Transnational networks and gay subjectivity in the theatre of Thomas Ostermeier, Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis

Abstract

ABSTRACT The work of French writers Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis has, through translation, gained an international audience. Thomas Ostermeier has adapted Eribon's Returning to Reims (Retour á Reims, 2017) and Louis' History of Violence (Histoire de la violence, 2018) for the stage allowing the authors' reflections on growing up gay and poor in rural working-class France to transform as they travel across borders. This article will map this transnational literary-theatrical network in relation to Eribon's idea of a “collective minoritarian experience”. It uncovers how Ostermeier and his collaborators adapt these texts for the stage, and how Eribon and Louis are themselves represented as subjects. The article asks how these productions develop a shared theatrical aesthetic to represent a shared queer experience. Focusing on the networks that made these productions possible reveals the potential of transnational collaboration for representing new experiences, as well as the transformations prompted by these collaborations.