G45.1721G45.1721 CONTEMPORARY FRENCH THEATER Prof. Bishop Spring 2008 This
course will examine the development of French theater since the beginning of
the 20th century, from its early reactions to the outmoded
conventions of late19th Century realism to the “flight from naturalism” that
has marked it during most of the following hundred years. During the first
weeks, we will discuss the anti-realistic thrust of the leading directors in
the early part of the century: Lugné-Poë, Copeau, Dullin, Baty, Jouvet, and
Pitoëff, illustrated by plays such as Jarry’s Ubu roi, Apollinaire’s Les
Mamelles de Tirésias, and La Machine
infernale by Cocteau--the most important single innovator in the post-World
War I years. Claudel will be viewed as a towering but isolated figure while the
major figure of the inter-war years, Giraudoux, will be studied via La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu.
Meanwhile, more modern forms of theater appear and will be examined in works by
Anouilh, Montherlant, and Sartre. In their plays, we will see the growing trend
to pessimistic and absurdist theater, reflecting a tragic view of the human
condition. The
major emphasis in the second half of the course will be on the “new” theater,
which begins, roughly in 1950 and includes the “theater of the absurd” with
Ionesco and Beckett, as well as Genet and theater linked to the esthetics of
the “nouveau roman” in the works of Sarraute and Duras. Finally, we will
several more recent trends: political theater and collective creation through the
Théâtre du Soleil (1789 and Cixous’s Indiade); the poetic theater of Koltès; and see the rediscovery of
realism illustrated by Tilly’s Charcuterie
fine. Plays
will be analyzed from a variety of points of view: thematics; dramatic
technique; as expressions (generally metaphoric) of contemporary realities and
concerns; as language. Attention will be paid throughout to theories of
theater, theatrical conventions, the language of theater, the audience-stage
relationship. In Artaud’s Le Théâtre et
son double we will examine the most influential essay on contemporary
theater. Excerpts
of filmed versions of performances of a number of these plays will be shown and
will be available at the Avery Fisher Media Center for individual viewing. Primary
readings will be the plays, which will be analyzed in class. Oral reports will
bear on some of the playwrights, theoreticians, directors. All work
in the course will be done in French. Recommended readings: Geneviève Serreau, Histoire du nouveau théâtre, Gallimard, Idées Jacques Guicharnaud, Modern French Theater, Yale U. Press David Bradby, Modern French Drama 1940-1980, Cambridger U. Press (also Le Théâtre français contemporain, P.U.
Lille) Jacqueline de Jomaron, ed. Le Théâtre en France, vol. 2, Armand
Colin Martin Esslin, The Theater of the Absurd, Doubleday. Christian Biet and Christophe Triau, Qu’est-ce que le théâtre ?
FolioJean-Jacques Roubine, Introduction
aux grandes théories du Théâtre, Bordas Christopher Innes, Avant-Garde Theatre, 1892-1992, Routledge |
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