"The People's Theatre" of Jean Giraudoux
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概要
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The first aim of this paper is to discuss "the People's Theatre" of Jean Giraudoux, a French playwright who wrote in the 1930s, by reading his essays on the theater. I will then show that, when compared with the other theories of "the People's Theatre" that were presented under the French Third Republic, Giraudoux's theory was very particuliar. Giraudoux made his debut in the theater in 1928 when his novel Siegfried was adapted for the stage. This play became a great success and Giraudoux consequently made his name as a playwright. After the success of Siegfried, Giraudoux wrote a number of popular plays. Parallel to his playwriting, Giraudoux also wrote several essays about the theater. There are nine essays in all. These essays are on many topics, such as the situation of the theatre in other countries, the dramaturgies of the classic playwrights, and the relationship between film and the theater. The essays are wide-ranging and we should note that in all these essays, there is a question about the relationship between the French Third Republic and the theater. In France, the idea that the theater should be adapted for a democratic society appeared in the form of the "People's Theater" (le théâtre du peuple). It was the philosophers of the eighteenth century, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who first proposed this vision of a new form of theater. In their theories, they insist that the theater after the revolution must refuse the aesthetic of the aristocracy and should be adapted instead for the aesthetic of the people. Meanwhile, the conception of a theater for, and by, the people was further developed by Jules Michelet in the middle of the nineteenth century. However, it was only after the birth of the French Third Republic that a real democracy was born in France, and the intellectual discussion about the idea of a theater for democracy was at its worst. We can consider that Giraudoux's essays about the theater connect with the rise of discussions about "the People's Theater" in the age of the French Third Republic. However, "the People's Theater" of Giraudoux is something very unique when compared to the ideas of the others theorists of this generation because his is a theory of a theater that can destroy the Republic, rather than a theory of a theater that services the Republic.