ABSTRACT

The figure of the director has played a sustained role in the elaboration and investigation of the national imaginaries of Europe’s constituent states, with ‘first-wave’ directors such as Firmin Gémier and later Jean Vilar in France, for example, contributing to the continued theatricalisation of the discourse of modern sovereignty, republican tradition and national prestige with the founding and development of organisations such as the Théâtre National Populaire (Kruger 1992: 26-7). Directors’ energies have not only been harnessed for the benefit of national prestige and legitimation, however. Indeed, the history of theatre in a country such as France is marked by an extensive array of festivals and organisations promoting the internationalisation of French theatre, such as the Théâtre des Nations and the Festival d’Automne, launched in the 1960s and 1970s respectively. These initiatives can be understood to serve as bridges to recent activity destined to reach a more focused international constituency. Highly visible European directors including Italian Giorgio Strehler have noted that in a climate of increasingly self-reflexive globalism directors can and must use theatre as a means of invoking important Europe-wide debates on the issue of European legitimation, what Strehler describes as ‘our common [European] humanistic culture which today is suffering a profound crisis’ (Delgado and Heritage 1996: 268). Such theatrical explorations are complicated by the fact that contemporary Europe is in fact understood to be the ‘New Europe’, a slippery designation that Janelle Reinelt notes with Derridean flair can be considered to be ‘an unfilled signifier, an almostempty term capable of endless mutations and transformations’ (Reinelt 2001: 365).