The Role of Ariane Mnouchkine at the Théâtre du Soleil

The Role of Ariane Mnouchkine at the Theatre du Soleil ADRIAN KIERNANDER In the early days of the Theatre du Solei! it was frequently pointed out with some surprise by commentators that Ariane Mnouchkine was extraordinary in being the only notable woman theatre director in France..After twenty-four years the French media have now grown accustomed to the idea of Mnouchkine as a director, even though this acceptance seems in most cases restricted to Mnouchkine personally rather than to the idea of women directors in general - there remain very few prominent female directors in the French theatre. The focus of much media attention has now switched from astonishment at the fact of a female director to a recurrent questioning of what are perceived to be contradictions and paradoxes in Mnouchkine's work and position within the company, implying that her role as director within a collective is a betrayal of her egalitarian principles. However, the perception of these contradictions depends on a point of view which ignores or even deliberately rejects the special structure of the company. Many of the implied attacks on Mnouchkine and her role betray hidden assumptions which rely on traditional male-dominated concepts of power. To understand Mnouchkine's role it is necessary to appreciate how very radical the structure of the Theatre du Soleil is and the threat it can be seen to pose to conventional authority. One of the ways in which the French media make the position of Mnouchkine unfairly controversial and misleadingly problematic is to focus any discussion of the company almost exclusively on her role. This reinforces the impression that she is a dictator and a Svengali who has single-handedly created both the company and the people in it. In fact the Theatre du Solei! has attracted a number of people exceptionally talented in a wide range of areas who arrived with a great deal of experience and whose special skills are as essential to the quality of the productions as is that of Mnouchkine. In addition to actors such as Georges Bigot and Andres Perez Araya, these Mnouchkine at the Theatre du Solei! 323 include the mask-maker Erhard Stiefel, the musician Jean-Jacques Lemetre, lighting designer Jean-Noel Cordier, set designer Guy-Claude Fran90is, costume designer Jean-Claude Barriera and, in an unusually difficult role given the way the company operates, the administrator Jean-Pierre Henin. Although many of these people make exceptionally innovative contributions to the productions and have developed techniques and approaches which have influenced their counterparts throughout the French theatre, their work is seldom publicly acknowledged. This to some extent is typical of the late twentieth century cult of the director at the expense of other theatre crafts, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that it also reflects fundamentally sexist assumptions on the part of the French press, treating Mnouchkine as being of special interest because she remains a curiosity as a female director. It is also possible that to acknowledge the contribution of all these people would undermine the conventional belief that non-hierarchical power structures are unworkable and that the collective structure of the Theatre du Solei! is a hypocritical fiction. The company was founded in 1964 by a group of friends, including Mnouchkine, who had been studying together at university in Paris. Many of them had previously been members of the Association Theatral des Etudiants de Paris. The Theatre du Soleil was formed, in a way that was common in the 1960s, with aims which were both theatrical and social. Their objectives were anti-traditional, revolutionary, and idealist. The company was set up, against all advice, as a workers' co-operative, as part of an attempt to guarantee a collaborative and non-hierarchical power structure which contrasted with that of the established society. But there was also, right from the start, a more extreme utopian dream which in the early days led the company to consider following in the footsteps of the Copeau legend by abandoning the city. For a brief period they thought of retreating into the countryside and combining the practice of theatre with the raising of sheep. This idea was quickly abandoned as being impractically romantic...