Staging France between the World Wars aims to establish the nature and significance of the modernist transformation of French theater between the World Wars, and to elucidate the relationship between aesthetics and the cultural, economic, and political context of the period. Over the course of the 1920s and 30s, as the modernist directors elaborated a theatrical tradition redefined along new lines: more abstract, more fluid, and more open to interpretation, their work was often contested, especially when they addressed the classics of the French theatrical repertory. This study consists...

This book analyzes the rise of the modernist aesthetic in French stagecraft between the world wars. Focusing on interwar productions of the classics, it demonstrates that modernist directors had a significant and lasting impact on the academic canon of theater.