Introduction Auteurism: New Theatre for Brave New Worlds

Abstract

In 1960, Eugene Ionesco likened the avant-garde artist to “an enemy inside a city which he is bent on destroying, against which he rebels.” Ionesco argued that, like any system of government, “an established form of expression is also a form of oppression. The avant-garde man is the opponent of an existing system. He is a critic of, and not an apologist for, what exists now” (45). Since the latter part of the twentieth century, the role of the director as maker, creator, ultimately “author” of the theatre event has been firmly rooted in the practices of the avant-garde stage. In fact, among the most common titles that came to be identified with innovative theatre makers, such as “conceptualist,” “formalist,” “experimental artist,” and “scenic writer,” that of “director-auteur”¹ has been the most apt. Borrowed from French film criticism, the descriptive term auteurism can be applied to the creative process of those directors who adapt/interfere with/ deconstruct the playwright’s original script or construct their own, having developed a unique style, a trademark that characterizes their work. The concept actually emerged in 1948 with French New Wave director and film theorist Alexandre Astruc’s essay “Naissance d’une nouvelle avant-garde: la caméra-i tylo” (“Birth of a new avant-garde: the camera-pen”) in L’Écran Français.