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Coriolanus and Stavisky: The Interpenetration of Art and Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Felicia Hardison Londré
Felicia Hardison Londré
Affiliation:
Felicia Londre isProfessor of Theatre at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Dramaturg for Missouri Repertory Theatre.
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Extract

Repeatedly throughout French theatre history two subjects have aroused the passions of the French theatregoer: art and politics. The famous opening-night riots at Le Cid in 1636, Hernani in 1830, and Ubu roi in 1896 all resulted in the overthrow of stale artistic conventions by the new art that each of these works represented. Examples of productions that had political repercussions are abundant – like the historical dramas of Marie-Joseph Chénier that did so much to promote the French Revolution (until his Caius Gracchus in 1792 caused a backlash demonstration), or the 1943 Comédie-Française production of Claudel's mystico-religious Soulier de satin that was gleefully interpreted by the French in German-occupied Paris as ‘resistance theatre’. One noteworthy theatrical event that succeeded in arousing both artistic and political passions was not even a French play – nor was it contemporary, although the most often-repeated comment about it was: ‘It seems to have been written just yesterday.’ This was a production of Shakespeare's Coriolanus at the Comédie-Française in the 1933–4 season, just at the time when the Third Republic was nearly toppled by the public's response to press revelations of the Stavisky scandal.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , Summer 1986 , pp. 119 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1986

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References

Notes

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