-

elty; theatres, national; theatres, private

Further reading

Bradby, D. (1991) Modern French Drama

1940–1990, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press (a detailed history of postwar

theatre practices, traditions and expo-

nents).

Corvin, M. (ed.) (1995) Le Dictionnaire du

théâtre, 2 vols, Paris: Bordas (an encyclo-

pedia of French theatre in French).

Couty, D. and Rey, A. (eds) (1995) Le Théâtre,

Paris: Bordas (a general history of practices

and traditions, with particularly textual

and pictorial material on twentieth-century

practitioners such as the Théâtre du Soleil).

Whitton D. (1987) Stage Directors in Modern

France, Manchester: Manchester University

Press (a useful English-language introduc-

tion to individual directors).

Théâtre du Quotidien

This name signifies a genre of theatre pro-

duced by a significant number of playwrights

in the 1970s in France. Their plays dealt with

Théâtre du Quotidien

525

everyday life on stage, as the word quotidien

suggests, relying on everyday language and

events to make more general, often violent

statements about aspects of society. The

movement was inspired by German and Aus-

trian theatre and cinema of the time, and by

the numerous German translations appearing

in French theatres which told of the lives of

everyday people in ordinary situations, usu-

ally in fragmented form. The same frag-

mented form and departure from linear plot

was evident in many French plays of the

1970s, which explored the way everyday lan-

guage can often be imprisoning to the people

who use it. Nonlinear structure was also a

feature of these texts, suspending emotional

engagement, and allowing the permeation of

larger, more violent messages told through the

relationship between characters and their en-

vironment. Notable playwrights of the move-

ment were René Kalisky, Michel Deutsch and

Jean-Paul Wenzel. The sociopolitical content

of their work, often violently exposed in their

tales of heightened everyday reality, appealed

to directors of the day, who continued to seek

to politicize theatre and reach out to ordinary

people through their productions, while also

searching for works leaving them room to

imprint their own creative voice. Using frag-

mentary structure, playwrights of the move-

ment experimented with time and space—in

plays such as Deutsch’s Convoi (Convoy),

and many of Vinaver’s works. Well-rounded

characters in the Théâtre du Quotidien were

to some extent abandoned, as was linear plot,

inasmuch as the characters in these plays are

often trapped by the language of the every-

day, which leaves them unable to articulate

emotions. Their existence, in dramatic terms,

is rooted in the message or theme they em-

body and epitomize, rather than in their es-

sence as naturalistic characters: the plays of

the Théâtre du Quotidien were

sociopolitically motivated, evoking emotion

or sympathy only while exposing wider social

issues.

ANNIE SPARKS

Further reading

Bradby, D. (1991) Modern French Drama

1940–1990, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press (includes a chapter on play-

wrights of the 1970s).

Sarrazac, J.-P. (1981) L’Avenir du drame,

Paris: L’Aire (a discussion of tendencies in

plays during this period).

Théâtre du Soleil

Founded in 1963 by Ariane Mnouchkine and

friends from the Sorbonne, the Théâtre du

Soleil has become one of the most influential

theatre groups in France, famous for innova-

tions in theatrical tradition, structure, form

and working methods. Christened ‘Soleil’ at a

time when state-run, decentralized theatre was

full of heavy and bureaucratically named com-

panies, the Théâtre du Soleil set out to seek

new ways of presenting political and aesthetic

messages to a mass audience made up of the

working class as well as the bourgeoisie. It was

keen to explore uncharted means of theatrical

representation, drawing on existing European

theatre traditions such as the commedia dell’

arte, old French farce, even Roman and medi-

eval theatre, for inspiration. Physical, exuber-

ant performances dominated its versions of

Gautier’s Fracasse and Wesker’s The Kitchen,

in which the actors added an expressionist,

physical interpretation of their characters to

an otherwise naturalistic play, which appealed

to packed audiences in occupied factories dur-

ing revolutionary 1968. The company also

produced an acclaimed production of Shake-

speare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, com-

bining physical and emotional vibrancy. Les

Clowns in 1969 was a further attempt to ex-

plore the role of the performer—a series of

autobiographical pieces based on individual

and group improvisations, the first of the com-

pany’s celebrated collective creations.

Now including designer Guy-Claude

François in the team, the Théâtre du Soleil set

Théâtre du Soleil

526

up in the Cartoucherie in 1970, a disused car-

tridge factory in Vincennes, where they experi-

mented further with theatre space and actor-

audience relations. The result was the hugely

successful 1789, combining historical research

with exuberant theatrical spectacle, plural

viewpoints of individual events with multi-

staging and audience involvement. Many were

so excited by it that they would remain after

the performance to discuss the ideas it raised.

1793, which followed, also combined his-

torical documentation with political comment

and multiple viewpoints, while L’Age d’or (The

Golden Age), which came next, turned to con-

temporary reality for inspiration, which meant

extra efforts were needed to prevent the piece

from becoming social documentary. Using

masks and gesture, the company told stories

based around real events, showing capitalism

at work using essentially theatrical means.

By 1975, the now state-subsidized com-

pany still found that its lengthy rehearsal and

research periods were leading to financial

problems. Jean-Claude Penchenat left to form

the Théâtre du Campagnol, while remaining

members moved on to play in Mnouchkine’s

film venture, Molière. The company returned

to theatre with Mephisto, Mnouchkine’s ad-

aptation of Mann’s novel in 1979, exploring

the political role of a theatre company, inter-

spersing ‘rehearsal’ scenes with political dis-

cussion. Reversible seats allowed the audience

to watch Nazi Germany from a dual perspec-

tive, to highlight the gulf between personal and

official viewpoints and culture.

