Revolutionary Acts: Theater, Democracy, and the French Revolution

In Revolutionary Acts Susan Maslan shows how theater played a pivotal role in Revolutionary France, positioning the theatrical stage as a battleground on which Parisian audiences, actors and playwrights, and political authorities fought to shape the newly emerging democracy. Examining the production, performance, and reception of Parisian plays between 1789 and 1794, Maslan sheds new light on two issues central to the political cultures of Paris and France: the nature of political representation-specifically the problematic relationship between direct democracy and representative democracy-and the correlative problem of transparency and its relation to theatricality. While traditional scholarship emphasizes the influence of newspapers and books on the French Revolution, Maslan’s erudite analysis reveals the rich and powerful impact of theater on France’s fledgling democracy.