Title Stagestruck : the business of theater in eighteenth-century France and its colonies / Lauren R. Clay

Published Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2013

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Description 1 online resource (xvi, 334 pages) : illustrations, maps Series UPCC book collections on Project MUSE. History Contents Introduction : The making of a French theater industry -- Investing in the arts -- Designing the civic playhouse -- The extent and limits of state intervention -- Directors and the business of performing -- The work of acting -- Consumers of culture -- The production of theater in the colonies -- Epilogue : Culture, commerce, and the state Summary This book traces the making of a vibrant French theater industry between the reign of Louis XIV and the French Revolution. During this era, more than eighty provincial and colonial cities celebrated the inauguration of their first public playhouses. These theaters emerged as the most prominent urban cultural institutions in prerevolutionary France, becoming key sites for the articulation and contestation of social, political, and racial relationships. Combining rich description with nuanced analysis based on extensive archival evidence, this book illuminates the wide-ranging consequences of theater's spectacular growth for performers, spectators, and authorities in cities throughout France as well as in the empire's most important Atlantic colony, Saint-Domingue. The author argues that outside Paris, the expansion of theater came about through local initiative, civic engagement, and entrepreneurial investment, rather than through actions or policies undertaken by the royal government and its agents. Reconstructing the business of theatrical production, she brings to light the efforts of a wide array of investors, entrepreneurs, directors, and actors - including women and people of color - who seized the opportunities offered by commercial theater to become important agents of cultural change. Portraying a vital and increasingly consumer-oriented public sphere beyond the capital, this book overturns the long-held notion that cultural change flowed from Paris and the royal court to the provinces and colonies. This work will appeal to historians of Europe and the Atlantic world, particularly those interested in the social and political impact of the consumer revolution and the forging of national and imperial cultural networks. In addition to theater and literary scholars, it will attract the attention of historians and sociologists who study business, labor history, and the emergence of the modern French state Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes In English Print version record Subject Theater and society -- France -- History -- 18th century Theater and society -- West Indies, French -- History -- 18th century Theater -- Economic aspects -- France -- History -- 18th century Theater -- Economic aspects -- West Indies, French -- History -- 18th century Theater management -- France -- History -- 18th century Theater management -- West Indies, French -- History -- 18th century HISTORY -- Europe -- France. PERFORMING ARTS -- Theater -- General. Manners and customs Theater and society Theater -- Economic aspects Theater management Kolonie Theater Französisch Gesellschaft SUBJECT France -- Social life and customs -- 18th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh92005863 West Indies, French -- Social life and customs -- 18th century Subject France Lesser Antilles -- West Indies, French Frankreich Westindien Genre/Form Electronic book History Form Electronic book LC no. 2012032827 ISBN 0801468213 9780801468216

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