A Sense of Direction: The Author in Contemporary French Theater

A Sense of Direction: The Author in Contemporary French Theater JANICE BERKOWITZ Le theatre de notre temps s'ccrit moins qu'i1 ne se fait. Guy Dumur Moi, un auteur dramatiqlle? Non:j'essaye seulement d'etre intelligent. Jean Genet The distinctive mark ofFrance's "nouveau theatre" or avant-garde ofthe fifties is, at first glance, the renown of its authors, a group whose lifeline to the properly literary as a written construct far outweighed any direct experience with the live stage. Although an occasional author would turn to full scenic involvement (Jean Anouilh continues to codirect his plays) or enter into limited association with like-minded directors (both Beckett and Genet did), the serious dramatic author who viewed lack of scenic experience as ashortcoming or liability was rare. Even proponents of theater as a global activity, such as author/actor/director Romain Weingarten or Roland Dubillard, identified primarily with their roles as text engenderers, using acting and directing as a means to ensure proper stagings of their plays. Once upon a time, playwrights wrote plays assuming authorial rights over signification; actors played roles; and directors re-presented the written. However, such a simple division of labor was hardly without its problems, as authors and directors naturally locked horns over conflicting hermeneutic responses to the same text. From Chekhov's dissatisfaction with Stanislavsky's "dismemberment" of The Cherry Orchard in '904 to Genet's outburst during Zadek's English production of The Balcony in '957, authors and directors gr~ppled with the dramatic text's elusive and ubiquitous patterns of signification . Still, the matter was grounded in a text, that tangible array of words, however equivocal, recorded upon a page by a single author. Although the equation has never been a simple one, the balance of power in JANICE BERKOWITZ stage matters has in recent decades weighed strongly in favor of the scenic master, the director. The assumption that theater is ftrst and foremost an authorial act, carried out by a single creator, resulting in an autonomous written piece of literature, is quickly losing ground among contemporary observers. The inherent difficulties in even defining "texte dramatique" have come to light in Patrice Pavis's Dictionnaire du theatre and in a newly released Bordas anthology, La litterature en France depuis 1968. Acknowledging the tendency to admit any text, even the telephone book, as valid dramatic material, Pavis remains convinced that some criteria for the dramatic text are within reach. More strikingly, the Bordas survey of French literary production since 1968 contains no section on the dramatic text, despite extensive examination of all manner of recit. By way of explanation, the preface enumerates four developments which account for the omission: that new theater forms have broken with the notion of a literary text; that theater as a literary genre is no longer tenable; that theater in the posH968 era takes shape primarily in its performed state, making reference to a written text all but impossible; and ftnally, that the playwright, at least to date, is a species in the process of extinction. I The observation that theater has severed its links to literature is an obvious starting point. Being reluctant to sponsor theater texts for popular-reader consumption, the publishing world fosters the idea that theater is performance, its vehicle text being an intermediary, a means rather than an end in itself. The publisher, however, is merely the disciple of a concurrent belief, well nourished in theater circles, that promotes the theatrical event as a primary act in the absence of which no dramatic text need exist. Not surprisingly, as the play qua literary object is rebuffed, mechanisms for grasping the performed text or theatrical event are, conversely, sought with greater interest and energy. A recent issue ofEurope (648 [avril 1983)) entitled "Le theatre par ceux qui Ie font" is but one example of an effort to capture the intricate workings of dramatic activity as described by its practitioners. Presented as a kaleidoscope of shapes changing as angles of vision shift from director to actor, to author, to critic, theater is best defined as "un travail d'equipe" and "un spectacle," the scenic result ofteamwork whose textual origins mayor may not be...