La Théâtromanie, a comedy by Pierre de La Montagne. Theater, mimesis and contagion

Scene 1 of Théâtromanie, a two-act verse comedy that debuted in Paris at the Théâtre des Variétés-Amusantes on December 27, 1782, opens on the castle of Florimont, property of a rich bourgeois, amateur de la déclamation, who has installed a private theater in his home and is rehearsing a new play to entertain his friends. The phenomenon of the théâtres de société, directly linked to theatermania, whose most basic meaning designated an obsession with stage practices that characterized the taste of the age, is the context in which the characters of Pierre de la Montagne’s comedy inhabit. Théâtromanie is presented like a "mal épidémique". Theatromanie, rather than being a comedy that speaks about theater, which posits the world of the stage with its methods and its actors at the center of the fiction, is above all a discourse on theater, which both underscores the distinction between identity process and social relationship within a culture of mimesis, and imposes a re-examination of the concepts of representation, theatricality, staging and role.