Ariane Mnouchkine

Abstract

Ariane Mnouchkine first became widely known in the years after 1968 as the director of the Théâtre du Soleil, a model of collaborative organisation. Her company has retained its reputation into the late eighties, although she is almost the sole surviving member from before 1968. Her work is as central to the Théâtre du Soleil as Littlewood’s was to Theatre Workshop. Like Littlewood and Planchon, her initial motivation was political as much as artistic, something that is evident in her continued insistence on equality of salaries within the company. Her major contribution to directors’ theatre has been to demonstrate the paradox that the greatest directors are not just those who develop a new stage idiom (though she has done this), but those who best succeed in bringing out the talents of their actors. Like Joan Littlewood, she has decried the all-powerful director, yet has not always resisted the temptation to be dictatorial. Her great distinction is to have developed much further than Littlewood ever did the research into popular acting styles, masks, clowning and acrobatics.