Theatre du Soleil: The Golden Age, First Draft

Extract

The Théâtre du Soleil, the gaudy and tumultuous star in a rising constellation of French leftist theatre troupes, emerged early this spring from eighteen months of work to offer a devoted public some contemporary reflections. The Golden Age, First Draft, staged by director Ariane Mnouchkine in three warehouses of an abandoned arsenal in the woods of Vincennes on the eastern outskirts of Paris, has succeeded in moving the group in an entirely different direction from their previous work, such as the unanimously acclaimed 1789 (see T52). But the current production, unlike its predecessors, is not offered as a finished product or as a concept fully realized. It is rather a public beginning, a point of departure.

Mnouchkine's troupe began attracting wide attention in 1967 with a production of Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen. It has grown increasingly popular with an innovative, pre-Brook production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was performed in a circus hall; with its step into nonliterary, collective creation titled The Clowns; and with the satirically caricatured historical spectacles 1789 and 1793.