The First Frame: Theatre Space in Enlightenment France (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781107079168)

In the late eighteenth century, a movement to transform France's theatre architecture united the nation. Playwrights, philosophers, and powerful agents including King Louis XV rejected the modified structures that had housed the plays of Racine and Molière, and debated which playhouse form should support the future of French stagecraft. In The First Frame, Pannill Camp argues that these reforms helped to lay down the theoretical and practical foundations of modern theatre space. Examining dramatic theory, architecture, and philosophy, Camp explores how architects, dramatists, and spectators began to see theatre and scientific experimentation as parallel enterprises. During this period of modernisation, physicists began to cite dramatic theory and adopt theatrical staging techniques, while playwrights sought to reveal observable truths of human nature. Camp goes on to show that these reforms had consequences for the way we understand both modern theatrical aesthetics and the production of scientific knowledge in the present day.

Author: Pannill Camp
ISBN-10: 1107079160
ISBN-13: 9781107079168
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 12/04/2014
Pages: 299
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.00w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 08/01/2015