French Theatre Today: The View from New York, Paris, and Avignon

Notes

Preface 1. To permit easy identification by the reader, I have chosen to place ACT FRENCH in uppercase throughout this book. 2. Among the prime movers of ACT FRENCH were Emmanuelle de Montgazon , then attachée culturelle, and her associate Nicole Birmann-Bloom of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York; Paris-based artistic liaison Denise Luccioni, assisted by Professor Philippa Wehle (SUNY/Purchase ); New York–based artistic advisor Mark Russell, founder of the Under the Radar festival; Elisabeth Hayes, executive director of the French American Cultural Exchange (FACE), based in New York; and Jean-Marc Granet Bouffartigue and Marie Raymond of the performing arts department of AFAA, based in Paris. Eighty percent of the festival’s $3.7 million budget came from participating New York theatres, ticket sales, and individual and corporate sponsors , while 20 percent came from AFAA and the French Cultural Services; see Alison James, “Gotham speaks ‘French,’” Variety.com, 10 July 2005, http:// www.variety.com/, and Claire Derville, “‘Act French’: les trois coups ont retenti ,” France-Amérique, 16 July 2005. 3. In October and November 2004 the Cultural Services of the French Embassy of Chicago hosted a festival of twenty-three contemporary French plays in English translation, performed by Chicago-area theatre ensembles. Unlike New York’s ACT FRENCH—which aimed to showcase alternative and hybrid stage forms along with more traditional works, and whose organizers invited France-based companies to perform in New York—the emphasis in Playing French: Chicago’s First Festival of Contemporary Plays from France fell squarely on literary playwriting in new translations. For an overview, see Yannick Mercoyrol, “Playing French: Notes and Reflections,” Entr’actes (Paris), no. 20 (January 2005): 151–55. Introduction 1. Donald Morrison, “The Death of French Culture,” Time, 21 November 2007, European edition. A revised and updated version of this text, with a reply by Antoine Compagnon, was published as Que reste-t-il de la culture Introduction . . . .. Notes . . . . . . . . .. For Further Reading . . . . . . . . .. Index . . . . . . . . .. Notes 308 française? (Paris: Denoël, 2008) and as The Death of French Culture (Cambridge , UK: Polity, 2010). 2. Bernard-Henri Lévy, “American Talk of French Culture Says More about Them Than Us,” Guardian (London), 8 December 2007. Random House (New York) published Lévy’s American Vertigo in January 2006. 3. John Lichfield, “The Death of French Culture? I Don’t Think So,” Independent (London), 6 December 2007. 4. Frédéric Martel, “Time Magazine et le débat sur la mort de la culture,” nonfiction.fr, 21 December 2007, http://www.nonfiction.fr/article-420-time_ magazine_et_le_debat_sur_la_mort_de_la_culture_francaise.htm. 5. Les Echos, 7 July 2005, quoted in Nathalie Mauret, “Festival d’Avignon: l’été de toutes les attaques,” La Scène, no. 38 (September 2005): 31. 6. Frédéric Ferney, Le Point, 21 July 2005, quoted in Mauret, “Festival d’Avignon,” 31. 7. Armelle Héliot, Le Figaro, 21 July 2005, quoted in Mauret, “Festival d’Avignon,” 31. 8. René Gonzalez, L’Humanité, 18 July 2005, quoted in editorial, “Une partie du public et des critiques contestent la direction prise à Avignon,” Le Monde, 24 July 2005. 9. Odile Quirot, “On danse sur le pont d’Avignon,” Le Nouvel Observateur, 7 July 2005. 10. Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres quoted in Emmanuelle Loyer and Antoine de Baecque, Histoire du festival d’Avignon (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), 546. 11. Régis Debray, Sur le pont d’Avignon (Paris: Flammarion, 2005), 98–99. 12. Georges Banu and Bruno Tackels, eds., Le cas Avignon 2005: regards critiques (Vic-la-Gardiole: L’Entretemps, 2005), 16. 13. Ibid., 222. Jean Vilar’s statement originally appeared in his 1968 piece “Théâtre et révolution,” which was reprinted in Jean Vilar, Le théâtre, service public et autres textes (Paris: Gallimard, 1986). 14. See Antoine de Baecque, Crises dans la culture française (Paris: Bayard, 2008), 222–28. 15. See Olivier Donnat, Les pratiques culturelles des français à l’ère numérique : enquête 2008 (Paris: Editions de La Découverte/Ministère de la Culture, 2009), 181. 16. Emmanuel Wallon, “Le théâtre et les spectacles,” in Politiques et pratiques culturelles, collection “Les Notices,” ed. Philippe Poirrier (Paris: La Documentation Française, 2010), 126. 17. Wallace Fowlie, Dionysus in Paris: A Guide to Contemporary French Theatre (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), 7. Notes 309 18. Ibid., 202. Fowlie’s book was one of a cluster of scholarly overviews of French literary...