What Is the Theatre?

What is the Theatre? is one of the most coherent and systematic descriptions and analyses of the theatre yet compiled. Theatre is, above all, spectacle. It is a fleeting performance, delivered by actors and intended for spectators. It is a work of the body, an exercise of voice and gesture addressed to an audience, most often in a specific location and with a unique setting. This entertainment event rests on the delivery of a thing promised and expected - a particular and unique performance witnessed by spectators who have come to the site of the performance for this very reason. To witness theatre is to take into account the performance, but it is also to take into account the printed text as readable object and a written proposition.

In this book, Christian Biet and Christophe Triau focus on the practical, theoretical, and historical positions that the spectator and the reader have had in relation to the locations that they frequent and the texts that they handle. They adopt two approaches: analysing the spectacle in its theatrical and historical context in an attempt to seek out the principles and paradigms of approaching the theatre experience on one hand, and analysing the dramaturgy of a production in order to establish lines of interpretation and how to read, represent, and stage a text on the other. This approach allows us to better understand the ties that link those who participate in the theatre to the practitioners who create theatrical entertainment.

Christian Biet is Professor in Performing arts, theatrical and drama aesthetics and French studies, University of Paris-Nanterre, and Institut Universitaire de France. He is also Regular visiting Professor in NYU, and a member of the editorial commitee of the French theatrical review Theatre/Public and of Litteratures classiques. Last books : Qu’est-ce que le theatre ?, (avec Ch. Triau, Gallimard, coll. ? Folio essais inedit ?, 2006 ; Theatre de la cruaute et recits sanglants (France XVIe-XVIIe siecle), coll. ? Bouquins ?, Laffont, 2006 ; Tragedies et recits de martyres (France, fin XVIe-debut XVIIe siecle), dir. Ch. Biet et M.-M. Fragonard, Classiques Garnier, 2009 ; Le Theatre du XVIIe siecle, dir. Ch. Biet, editions L’Avant-Scene, 2009; lately several issues of Theatre/Public (on Chinese theatre 2013; Flemish performance, 2014; Repertory, 2017...) and an issue of Communications on the theoritical question of performance (n°92, 2013).

Christophe Triau is Professor in Theatrical studies at the University of Paris-Nanterre. He also works as a dramaturge. His PhD was about 17th century french theatre, and he now mostly works on contemporary theatre, especially dramaturgy and aesthetics of stage direction. He directed many collective publications and issues of reviews like Alternatives theatrales (and is member of its editorial committee) and Theatre/Public (in particular, every two years, the "Etats de la scene actuelle" issues, in collaboration with O. Neveux), and published many writings about contemporary stage directors (recently : a book about Joel Pommerat's Cendrilllon, Sceren edition).

.