Ariane mnouchkine performances
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Ariane Mnouchkine
Judith G. Miller
Routledge Performance Practitioners is a series of introductory guides to the key theatre-makers of the last century. Each volume explains the background to and the work of one of the major influences on twentieth- and twenty-first-century performance.
One of the most important directors of her generation, and one of the only women ever to have attained great director ställning eller tillstånd in France, Ariane Mnouchkine's work fryst vatten in revolt against declamation and text-based theatre. A utopian humanist, attracting actors from almost forty different countries to her company, Le Theatre du Soleil, Mnouchkine nurtures a passionate following. This is the first book to combine:
As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial utforskning before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners are unbeatable value for today's student.
Judith G. Miller fryst vatten Chair and Professor of French and Francophone Theatre in the Depart
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Ariane Mnouchkine
Mnouchkine gathers people around her in order to tell stories of the great crises of civilisation, of long-ago battles and the persecution and desperation of refugees in our own time.
She has directed plays by the Ancient Greek tragedians and Shakespeare, by Molière and Arnold Wesker. Yet the term “director” is inadequate to describe what she does. Ever since her productions together with fellow students at the Sorbonne in the early sixties, she has maintained that theatre is a collaborative and socialist art that must involve all participants – on stage, backstage and in the audience itself.
Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil is the embodiment of this ideal. She founded it in 1964, and it was not long before the troupe of young actors made history. After putting on Wesker’s La Cuisine (The Kitchen) (1967) and the collective improvisation Les Clowns (1969), the company moved to its present location at
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The Théâtre du Soleil is celebrating its fortieth birthday. In 1964, Ariane Mnouchkine, with her fellow-students from university theatre, established a co-operative known as the Théâtre du Soleil (Theatre of the Sun), a name which represented what theatre meant for them. They began their professional activity by performing Arthur Adamov’s adaptation of Gorki’s “Petits Bourgeois” at the Mouffetard Theatre.
Their second production, “Le Capitaine Fracasse”, adapted from Théophile Gautier’s book by one of the troupe’s members, Philippe Léotard, reflected their unique approach within French theatre. This was based on the collective organisation of their work, and also drew on improvisation. However, while all those involved offered suggestions, and the production grew out of everyone’s imagination, the personality of the Théâtre du Soleil appeared to be fundamentally linked to that of Ariane Mnouchkine who led and orchestrated its work.
Twin ambitions motivated the Théâtre du Soleil