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Theatre Go-betweens


Key institutions (AFAA and ONDA in France), central structures in the network promoting plays (Entr'Actes, Théâtrales/l'Association, the Maison Antoine Vitez), crucial partners around the world such as publishers, agents, Verlags, translators, dramatists. And a few other efficient mediators such as the following.

Actors
Because of their prestige, actors are also go-betweens in promoting the flow of plays. Well-known actors can get plays staged which are by foreign playwrights unknown to local audiences. Plays by X. Durringer and F. Veber are currently being staged in Bulgaria, following key productions in Sofia by É.-E. Schmitt, S. Kribus, S. Valletti and Y. Reza, and a project around L. Bellon is in progress. Actors have the same status in Italy, remarked G. Costa, where agents and directors intervene after there has been a genuine "connection between actors and plays".
In France, actors and companies play a similar role in events such as the Contemporaines. D. Girard explained that not enough stage directors and directors of theatres attend the public readings, which are initiated by actors hoping to propose the texts to theatres.

Playwright-Directors
Projects involving playwrights and directors can be the most efficient solutions: A. Hakim and M. Azama went to Chile, É. Lacascade visited R. Peres in Spain. France hosted Italian directors. M.-C. Rivière cited C. Marquerie, F. Ramirez Olivero and A. Llamas as more examples of theatre go-betweens. And what a stroke of luck, she observed, to be able to send a playwright-director like R. Garcia on a mission to France. As the only Spanish playwright who is relatively well-known in France and whose work has been translated into French, he is the ideal mediator for establishing ties between the stage and the quest for new kinds of writing. In Scotland, dramatist E. Wildridge hosted S. Kribus at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and held readings in French of plays by Durringer and Lagarce.
As for AFAA, it mainly calls upon directors to "export" French playwrights. Foreign tours have been made possible by this strategy, with the aim of directly linking the world of the stage and performance with that of playwriting, and of banking on more pro-active promotion through acting and staging - often accompanied by simultaneous translation. Moreover, the Fonds Étant donnés recently created in the United States supports twenty or so artistic projects per year, mainly contemporary French plays staged in English by American companies and theatres, but also tours of French-language productions.