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COMEDIE-FRANCAISE REGISTERS PROJECT

http://cfregisters.org

The aim of CFRP is to digitize and make available online the daily administrative registers (box-office, expenditures, and casting) of the Comédie-Française from its establishment by Louis XIV in 1680 until its temporary closing during the French Revolution. CFRP offers unprecedented online access to high-resolution facsimiles of the troupe’s 88,000 register pages, with accompanying advanced search and visualization tools that allow researchers to classify and contrast financial, programming, and casting information for 32,094 nights of theatrical performances in Paris between 1680 and 1793.

By providing the richest digital archive of historical data pertaining to early modern theater in any European country, CFRP opens up many intriguing avenues of inquiry about cultural consumption, performance practices, and theatrical repertory in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France. New understandings of the French neoclassical and Enlightenment stage also trigger pioneering pedagogical methods in theater studies and cultural history, as well as new possibilities for future staging of the repertoire.

CFRP Co-Leaders: Jeffrey Ravel (MIT), Christian Biet (Paris Nanterre), Sylvaine Guyot (Harvard University), Sara Harvey (University of Victoria), Tiphaine Karsenti (Paris Nanterre), Pierre Frantz (Paris Sorbonne) and Agathe Sanjuan (Bibliothèque-Musée of the Comédie-Française)

CFRP is funded by: Florence Gould Foundation; Agence Nationale de la Recherche; MIT Global Studies; Harvard Department of Romance Languages and Literatures; Partner University Fund; Institut Universitaire de France; Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada.

CFRP Recent Events

• National Theaters Across the Channel: Paris/London 1660-1793, org. Sylvaine Guyot & Derek Miller, Radcliffe Exploratory Seminar, Harvard University, May 17-18, 2018.
• Comédie-Française 2.0, org. Sylvaine Guyot & Tiphaine Karsenti, An Annual Graduate Workshop, Harvard University - Paris Nanterre, March 2016, March 2017, Nov. 2017, March 2019.
• La polémique en scène, org. Sylvaine Guyot, Christian Biet & Tiphaine Karsenti, An evening of performance, Le Siège de Calais (dir. S. Guyot) foll. by an adaptation of Voltaire’s Mahomet (dir. Quintett Express), Harvard University, Nov. 10, 2017.
• Economy, Climatology, and Theater in Eighteenth-Century France, org. Jeffrey Ravel, MIT, September 23, 2016.
• Early Modern Theatre Practices and the Digital Archive. The Comédie-Française Registers Project (1680-1793), org. Sylvaine Guyot & Jeffrey Ravel, Harvard University & MIT, May 19-21, 2016.
• Remettre en jeu le passé: Métamorphoses du corpus des Registres de la Comédie-Française 1680-1793 / 2013-2016, org. Christian Biet & Pierre Frantz, Comédie-Française & INHA, Dec. 14-16, 2015.
• Les Registres de la Comédie-Française à l’épreuve de la pratique, org. Christian Biet, NYU, October 14-15, 2014.

CFRP Recent Publications (sel.)

• Early Modern Theater Practices and the Digital Archive, eds Jeffrey Ravel & Sylvaine Guyot, MIT Press, online, 2019.
• Le Répertoire théâtral, théories et pratiques de la scène, ed. Christian Biet, special issue of Littératures classiques, no 96, 2018.
• Le Répertoire aujourd'hui, ed. Christian Biet, Théâtre/Public, no 225, 2017.
• Harvey Sara & Agathe Sanjuan, « Les humanités numériques, dialogue entre la recherche et la documentation : le projet des registres de la Comédie-Française », in Bulletin des bibliothèques de France, July 2016.