Reviewed by:

• Le Théâtre du Soleil: The First Fifty-Five Years by Béatrice Picon-Vallin
• Nancy Jones (bio)

Originally published in French in 2014, Béatrice Picon-Vallin's encyclopedic book about the Théâtre du Soleil outlines the company's first fifty years. Picon-Vallin is the former director of the CNRS, France's center for research in the Performing Arts, and a professor at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Paris, France. This English translation by NYU Professor of French Theatre Judith G. Miller and her team was published in 2021. Containing 323 color illustrations and archival research, it provides a road map to Théâtre du Soleil's innovations, working methodologies, and willingness to continually reinvent itself, in response to current cultural questions. Picon-Vallin situates founder Ariane Mnouchkine at the center of this project but spends equal time reflecting on the company's diversity, originality, and creativity through interviews and images.

Picon-Vallin begins with a description of the company's origin story that hearkens back to ATEP (the Association for Parisian Theatre Students), Ariane Mnouchkine's first theatre group in 1959. After a year of preparation, ATEP's initial offering was a week-long run of the play Genghis Khan, based on the poet Henry Bauchau and performed in the Arènes de Lutèce in the Latin Quarter. Though biographical details of Mnouchkine's life are scarce, her father was a celebrated filmmaker, providing a foundation in both theatre and cinema that would influence her work and the ongoing artistic "adventure" of the company (2). Théâtre du Soleil's first shows established their cooperative policies and their physical, improvisatory working methods, which began with "concrete stage actions, rather than decoding the text" (11). Picon-Vallin details that early creative process, describing the company members' daily creative regime and use of the "text as inspiration" through a variety of exercises (12). Under Mnouchkine's strong ideological leadership the company developed its aesthetic early on, "a freedom from realism and psychological acting, freedom from the everyday, from naturalism" (33). Picon-Vallin describes their style as having the "spirit of the circus, of the fairground aesthetic," when they rejected the traditional Italianate proscenium theatre space and chose instead to rent a space in the Theatre d'Hiver (33). The introduction explains that the company understood that finding their own space was crucial to the type of work they hoped to produce. They eventually discovered an abandoned munitions factory called the Cartoucherie in the Bois de Vincennes, rented it from the city of Paris, and began its transformation to a theatrical space.

Picon-Vallin's book thoroughly details the process and working methods for each of the company's productions and the truly collaborative exploration that [End Page 438] led to each one's astonishing creativity. It was through Mnouchkine's persistent intellectual questioning and curiosity that "the company would inscribe itself … in a long and vast history of theatre, without ever copying, directly borrowing, or cleverly manipulating through deconstruction of hybridization the work of others" (49). As Picon-Vallin describes it, the creation and rehearsal process were intentionally slow, with productions like The Shakespeare Cycle, 1789, and The Golden Age sometimes opening weeks or months after their published start date. Mnouchkine and company were unapologetic in these moments as the work they engaged in required artistic courage, and painstaking detail and accuracy.

Chapter 2 includes a description of the ways in which each production required a complete transformation of the Cartoucherie. Mnouchkine remarked on that process in an interview with Picon-Vallin: "We transform the space for every show, but we never start from zero" (56). Images and detailed explanations reveal the ways in which the company's history is layered into the space itself: "we cut into the floor of the stage with a bulldozer and realized that underneath were layers of … other shows" (56). This depiction provides the reader with an imprint of the palimpsestuous nature of the...

审核人：

• 《太阳剧院：第一个五十五年》比阿特丽斯·皮孔-瓦林 (Béatrice Picon-Vallin)
• 南希·琼斯（生平）

Béatrice Picon-Vallin 关于太阳剧院的百科全书最初于 2014 年以法语出版，概述了该公司的前五十年。Picon-Vallin 是法国表演艺术研究中心 CNRS 的前任主任，也是法国巴黎国立戏剧艺术学院的教授。纽约大学法国戏剧教授朱迪思·G·米勒 (Judith G. Miller) 及其团队的英文译本于 2021 年出版。包含 323 张彩色插图和档案研究，它为太阳剧院的创新、工作方法和不断重塑自我的意愿提供了路线图，回应当前的文化问题。Picon-Vallin 将创始人 Ariane Mnouchkine 置于该项目的中心，但同时花时间反思公司的多样性、独创性、

Picon-Vallin 首先介绍了公司的起源故事，这可以追溯到 ATEP（巴黎戏剧学生协会），这是 Ariane Mnouchkine 于 1959 年成立的第一个剧团。经过一年的准备，ATEP 的最初发行是为期一周的戏剧成吉思汗, 改编自诗人亨利·包肖 (Henry Bauchau)，并在拉丁区的 Arènes de Lutèce 演出。虽然 Mnouchkine 生活的传记细节很少，但她的父亲是一位著名的电影制作人，为戏剧和电影奠定了基础，这将影响她的工作和公司正在进行的艺术“冒险”(2)。Théâtre du Soleil 的第一场演出确立了他们的合作政策和他们身体上的、即兴的工作方法，这些方法从“具体的舞台动作，而不是解码文本”开始 (11)。Picon-Vallin 详细介绍了早期的创作过程，描述了公司成员的日常创作制度和通过各种练习使用“文本作为灵感”(12)。在 Mnouchkine 强大的思想领导下，公司很早就发展了自己的审美，”

Picon-Vallin 的书详细介绍了公司每部作品的流程和工作方法，以及[第 438 页末尾]带来每个人惊人创造力的真正协作探索。正是通过 Mnouchkine 坚持不懈的智力质疑和好奇心，“公司将自己铭记在……漫长而浩瀚的戏剧历史中，而无需复制、直接借用或通过解构混合他人的作品巧妙地操纵他人的作品”(49)。正如 Picon-Vallin 所描述的那样，创作和排练过程是故意放慢的，例如莎士比亚周期，1789 年和黄金时代有时在公布的开始日期后几周或几个月开放。Mnouchkine 和公司在这些时刻毫不道歉，因为他们从事的工作需要艺术勇气、细致入微和准确性。

第 2 章描述了每部作品需要对 Cartoucherie 进行彻底改造的方式。Mnouchkine 在接受 Picon-Vallin 采访时评论了这一过程：“我们为每场演出改造空间，但我们从不从零开始” (56)。图片和详细的解释揭示了公司的历史是如何融入空间本身的：“我们用推土机切开舞台地板，发现下面是……其他节目的层层叠叠”(56)。这种描述为读者提供了...的重写本性质的印记。