Abstract
One need not worry about the Strindberg legacy : it is still very vivid - not the least on stage everywhere in the world, particulary in France. But one part of his theatrical work has been largely neglected in the country of Corneille since the very beginning : his historical dramas. How do you explain such a lack of interest ? However, if the plays where known by a few specialists of scandinavian litterature, the french public had to wait until 1958 in order to be able to read the first translations in french (by C. G. Bjuström and Boris Vian) of one of the historical dramas, Erik XIV, a bit later (1960) Charles XII, Christine and Gustav III, and as late as 1986 to get the whole range of them (13 plays). This allowed a short blooming of productions in the sixties. Most famous was the performance of Erik XIV directed by Jean Vilar on the huge parisian Théâtre National Populaire (TNP) in 1960, where an enormous number of spectators could discover this part of Strindbergs work. All these attempts seemed to express and reflect the movement called « théâtre populaire » with it’s leitmotif « decentralisation » which had been initialized by André Malraux’ Ministery of culture in the early sixties, and was especially open to innovative and foreign repertoire. After a long silence, a very brave attempt was done in the season 2009-10 by a tiny theater in Paris, the « Théâtre du Nord-ouest » to play Strindbergs complete theatrical work, and among this his historical dramas. With its very tight economy, they could only afford to produce two of the historical plays on stage, (Erik XIV and The Nightingale of Wittenberg) but managed to make lectures of all the others.
Published Version
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