Inventer l'acteur: émotions et spectacle dans l'Europe des Lumières by Laurence Marie (review)

Early in her Introduction, Laurence Marie observes that the 1980s saw a shift in theatre studies from a focus on poetics (the text) to performance (including acting style, declamation, and scenography). She cites several seminal studies that examine, as her work does, eighteenth-century theories of acting, leaving the reader to wonder briefly what her own contribution will be. The answer follows two pages later: 'Comprendre la révolution esthétique qui se produit au XVIII^e siècle au sein des premières théories du spectacle demande de sortir des cadres génériques et nationaux pour examiner un corpus fondamentalement pluriel. Ce travail est doublement comparatiste: il est interdisciplinaire et européen' (p. 14). Indeed, at a time when fashionable terms such as 'interdisciplinarity' and 'transnationalism' are still more commonly tossed around than actually practised, very few accounts of eighteenth-century drama have dared cross national frontiers, and none as brilliantly and thoroughly as Inventer l'acteur, with its pioneering research in multiple languages and literary traditions. Marie's comparatist approach offers numerous advantages. A transnational lens allows her to trace a more complete and accurate genealogy for one of the eighteenth century's greatest aesthetic advances: the development of the first modern theories of acting, and their progressive embrace of a more natural, body-centred style. Wisely eschewing an overly simplistic narrative that would situate this new conception of acting in one culture and show its spread to others, Marie charts a complex network of crisscrossing lines, each node borrowing ideas from the others but also transforming them by seeking to adapt them to divergent national styles and conventions, producing exchanges and innovations that gradually coalesce into a potent alternative to the classical model. Secondly, by bridging disciplines as well as literary traditions, Marie reveals not only the impact of painting, sculpture, music, philosophy, and medicine on the new theories of acting, but also the ways that acting, because it entails a unique form of live creation that takes the body as one's instrument, became an ideal laboratory in which to experiment and test radical ideas that, in turn, impacted other disciplines. Notably, Marie makes a compelling case that the birth of acting theory played a key role in the rise of the Romantic vision of artistic creation and in the development of modern drama. A third advantage bears mentioning: Marie's comparatist approach should guarantee her book a broad audience and impact. It will appeal, for instance, to scholars of French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish theatre. In fact, as I write this review, mere months after its publication, Marie's study has already been cited in books and articles on Hamlet and Renaissance drama, postmodern French theatre, and acting styles on the pre-Revolutionary Caribbean stage. No doubt such citations and extensions of Marie's research will continue, ensuring this book earns a deserved place among the essential works on eighteenth-century European theatre.