Quando il popolo va in scena. Arti, mestieri e professioni nei teatri minori del Settecento

Although, between 17th and 18th Century, popular culture was repressed and submitted to dominant culture in France, minor theatres tended to merge low and high, folk atemporal elements and literary references. The public going to fair theatres was made up by people coming from different classes and this fact encouraged the artists to create comic plays where the two cultures could meet, in a new conception of theatre.This article focuses on the presence of craftsmen, ambulant workers, farm-hands in Parisian fair theatres dramaturgy and performance, during the first half of the 18th Century. These figures are not conceived as decorative elements but they are put at the heart of the plays. There are several ways of combining popular and élite culture, in performances founded on wonder, in parodies of tragedies and operas or by giving new dignity to humble people by underlining the value of art and industrie, in accordance with Diderot’s ideas originating the Encyclopédie, and also by proposing their language and argot as a mean to enrich literary style, as in poissard production