Spectatorship and the Real in French Contemporary Theatre

This book explores how avant-garde directors in French theatre play on their audiences’ frustration to generate an encounter with the real. Focusing on the work of directors such as Gisèle Vienne, Jan Lauwers, Rodrigo Garcia, Jan Fabre and Romeo Castellucci, the book looks at how these directors manipulate their audiences to experience a raw perception of materiality and physical bodies on stage, set within narratives of mystery and the uncanny.This approach has led to these directors' work described as 'obscene', 'pretentious', 'demagogic' and 'provocative'. Because of this, the act of spectating and the nature of spectatorship itself becomes complicated and tends to leave French audiences doubting traditional codes and practices.It leads to the directors' work being misjudged and to contradictory discourses between critics, researchers and directors. The book examines how directors implement strategies on stage to trigger such experiences, while evaluating how problematic these strat