This thesis presents a conceptual examination of the modernist director read through Gillian Rose's speculative lenses of the 'broken middle'. Highlighting the significance of speculative philosophy, I explore the meaning of the director as a mediating subjectivity. I demonstrate how a speculative reading of the director can act as a corrective to the received totalitarian, despotic image of the director. I urge for the rehabilitation of the director as a history and as a practice and I propose the emergence of this figure as being the outcome of a complex theatrical articulation entangled with the discipline of philosophy. Combining close readings of philosophical texts by Rose, Plato, Castoriadis, Badiou, Rancière, Laclau and Mouffe, among several other intellectual references in this study, I explore the director as a mode or trope of embodied philosophy. My argument also proposes the director as an Event, in Badiou's definition, and I trace this configuration as already taking place with the 'tragic' paradigm of the Athenian theatre. This Event of the director, I then argue, gets fully inaugurated in modernism as the Event of thought in theatre. I explore how the director acting as a mediator transforms theatre to what Puchner calls 'a theatre of ideas' while simultaneously philosophy becomes itself transformed to a theatre of thought. Chapter 1 outlines the key strands of Rose's thought and sets out the theoretical parameters of my examination. The chapter argues for a speculative reading of the director cross-examined with current positions within theatre historiography. The chapter paves a new understanding of the director, not historically, but conceptually, as a mode of embodied thought. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between the primacy and centrality of the aesthetic paradigm of theatre in philosophy and the role and practice of the poet - or 'chorodidaskalos' - who I consider as an early philosophical figuration of the modern director. I highlight speculative 'aporia' which in Rose indicates a path 'without a path' as the primary modality of thinking philosophically, already at work in tragedy, that renders the modernist director as a theatrical thinker. Chapter 3 puts forward the case of the director's mediating subjectivity by arguing for the Event of the director. I analyse Badiou's philosophy of the Event, making connections to speculative philosophy and illuminating the Evental dimension of this figure. Chapter 4 moves the examination to the Event of the director that I locate in Richard Wagner. My reading explores the philosophical dimension of Wagner as an artist and a thinker by which I rehabilitate his overtly negative image. I do this by reading Left Hegelianism, and anarchist philosophy more broadly, in Wagner's operatic works, writings, and political activism. Chapter 5 examines the 'speculative director' in the aesthetic project of Naturalism and Realism. The chapter includes a published section by which I explore the political mode of the director indirectly, by examining the articulatory discourse in Laclau and Mouffe's definition and the practice of affirmation. Chapter 6 looks at the avant-garde manifesto as a form of meta-language that seeks to actively re-shape theatre and the world as embodied, declaimed philosophy. The chapter repositions the avant-garde's aesthetic preoccupation with failure as a profoundly transformative project rather than as being incomplete. The included published article examines more closely the affinity between the Spartacus Manifesto by Rose Luxemburg (philosophy) and the more politicized forms of the Dada Berlin manifesto art (theatre). Chapter 7 is the concluding chapter by which I argue the case of the director finally having entered the theatre as a philosopher; that is, through Bertolt Brecht.

