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Turk, Edward Baron. French Theater Today: The View From New York, Paris, and Avignon. Iowa City: UP of Iowa, 2011. ISBN 978-1-58729-992-6. Pp. 351. $35. This extensive study reviews developments in scripting, staging, and performance in productions presented in 2005–06. The author provides analyses of plays, commentaries by actors and playwrights, as well as descriptions of technologies that enhance productions. He discusses issues such as immigration, refugees, war, poverty, class oppression, ethnicities, sexual and personal identity in performances whose staging often challenged audiences, or in creative works that placed technology center stage along with plot and dialog. In the New York section, Turk mentions plays such as “... She said,” based on the novel and film by Marguerite Duras (“Détruire, dit-elle”), in which a constant stream of multimedia stimuli challenges the viewer “to construct possible meanings for the highly metaphoric goings on” (88). Turk examines plotand dialogue-driven plays (which “reclai[m] the word as theater’s core component” [62]), such as José Pliya’s Le complexe de Thénardier, as well as “media theater” (77), highly technological,experimental presentations (by Philippe Quesne or Pascal Rambert, among others). Turk also discusses the mission of ACT FRENCH, established in New York by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the Association française d’action artistique. ACT FRENCH promotes accessibility and understanding of contemporary French theater, by organizing roundtables, scholarly lectures, and readings by playwrights. The Paris section of the book documents the cultural divide between théâtre privé (“commercial houses that showcase celebrity players and offer fairly conventional fare” [104]) and théâtre public, state- and city-supported not-for-profit theaters (France has five théâtres nationaux, supported entirely by the French government ; four of these five are located in and around Paris). The author highlights three literary dramatists who have revitalized French theater: MichelVinaver,Valère Novarina, and Olivier Py. For example,Vinaver’s L’émission de télévision explored ways in which trans-national economics and mass media have complicated life in today’s world; Novarina’s L’espace furieux at the Comédie-Française combined music-hall and circus antics with philosophical issues of man’s essence and existence in time and space; Py’s Épître aux jeunes acteurs pour que soit rendue la Parole à la parole showed theater as a spiritual site. Turk concludes with a discussion of Boulevard plays, opera with social commitment, and the circus. Part three covers the Festival d’Avignon, which is divided into“In”and“Off”sections.“In”theater is théâtre public, offering new projects, many with experimental staging. Artistic grandeur and ambition mark the“In,”while“Off” plays (named this way in reference to Off-Broadway productions) usually exist on tight budgets, struggle for public attention, and rent a time slot during the festival. To give just one example of a successful “Off” play, Le jour où Nina Simone a cessé de chanter (2007) by Darina Al-Joundi is a one-woman-account about coming of age during the civil wars in Lebanon. Turk’s encyclopedic work is replete with photos, 282 FRENCH REVIEW 87.3 Reviews 283 copious chapter notes,an annotated bibliography,and index; elegantly written,it serves as an introduction to new tendencies in French theater on both sides of the Atlantic. Neumann University (PA) Maria G. Traub Society and Culture edited by Frederick Toner Carrick, Jill. Nouveau Réalisme, 1960s France, and the Neo-Avant-Garde: Topographies of Chance and Return. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7546-6141-2. Pp. ix + 172. £60. Nouveau Réalisme, an artistic movement that gained attention in 1960s France, has often widely been dismissed as a naïve celebration of consumerist society. Framed most prominently by art critic Pierre Restany, Nouveau Réalisme is a more positive, forward-looking form of artistic expression in contrast to other artistic forms, namely Dadaism, which he claimed celebrated the negative and the past. Indeed, so influential were his interpretations of Nouveau Réalisme that until a 2007 exhibit “relatively few authors dared contest Restany’s initial portrayal of Nouveau Réalisme as celebratory of modern-day materialism” (4). The main...

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