American Contemporary Theater in France – ACTiF

A “total social fact” (Mauss), US theater should not be analyzed as “being-for-itself” but as “being-for-others” within a French context (Sartre). Because ACTiF is “problem-focused” (based on the observation that US theater is paradoxically rare in France), “context-specific” (taking into account the various subjectivities at play), and “future-oriented” (augmenting the visibility of US theater), the project meets the definition of action-research that seeks to help practitioners become aware of their practices (Hart & Bond).

ACTiF is structured around four lines of action: the first three workpackages (WP) are sectorial (archive inventory/ mapping out theater relations/translation processes), while the fourth adopts a trans-thematic perspective, to cross-reference the different findings and offer a global picture. Creative projects with social applications run throughout the four WPs, while our wide variety of research profiles, along with the implication of theater professionals and amateurs (students), will ensure a transdisciplinary perspective throughout.

The division of the WPs into separate tasks follows a funnel logic: we start with global conceptual considerations, then go into the practical details of importing theater. Each WP is based on preliminary inquiries (PI) that rely upon traditional methods (archives, interviews, data analysis) implying that the researchers adopt the position of outsiders interpreting the material. The second phase consists in shifting to the position of insiders to gain firsthand knowledge of the actual practices of the various actors involved. In this second phase, our modes of investigation will be participative action (PA) and experimental action (EA) (Lewin). In Resweber’s terms, PA is about “observing” rather than “healing”: researchers immerse themselves in a specific cultural institution to bring to light the concrete functioning of the “super-egoes” in context (Resweber). Immersion into these “living archives” is passive in the case of PA, since researchers do not participate directly in the activities, and active in the case of EA, which involves researchers acting upon the practices by experimenting with new strategies.

Our cultural partners will engage with each phase of inquiry, either providing us with the material to study (PI) or opening their doors for us to immerse ourselves in their worlds (PA, EA). Working together, we will create useful tools for the artistic community to ease the processes of importation. This collaboration with cultural partners is a methodological pillar of ACTiF.

Why does the impact of American theatre on French stages remain limited, in spite of the US’s booming performing arts industry, and leading influence in other fields? The project ACTiF (American Contemporary Theater in France) aims to investigate this unexplored paradox, thus filling a gap in performance studies as well as international cultural policy studies, and building bridges between ongoing research on French and US theatre cultures.
The importation of US theater in France is the result of a selection process whose context, logics and subjectivity must be studied to account for its relative scarcity. ACTiF’s first objective is to circumscribe the episteme of the cultural transfer mechanisms, specifying the various aesthetic, political and diplomatic stakes involved in the circulation of US plays in France from the 1960s to the 2020s. Its second objective is to contribute to the development of tools useful to both academic and artistic communities and general audiences alike, to galvanize French research on transatlantic cultural exchanges, and heighten the visibility of US theater. To reach these goals, ACTiF adopts the conceptual and practical method of action-research bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines and theater practitioners (artists and cultural workers).