A diverse selection of contemporary plays from a range of established and up-and-coming playwrights based in France, edited and translated by Chris Campbell, Literary Manager of the Royal Court.
‘The four works in this collection illustrate how contemporary French playwriting cannot be confined to any particular tendencies. Notwithstanding, if one might claim – rather reductively – that UK playwriting tends to focus on social, political or economic issues, then French playwriting tends to foreground form. The wholesale rejection of naturalism begun at the turn of the twentieth century by Alfred Jarry and Roger Vitrac, and taken to its extreme by post-war authors including Beckett and Nathalie Sarraute, led to the explosion of classical theatrical notions like narrative coherence, inear action, psychological characterization and comprehensible dialogue, which were replaced by dissolute poetic fragments. Theatre became a laboratory for research into formal possibility. Contemporary plays in French often push the boundaries of conventional theatrical presentation and production, posing new challenges for directors and actors, who are obliged to revise and renew their dramatic practice in order to stage them. So, too, do these plays pose challenges for translators, and Chris Campbell has succeeded with modest mastery in rendering the music of each of the four authors’ individual voices in his translations.’ Dr Clare Finburgh, University of Kent, from her introduction.
