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International Theatre Institute
- founded in 1947 under UNESCO
- Published World Theatre
- held international meetings
- after 1954 held an annual festival
- also founded theatres in areas that previously had few or none
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Post-war theatre in Paris
- Prosperous though not outstanding during occupation
- Postwar government sought to take a more active role
- Ministry of Arts and Letters subsidized select productions of new works
- State theatres reorganized: Opera and Opera Comique placed under single management, Comedie Francaise and Odeon merged
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French regional theatres
- Government encouraged decentralization of the theatre which by 1945 had been primarily restricted to Paris
- 1947 regional dramatic centers begin to be established
- Regional troupes also toured local towns
- Festivals founded, and by 60s more than 50 festivals held annually
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Jean-Louis Barrault
- 1940 became societaire at the Comedie Francaise
- 43 production of Claudel's The Satin Slipper popularized "total theatre"
- Previously thought to be unplayable due to its length and complexity, Barrault shaped it into a powerful theatrical experience
- declared that the text of a play is like an iceberg, only 1/8 visible, and it was the director's task to use all the theatre's resources to illuminate the other 7/8
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Jean Vilar
- 1951 appointed as director of the Theatre National Populaire, then on the brink of collapse
- Assembled an impressive company and by 1954, the TNP was one of the most popular troupes in France
- Productions focused on the actor with little scenery
- Troupe played at Avignon Festival and toured, leading to it soon becoming the most popular of the state troupes
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Municipal Cultural Centers
- Founded by DeGaulle's minister of Culture Andre Malraux
- Held theatrical performances, dance, film, music, visual arts and public lectures
- many founded in suburbs of Paris, too far to benefit from the facilities of the city
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French Existentialism
- Primarily through Jean Paul Sartre
- The Flies, Dirty Hands, No Exit, The Devil and the Good Lord, The Condemned of Altona
- Denies existence of God, fixed standards, and verifiable moral codes.
- human beings "Condemned to be free"
- people must choose their own values and live by them
- believed that it was necessary to be politically engaged
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Albert Camus
- Small theatrical output, but most influential through essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus"
- Human condition absurd because of the gap between people's hopes and the irrational universe
- Only remedy lies in an individual's search for a set of arbitrary standards that will allow him to bring order out of chaos
- conclusions similar to Sartre's
- Disagreed most with Sartre's ideas on engagement, denying the validity of choosing between 2 immoral choices
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Absurdists
- Tended to concentrate on the the irrationality of human existance, whithout suggesting a path beyond
- Episodes unified by theme or mood, rather than cause and effect, paralleling the chaos of the world
- Sense of absurdity heightened by juxtaposition of incongruous events producing comic and ironic effects
- Language often subverted because it was seen as a major rationalistic tool
- 4 most important: Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Adamov
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Samuel Beckett
- First absurdist to win international fame with Waiting for Godot (1953)
- In many ways, seems the characteristic playwright of the 1950s
- characters often seem to be set down in a world ravaged by disaster
- Beckett most concerned with the human condition in a metaphysical sense
- Characters isolated in space and time, raise questions that cannot be answered, and struggle in a disintegrating world.
- Expressed postwar doubts about human's capacity to understand and control the world
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Eugene Ionesco
- Fist Play The Bald Soprano (1949)
- Early plays (The Lesson, The Chairs) negative, concentrating on cliches of language and irrationality of materialist values
- Later works (The Killer, Rhinoceros, Exit the King, Macbett, The Man with the Suitcases) slightly more positive, showing protagonists holding out against conformity
- Concerned primarily with social relationships, typically of middle-class families
- 2 major themes: deadening nature of materialistic, bourgeois society, and loniness of the individual
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Jean Genet
- Early works The Maids and Deathlands, but his reputation made on The Balcony, The Blacks, and the Screens
- Characters rebel against organized society; deviation is necessary to achieving integrity
- Nothing has meaning without its opposite, so deviant behavior just as valuable as accepted virtues
- transforms life into a series of ceremonies and rituals giving an air of stability to otherwise nonsensical behavior
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Arthur Adamov
- Early plays The Invasion, Parody, All Against All show cruel world of moral destructiveness and personal anxieties
- Later plays became more socially oriented, especially after 1956, when he denounced his earlier work and adopted a Brechtian approach
- new outlook reflected in Paolo Paoli and Spring '71
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Social Drama in France
- Interest in absurdism wanes in the early 60s, and many French playwrights turned to political and socioeconomic themes
- Aime Cesaire especially concerned with problems of postcolonialism
- Gabriel Cousin wrote in brechtian style, but with a Christian slant
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