The company cleared its debts with sub-

sidy from the new Socialist government in

1981, embarking on a Shakespearean cycle

inspired by theatrical traditions from India

and Japan, followed by the four-play cycle Les

Atrides in the early 1990s, experimenting with

Greek tragedy. Both cycles sought to find con-

temporary relevance for the classics while ex-

perimenting with performance traditions. Dur-

ing the 1980s and 1990s, Mnouchkine has

also worked extensively with feminist author

Hélène Cixous, whose epic Sihanouk in 1985,

L’Indiade in 1987 and La Ville parjure ou les

Érinyes (Treacherous City) in 1994 have

proved memorable epic productions, dealing

with contemporary social and political issues.

The latter, for example, took on the contro-

versial issue of blood contamination and con-

sequent infection with AIDS; Cixous set the

play, however, in an undefined time scale, be-

tween ancient times and the modern day, em-

ploying the Furies (the Érinyes of the play’s

title from Greek myth) to seek revenge on be-

half of the victims. The trial before society

which ensues in the play is fruitless: no one

will take responsibility. This two-part epic was

performed the following year in alternation

with Tartuffe at the 1995 Avignon festival.

Mnouchkine’s new production, and her first

full-scale production of a Molière play, took

on the issue of contemporary war-ridden Al-

geria, endowing Molière’s classic with a bit-

ing relevance to the present day.

ANNIE SPARKS

See also: Algerian war; Avignon and summer

arts festivals; theatre

Further reading

Kiernander, A. (1995) Ariane Mnouchkine

and the Théâtre du Soleil, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Theatre of Cruelty

Antonin Artaud’s notion of a ‘theatre of cru-

elty’ is central to his collection of essays enti-

tled The Theatre and Its Double (Le Théâtre

et son double), first published in 1938.

Artaud’s overall aim in these essays was to

rewrite the conventions of theatre. He sought

to subvert the classical conception of drama,

which gave priority to the playwright, the text

and the dramatic canon, and to develop in-

stead a theatre which pushed the audience to-

wards the painful collective release of their

subconscious, through cruelty. Cruelty in the

theatre, for Artaud, did not refer simply to the

staging of criminal or violent acts, but

Theatre of Cruelty

527

involved exposing the audience to the contra-

dictory thrills and dangers of existence. As a

result, the audience would be forced to con-

front the dark side of their own cultural inher-

itance, and ultimately the eroticism and vio-

lence which lay repressed within their own

subconscious. Artaud drew a close parallel

between cruelty on stage and the Plague, both

of which were able to subvert and destroy

conventional social hierarchies, and thereby

allow actor and spectator a privileged insight

into their essential complexity.

In an attempt to rewrite stage conventions,

Artaud proposed a new theatrical ‘language’

which sought to bypass the spoken word or

‘logocentrism’ of the Aristotelian theatre.

Artaud’s theatre was to depend on the synthe-

sis of music, dance, mime and set, which to-

gether would form a concrete theatrical lan-

guage able to penetrate the spectator’s subcon-

scious through the senses. Following his obser-

vation of the sharp, angular movements of the

Balinese actors in Paris in 1931, movements

which provided an economy of direct,

unmediated communication between actor and

spectator, Artaud developed an interest in the

dramatic possibilities of gesture. Despite

Artaud’s detailed specifications, however, the

Theatre of Cruelty failed to achieve the impact

or success which Artaud had hoped for during

his lifetime. Indeed, his only full-length play, The

Cenci (Les Cenci), written in 1935, was plagued

by financial difficulties and derided by a number

of critics as a failure, before being withdrawn

after only two weeks. Derrida, in Writing and

Difference (L’Écriture et la difference) sees in

Artaud’s writing an implicit critique of West-

ern metaphysics as a whole. Artaud, says

Derrida, attempted to destroy the legacy of God

the Father, who was the originator of all lan-

guage and ‘logocentrism’. This attempted par-

ricide led to the closure of all representation,

and the impossibility of all repetition, within

Artaud’s theatre.

It was only after the posthumous publica-

tion of Artaud’s essays in English in 1958 that

Artaud’s reputation eventually grew. There are

clear thematic links between Artaud’s theatre

and the French New Theatre of the 1950s, as-

sociated with writers such as Beckett. Ionesco

and Genet, and practitioners like Blin and

Barrault. Artaud’s theatre also influenced the

development of film. For instance, Claudel

wrote in 1930 in his essay Le Drame et la

musique (Drama and Music) that the screen,

rather like the stage, could unlock the door to

the troubled world of the human unconscious,

and that cinema and theatre would establish

an alliance firmly based within America.

Artaud’s theatre, equally, encouraged the de-

velopment of a new director’s theatre. One

exponent of this kind of theatre, Roger

Planchon, follows Artaud in suggesting that

the modern director is no longer subservient

to the playwright. In his preface to the 1986

edition of Molière’s L’Avare, he suggests that

the director resembles a museum curator, who

by restoring and displaying relics from the past

instils in them an essential ambiguity, such that

it is no longer clear who is responsible for the

‘relic’ as it is now perceived.

GERARD PAUL SHARPLING

Further reading

Barber, S. (1993) Antonin Artaud: Blows and

Bombs, London: Faber (an authoritative

account of Artaud’s life and works, with a

chapter on the emergence and the demise

of the Theatre of Cruelty).

Theatre of the Absurd

‘Theatre of the Absurd’ is a term used to refer

to the work of a collection of individual play-

wrights writing in the 1950s and 1960s, whose

radical approach to drama intrinsically ques-

tioned the nature of theatre. Leading propo-

nents of the movement were Beckett, Ionesco,

Adamov and Genet, all of whose works were

produced in the 1950s in small, Parisian avant-

garde theatres. They were by no means part of

a self-acknowledged group. The various

Theatre of the Absurd