ABSTRACT
One of the major challenges in teaching classical seventeenth-century French theatre today is to discover contemporary resonances in these texts while respecting their own time and place. Since the ultimate destination of all drama/script is theatre and since recent innovative French theatre directors have written extensively on their works, their stage writing and mises en scene are excellent sources for renewing the classics today. This essay argues for the value of such production materials for any contemporary understanding of the classics and offers examples from stagings of Molière’s Tartuffe and Dom Juan, and of Racine’s Bérénice.
