ABSTRACT

The bourgeoisie has been in control of the theatre for about 150 years now. First of all, it controls it by the price of land, which rose so sharply in the nineteenth century that, as you know, the workers left the city, resulting in buildings and entire quarters belonging to the bourgeois; the theatres are almost all located in the center of the city. The bourgeoisie controls the theatre by the price of thickets which rose steadily in order to make the theatre a profit-making enterprise. In France it also controls it by centralization, so that in just those cities where contact with a varied audience would be possible, plays do not come or come much later, on tour. Finally, it controls it through the critics. It is an error to contrast the newspaper critic with the public. The critic is the mirror of his public. If he writes nonsense, it is because the public which reads the newspaper will speak nonsense too; therefore, it would be futile to oppose one to the other…

…One deals here with an absolute control, the more because this same bourgeoisie, to scuttle a play, has merely to do one thing-namely, not to come. It is evident then that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie has created a bourgeois theatre. Is this simply dangerous, this introduction of a too particular content, or has this dictatorship destroyed the very foundations of what the theatre should be? This is what we shall attempt to discover.