ABSTRACT

Ever since Barcelona, I have kept asking myself, ‘Where am I at?’— a question evocative of the 1960s, when theory flourished.1 For unfortunately I do not belong to a national minority: I am neither Breton, nor Corsican, nor Basque, nor Catalan, nor even Parisian, and the minority which I feel vaguely obliged to defend-theoreticians and semioticians-has been rather overwhelmed (but who’s complaining?) by a flood of theatre practices, performances and questions of cultural politics. Subsection no. 9, the last of the whole lot, may well insist that ‘theoretical research can contribute something to the development of theatre’; it sounds to me like a gentle provocation and an ironic call to justify theory’s right to life by virtue of the beneficial influence that it cannot but exercise on the development of theatre. In short, I find myself called upon in a friendly way to defend not only theory but also minority2 theory. Thus challenged, and motivated by caution as well as by tactics, I can only begin by affirming that this influence is limited and that theory ought to aspire to the elevated status of an artistic practice. Thus, everything remains to be (re)constructed: a classic situation for a theoretician.