ABSTRACT
Like many other European theater companies emerging in the 1960s, the Theatre du Soleil was created in reaction to what was felt to be a hyper-commercialization of theater and thus a loss of theater's ability to move and instruct audiences. Many youthful artists believed that theater had become, on the whole, just another object of consumption: "Theatre can't make up its mind what it is. It's boring. It has nothing more to say. It's lost the audience". From the 1970s onwards, Ariane Mnouchkine and the Theatre du Soleil have been on board with other activists for a range of social actions and street theater performances. In 1981, the Theatre du Soleil demonstrated for the Polish liberation movement, Solidarity. The long-awaited victory of the French Left in the presidential elections of 1981 helped foreground the cultural importance of Ariane Mnouchkine and the artistic worth of the company.
