Audiences and Programs: Rare Illustrated Programs from the Théâtre Libre, the Théâtre d'Art, and the Théâtre L'oeuvre

Abstract

Theatre historians have given surprisingly little attention to theatre playbills and programs as documents of material culture. The modern theatre “magazine” program especially, which began to develop in the 1860s, offers more than primary documents for dates, performers, and scenic artists, visual evidence of a performance, or the dramaturg's notes. For the cultural historian, these are open books, symbolically. Programs of the late twentieth century, packed as they are with advertisements, news of the theatre, photo montages, and litanies of benefactors and “friends,” document that larger performance of which the staged event is but a part, the performance of the imagined community to which, and from which the theatrical event ostensibly speaks.