According to a2zcamerablog, France is a country located in Europe. As in all of Western Europe, the French theater of the Middle Ages was born in the church, or rather it was born when the liturgical drama, first performed in the temple, was transferred to the churchyard and then to the market square, absorbing in this process elements taken from folklore and from the tradition of the minstrels. The control of the representations thus passed from the clergy to the trade guilds and the national language increasingly replaced the Latin one. Episodes, often foolish, taken from everyday life were inserted into the sacred drama and the first comic genres developed, the farce and the sotie, entrusted to groups of jolly good fellows (le sociétés joyeuses) or students (such as the Parisians enfants sans souci). In 1402 the Confrérie de la Passion was formed, a corporation of amateur actors that obtained for a long time the monopoly of the theater in Paris, until in 1548 it was obliged by law to eliminate from its repertoire the dramas of religious subject, too tainted by profane insertions. Thus began the autonomous history of French secular theater, which was inevitably also professional theater. The first companies were born in the province and only at the time of Richelieu did they land permanently in Paris, which became the capital of the theater. The venue for the shows was the Hôtel de Bourgogne, which belonged to the still powerful Confrérie de la Passion and which for some time retained the simultaneous scene structure of the medieval theater. From 1595, however, fair theaters were also legally authorized and, paying a price to the Confrérie, another theatrical building was opened, the Hôtel d’Argent.
Meanwhile they began to arrive from Italy, for longer and longer stays, the companies of art comedians and the court opened up to the actors, paid them, used them for dances and parties. In the middle of the century XVII Paris had three theaters: the Hôtel de Bourgogne, site of the tragedy; the Marais, specialized in showy pièces à machines; the Palais-Royal, where Molière’s company alternated with Italian comedians. The monopoly of the Confrérie ceased in 1680 and was replaced by that of the newborn Comédie-Française, which admitted the Comédie-Italienne as the only alternative, i.e. the Italian companies of art comedians. who settled in France more and more permanently and began to act in French as well. Throughout the eighteenth century the theater in Paris took place only in these locations; the indestructible theaters of the fairs, which were beginning to settle down on the Boulevard du Temple, could accommodate everything, that is, songs, dances and mimic shows, but not the spoken theater. With the emergence of the middle classes there was a turning point in repertoires. The comédie larmoyante, the forerunner of the bourgeois drama, was flanked by tragedy and comedy more and more intrusive.
The monopoly of the Comédie ended with the Revolution, which was also and above all the era of the great allegorical spectacles of the square and of the quérelles between actors loyal to the old regime and supporters of the new. The theatrical panorama of the nineteenth century is very varied. The Comédie became predominantly the custodian of the classical repertoire, while the theaters, which after Haussmann’s eviscerations were called del boulevard, developed new genres: vaudeville and drama for the bourgeoisie, farce and mélo for the proletariat, plus, of course, operetta and opera. The theater, with the exception of the Comédie, no longer lived on the subsidies of power: it had become a commercial enterprise, supported by box office receipts as in part it still is today. The reactions to this situation, to the commercial character of the boulevardier theaterand the conservatism of the Comédie, they made the history of the French scene from 1887 to 1939, qualified by the action of the Théâtre Libre by Antoine, the uvre by Lugné-Poe, the Vieux Colombier by Copeau, the theaters of the Cartel. After the First World War, some important initiatives have greatly changed the national framework: with state subsidies, the Théâtre National Populaire was established; the tiny avant-garde theaters have acquired importance and launched the most interesting repertoire; the province has found autonomy, for centuries a mere incubator of talents destined to blossom in the capital or market for the exploitation of Parisian successes and now a driving force of autonomous theatrical life, thanks to the new structure of the public theater, oriented, since the end of the sixties, towards the decentralization of business. The center dramatiques, which are roughly equivalent to our permanent theaters, the troupes permanentes, based in provincial cities, the maisons de la culture and the centers d’animation culturelle operate in harmony with the new orientation.. The panorama of subsidized national theaters has also changed: the Comédie-Française and the Odéon have been joined by other theaters including the Théâtre de l’Est Parisien, the Théâtre National of Strasbourg, the Théâtre de la Cité of Villeurbanne: quest ‘last since 1972 is the seat of the Théâtre National Populaire.