ABSTRACT
The place of madness and suicide inside Virginia Woolf's last book is more unobtrusive than it was in The Waves. Surely Virginia Woolf's project was just a playful evocation of the tranquil images of a daily contentment: 'English country; and a scenic old house, and a terrace where nursemaids walk, and people passing'. All these elements are there in Between the Acts. Between the Acts explores the relation that theatrical representation maintains with this prehistory. It appears that, beyond the return to a central episode of an individual past, the theatre induces the reactivation of an ancient phase of the collective past. The changes that history appears to bring are only superficial modifications which can be effaced in a moment. Voices without identifiable origin are juxtaposed, as are those of the anonymous spectators: Miss La Trobe sends back to the audience something which is a little like an echo of their own reactions as she perceived them from the wings.
