Rereading Moliere: Mise En Scène from Antoine to Vitez

By Jim Carmody

Rereading Moli re: Mise en Sc ne from Antoine to Vitez investigates the strategies employed by some of the most influential French directors of the present century to create radical interpretations of Moli re's classic texts. At the same time, the book explores how these reinterpretations of Moli re's popular comedies have articulated a revisionist version of French cultural history.The book focuses on five productions of two Moli re plays: Andr Antoine's and Jacque Arnavon's 1907 Tartuffe, Arnavon's 1936 School for Wives, Roger Planchon's two productions of Tartuffe in the 1960s and 1970s, and Antoine Vitez's Moli re tetralogy of 1978. These productions represent not only some of the best stagings of Moli re in this century, but also key moments in the history of French theater, as each one marks an important development in the ways that plays from the classical period were staged in France. Taken together, these productions constitute an almost century-long exploration of the status and identity of "the classics" in twentieth-century French theater. At the same time, these productions reveal an abiding interest in exploring the ever-shifting understanding of the Grand Si cle, the Golden Age of the seventeenth century, as a value in modern and contemporary French culture.Rereading Moli re examines a range of critical issues: the relationship between director and playwright as manifested in directors' attitudes to the classic text; developments in directors' strategies for adapting the dramaturgy and scenography of the 1660s to the aesthetics of the twentieth century; and developments in directors' responses to the ideologies of "fidelity" and "realism."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0472750615
• ISBN13: 9780472750610
• Release Date: October 2016
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"