Comédie-Française

Comédie-Française Exhibition Proposal

We plan to extract ticket sales by ticket type for each individual recorded year. First, we would work with an expert to translate the French content of the documents to English. If expert time is unavailable, we plan to crowdsource the translation of the French content. An expert would be preferable, because the documents are written in an anarchic version of the French language; we could encounter translation discrepancies in consulting with modern French speakers. Once translated, we plan to summarize ticket sales and attendance data by ticket/class tier purchased, for each given year, and present these data alongside the original documents, as well as supplementary historical representations.

We aim to present the data included in the facsimile as a cultural and historic exhibition. Specifically, we consider pricing information as a means of representing the economic composition of the Comédie-Française’s attending populace. Beyond the immediate use value of representing the price and popularity of cultural activities, we recognize that economic data is representative of class structure. Thematically, artists and historians have explored class, its constructions and its manifestations in a variety of ways. We plan to pair our representation of the cultural data with a timeline of related historical events, curating something of a commentary on this particular theme. We plan to include events through the temporal availability of the original documents, in addition to architectural sketches and blueprints of the theater and similar cultural institutions.

We anticipate that our exhibition will be of interest to cultural scholars and historians who might appreciate the opportunity to review cultural attendance by class, over time with this particular theatrical institution. We also anticipate that our exhibition would be of interest to the general public, as a presentation of objects of cultural interest alongside information from this particular period of French history. We imagine that members of the public might take an interest in the kinds of visitors such theaters hosted prior to the French Revolution, and the relationship between cultural institutions and historical events. Our exhibition and presentation of the ticket sales data would seek to address the following questions:

• How did theater attendance change over time?
• What types of individuals attended cultural events hosted by Comédie-Française? How does the composition compare with the composition of French society at the time?
• What is the relationship between theater attendance, cultural activities, and socio-political events leading up to the French Revolution? Can any parallels be drawn?
• What is the relationship between attendance of cultural activities and economic changes?

Translation overlay example

Additional information about the performance

Timeline and cross-cut diagram

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