Spectatorship in French Theater Architecture: Stage and Public Space

Theater, as one of the oldest mass media, is often considered as the privileged place to discern the historically variable ways of how social identities are constructed and distributed. The social agency or performativity of theater is mostly studied from its representational aspects, focusing on the relation between what is performed on stage and the recipient of the performance, the spectator. However, it is equally important to include the place of performance as well. The location of the performance within the public space, its specific architecture and decorations, and its spatial structuring of the relation between performers and spectators, all contribute to theater's social agency. The importance of the performance place in the construction and distribution of social identities especially holds true for French eighteenth‐century architectural theory and practice. In a reaction to the dreadful spatial conditions of most French playhouses until deep in the eighteenth century, numerous architects and theorists proposed new ideas concerning theater architecture and the way they structured new modes of spectatorship.