David Calder
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Theatre in ruins
Street and theatre at the end of Fordism

This chapter interrogates contemporary French street theatre's dominant origin stories, which link the form to the festive protests of May 1968 and to a premodern carnivalesque. After the collapse of the Fordist compromise, street theatre is supposed to have reanimated public space through its transgression of boundaries and its invocation of a pre-industrial past. This chapter brings together street theatre historiography and analysis of key performances by Théâtre de l’Unité and Générik Vapeur to examine the complex and at times contradictory connections between street theatre’s anti-functionalist politics and its anti-theatrical prejudices. Ultimately the chapter argues that street theatre thrives in the remains of the modern industrial city because of its anxious relationship to a mythic urban ideal. This examination of street theatre's complex nostalgia challenges persistent assumptions about street theatre's temporal, spatial, and political work.

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