Camp, Pannill. The first frame : theatre space in Enlightenment France

Folger bibliographic ID: 356906
Folger call number: NA6840.F7 C36 2014
Folger holdings ID: 504988

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.--

General notes

Includes bibliographical references (pages 260-280) and index

Contents

Introduction: The "first frame" of Enlightenment theatre space. Theatre space -- Perspective -- Natural philosophy -- Spectators -- The divided scene of theatre space in the neo-classical era. Paris theatre spaces before reform -- The perspective apparatus -- The versatile space of the Jeu de paume -- The theatrical frame in French neo-classical dramatic theory. Mirror plays -- Rationalist and theatrical minor worlds -- Dubos' Lockean formula -- Diderot's first paradox -- Enlightenment spectators and the theatre of experiment. The spectator as epistemological figure -- Experimental physics and its spaces -- Experimental dramaturgy -- Window plays -- Theatre architecture reform and the spectator as sense function. Mid-century critiques -- The spectatorial act -- The geometry of sense -- Optics and stage space in enlightenment theatre design. Epistemologies of visual space -- Models of the eye -- Ocular morphology -- Perspective destabilized -- Epilogue: Modern spectatorial consciousness

Extended title: The first frame : theatre space in Enlightenment France / Pannill Camp, Washington University in St. Louis

Theater architecture Theaters French drama Architecture and society France Theaterbau Bühne Frankreich Teatrar Arkitektur och samhälle

author: Camp, Pannill, 1977-