Contemporary French Theatre and Performance (review)

This welcome and important volume responds successfully to the challenging task of providing an inclusive, coherent, and forward-looking set of interventions by academics, artists, and theatre makers on central figures and trajectories in contemporary French theatre and performance. Although the collection is divided into two sections, which might seem to reinforce boundaries between theatre and performance, the volume’s explicit address of the shifting dynamics and hybridity of forms, practices, and terminologies serves to energize discursive threads that construct coherent bridges and provocative alliances across chapters and sections. The editors’ creative response to the need to be selective ensures that the seventeen chapters include both innovative interpretations of the work of anticipated presences (Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Philippe Minyana, Orlan, Olivier Py, and Noëlle Renaude) and fresh insights into emerging and neglected figures (Georges Lavaudant and Philippe Quesne). In addition to the impressive interdisciplinary scope of the volume, which covers forms as divergent as postmodern dance and théâtre de la rue, the texts present compelling insights into the diversity of political, economic, and philosophical frameworks through which performance can be considered, while never losing sight of the volume’s own site specificity, namely the sociocultural context of contemporary France. There is insufficient space here to engage with individual chapters, nor is there a need to draw distinctions when the quality of writing and suggestiveness of thinking remains so consistently high. The volume moves beyond a focus on isolated, individual practitioners and the format of case studies to provide detailed analyses of works within frameworks that address central tropes of place (Michel Corvin, Céline Hersant), textualities (David Bradby, Clare Finburgh), and spectatorship (Augusto Corrieri, Susan Haedicke); to de-construct the liberal economics of ‘international excellence’ and its privileged sites (Robert Cantarella, Jean-Pierre Han); to seek a new ethics of creation (Chloé Déchery, Bérénice Hamidi-Kim); and to investigate new convergences of form and discourse (Elaine Aston, Laura Cull, Geraldine Harris, Carl Lavery, Nigel Stewart, Éric Vautrin). The far-reaching Introduction sets in motion a constellation of positions between text, performance, actor, spectator, narrative, image, and liveness to challenge accepted hierarchies and enact an invigorating mise en relation of current approaches. Despite their diverse remit, the individual chapters are bound together by an assertive, coherent, and welcome insistence on the role of theatre in thinking representation, presence, and participation. These concerns are reflected in the collection’s serial engagements with contemporary politics of perception through recurring references to the work of Giorgio Agamben, Nicolas Bourriaud, and Jacques Rancière. Indeed, in line with the concerns of these writers, and in addition to the volume’s stated aim to instigate new debates between French and anglophone artists and scholars, one of the collection’s many strengths remains its ability to create, and extend to the reader, a meaningful invitation to community, participation, and active interpretation.