In collaboration with the University of Padua, the Institute of Theatre and Opera is hosting a lecture entitled “Edward Gordon Craig and the ‘Drama for Fools’”, to be given by Professor Didier Plassard.
The lecture will deal with Edward Gordon Craig’s series of puppet plays called “Drama for Fools”. Written by the English director and playwright during the First World War, this unusually large project consisted of a total of 365 playlets. Having been left incomplete, the series was recently published in a bilingual book (Edward Gordon Craig, Drama for Fools / Théâtre des fous, edited by Didier Plassard with Marion Chénetier-Alev and Marc Duvillier, IIM / L’Entretemps, 2012). Illustrated by some beautiful drawings, this masterpiece of comedy reveals a previously little-known penchant for humour or even farce in the father of contemporary stage direction. Didier Plassard is a professor of theatre studies at the Paul Valéry University-Montpellier 3. A modern and contemporary theatre scholar, he specializes in puppetry and new technologies applied to the contemporary stage.