Les études historiques sur la critique de théâtre se déclinent sous de multiples approches, toutefois cette dernière ne fait que rarement l’objet de questionnements épistémologiques spécifiques. La préposition « Pour », premier mot du titre de ce travail de recherche, manifeste le désir de constituer un ouvrage qui mette en exergue les rouages de la critique, ses structures et ses protocoles en la considérant comme un objet autonome d’enquête historiographique. Nous avons ainsi forgé des outils d’analyse adaptés en lien avec le cadre méthodologique des recherches revuistes. Les revues et journaux des critiques ont constitué l’ossature de notre thèse permettant de dénouer son fil directeur : la réforme du protocole critique texto-centré. Nous avons structuré le plan de la thèse en suivant le fil rouge de cette réforme de ses premières remises en question en 1952, en France et en Italie, lors du discours de Jean Vilar « Le Théâtre et la soupe » et du décès de Benedetto Croce jusqu’à la disparition, respectivement en 1994 et 1996 de Bernard Dort et Giuseppe Bartolucci, initiateurs de la modification de ce protocole par l’introduction du concept d’« écriture scénique » dans le vocabulaire de la critique. Cette recherche repose sur l’analyse de nombreux fonds d’archives conservant périodiques et documents en partie inédits. / Although the studies on the history of theatre review and critique have followed different approaches, the critique itself has rarely narrowed its focus on a specific epistemological question. The word towards, in the title of this research, expresses the desire of designing a first study for analysing the mechanisms of critique, its structure and its protocols, considering it as an independent object for the historiographical analysis. We have therefore developed some appropriate analytical tools, based on the methodology used by researches published in magazines. Critics’ magazines and journals have formed the framework of this thesis, from which its main thread has been unveiled, namely the reform of the text-centred critical protocol. The thesis plan has been structured following this common thread from the first signs of the reform in 1952, found in France and in Italy after the death of Benedetto Croce and Jean Vilar's speech « The theatre and the soup », until Bernard Dort and Giuseppe Bartolucci, who started the modification of the protocol by introducing the concept of « scenic writing » in the vocabulary of criticism, died in 1994 and 1996, respectively. The present research is based on the analysis of many periodicals and archival documents, which are in part unpublished.

Le théâtre populaire, concept chargé des finalités les plus diverses, sʼinstitutionnalise en France à la fin du XIXe siècle, notamment grâce à Romain Rolland, Firmin Gémier, Jacques Copeau, Jean Vilar et Bertolt Brecht. De nombreuses traces de ces réflexions et pratiques se retrouvent dans le théâtre québécois, et tout au long de lʼexistence du Théâtre Populaire du Québec (TPQ) dont ce mémoire veut dégager les principaux éléments de la pensée artistique des directions successives pour les confronter aux programmes établis de la fondation de la compagnie en 1963 jusquʼen 1976. Au cours de cette période qui sʼest avérée déterminante dans le domaine de la production théâtrale au Québec, lʼhistoire de la compagnie met en lumière les paradoxes et les apories du concept de théâtre populaire. / The concept of popular theatre, which is full of the most diverse purposes, becomes institutionalized in France at the end of the XIXth century thanks to, among others, Romain Rolland, Firmin Gemier, Jacques Copeau, Jean Vilar and Bertolt Brecht. Numerous traces of these thoughts and practices are found in Quebec theatre, and throughout the existence of the Theatre Populaire du Quebec (TPQ) of which this report aims to draw the artistic thoughtʼs main elements of the successive directions, to then confront them with the established programs, that from the foundation of the company in 1963 until 1976. During this period, which turned out to be a deciding factor in the field of theatrical production in Quebec, the history of this company enlightens the paradoxes and aporias of the concept of popular theatre.

Le théâtre populaire, concept chargé des finalités les plus diverses, sʼinstitutionnalise en France à la fin du XIXe siècle, notamment grâce à Romain Rolland, Firmin Gémier, Jacques Copeau, Jean Vilar et Bertolt Brecht. De nombreuses traces de ces réflexions et pratiques se retrouvent dans le théâtre québécois, et tout au long de lʼexistence du Théâtre Populaire du Québec (TPQ) dont ce mémoire veut dégager les principaux éléments de la pensée artistique des directions successives pour les confronter aux programmes établis de la fondation de la compagnie en 1963 jusquʼen 1976. Au cours de cette période qui sʼest avérée déterminante dans le domaine de la production théâtrale au Québec, lʼhistoire de la compagnie met en lumière les paradoxes et les apories du concept de théâtre populaire. / The concept of popular theatre, which is full of the most diverse purposes, becomes institutionalized in France at the end of the XIXth century thanks to, among others, Romain Rolland, Firmin Gemier, Jacques Copeau, Jean Vilar and Bertolt Brecht. Numerous traces of these thoughts and practices are found in Quebec theatre, and throughout the existence of the Theatre Populaire du Quebec (TPQ) of which this report aims to draw the artistic thoughtʼs main elements of the successive directions, to then confront them with the established programs, that from the foundation of the company in 1963 until 1976. During this period, which turned out to be a deciding factor in the field of theatrical production in Quebec, the history of this company enlightens the paradoxes and aporias of the concept of popular theatre.

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