Stagestruck: The Business of Theater in Eighteenth-Century France and its Colonies by Lauren R. Clay (review)

The old (and not so old) story of French cultural patronage goes like this: a king, emperor, president, or cultural minister dreams up a project; a centralized administration finances and deploys the project (usually first in Paris); the administration then seeks to recreate Parisian success in provincial cities and towns. Lauren R. Clay proves that this trajectory — from Paris to the provinces, from big to small — fails to account for the stunning success of public theatres across France and its empire during the eighteenth century. Clay organizes her book into seven chapters, each of which furthers her main argument that ‘the unparalleled expansion of French theater […] was not founded on a court-based culture of patronage and political coercion’ but rather ‘owed more to the market’ (pp. 4–5). Chapter 1 shows how municipal authorities and local benefactors, and not royal henchmen, were responsible for the exponential rise of playhouses across the country (according to Clay, ten French cities had a playhouse in 1730; there were seventy-two cities with a theatre by 1789 (p. 17)). In Chapter 2 the author proves that the most opulent playhouses, often constructed by France’s most prominent architects, were actually located outside of Paris and were the result of innovative financing initiatives by local businessmen and joint-stock companies. The third chapter examines the moments when the state did intervene in provincial playhouse construction and operation, mostly through military initiatives and sometimes only after local petitioning. Analysing the personalities behind local theatres, Clay shows in Chapter 4 that directors exhibited a keen awareness of market trends by choosing to stage plays and genres that reflected popular tastes. Chapters 5 and 6 highlight the roles of actors and spectators in the direction and control of theatres. Here Clay provides a unique view of life at the provincial theatre by analysing eyewitness testimony of performances and correspondence between actors and directors, instead of relying on the more traditional sources that scholars have used to describe theatre cultures of the period, such as Rousseau’s moral writings, religious criticisms of the theatre, and philosophe treatises. In the seventh chapter, perhaps Clay’s most original, the author uncovers the role of theatres in French colonies by examining, among other issues, the influence of theatre finances on the complex race relations that characterized Saint-Domingue and Martinique. Clay uses rich and diverse sources to prove that dramatic performance, like luxury goods and other examples of material culture, reached a greater number of French subjects during the eighteenth century. The author overturns commonly held notions about Ancien Régime business practices, political ‘uses’ of theatre, and the economics of cultural patronage; she also questions existing scholarship on ‘larger’ issues, such as the participation of women in the emerging public sphere, and race relations in French colonies. Stagestruck is a carefully argued attack against the narrative of Parisian primacy that still dominates cultural discourses today, and a necessary read for any student of eighteenth-century French theatre as well as political, cultural, and economic history.