French theater since 1968

by Bettina Liebowitz Knapp

One lasting effect of France's May 1968 antiestablishment movement has been the reevaluation of the philosophical, psychological, and aesthetic aspects of theater. In the 1950s and 1960s the plays of Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Eugene Ionesco had abolished traditional theatrical forms, as had the existentialist theater of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Jean Anouilh. French playwrights, bursting with new ideas as well as with confidence in their own worth after 1968, formulated fresh criteria, probed new forms, and experimented with different approaches to the performing arts. As dramatists broke new ground, so directors broke away from established aesthetics to focus on audacious, provocative interpretations of playwright's visions. In this astute examination Bettina L. Knapp looks at how the outcry of young people in 1968 has influenced French directors and playwrights and has changed conceptions of "theater" in the two and a half decades following. Beginning with an overview