Maslan's work is concerned with three major interrelated themes: the tension between representative and direct democracy, antitheatricalism, and surveillance as a means of guarding and preserving the Republic. These concerns take her study far beyond the specific matter of the theatre of the French Revolution, into matters of central importance in European cultural and political history. The scope and depth of Maslan's work and the original critical insight that she brings makes this an important contribution to the cultural study of early modern France and the history of the French theatre. -- Marvin Carlson, City University of New York A thoughtful and sophisticated study that promises to join an extremely influential body of work on the political culture of the French Revolution which, like Lynn Hunt's Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution and Mona Ozouf's Festivals and the French Revolution, has had a significant impact across disciplinary and chronological boundaries. -- Laura Mason, University of Georgia

In Revolutionary Acts Susan Maslan shows how theater played a pivotal role in Revolutionary France, positioning the theatrical stage as a battleground on which Parisian audiences, actors and playwrights, and political authorities fought to shape the newly emerging democracy. Examining the production, performance, and reception of Parisian plays between 1789 and 1794, Maslan sheds new light on two issues central to the political cultures of Paris and France: the nature of political representation-specifically the problematic relationship between direct democracy and representative democracy-and the correlative problem of transparency and its relation to theatricality. While traditional scholarship emphasizes the influence of newspapers and books on the French Revolution, Maslan's erudite analysis reveals the rich and powerful impact of theater on France's fledgling democracy.