Rachilde is the pseudonym of Marguerite Eymery Vallette (1860-1953), one of the few women active in Paris theater in the 1890's. She was a writer with a powerful personality, who made her place at the very center of the Symbolist movement in France, but she is relatively unknown in this country. She wrote over twenty plays that were produced throughout much of Europe. Rachilde was a pioneer of anti-realistic drama -- it was she who first developed the term "absurd" to characterize the new kind of theater that would be "a prextext for a dream." She wrote dramas for the Théâtre d'Art and Théâtre de l'Oeuvre, as well as several novels in the decadent style, which featured the disruption of gender expectations. Her salons at the avant-garde newspaper, Le Mercure de France, attracted international celebrities and young writers such as Alfred Jarry and Colette. In short, Rachilde had a profound influence on the new styles which sparked the beginning of modern theater.
These new translations by Kiki Gounaridou and Frazer Lively, both on faculty at the Department of Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, should be of considerable interest for Gender, Women's, French, Cultural, and Theater Studies departments. Rachilde's work should also appeal to a wider public. Her sexual politics and sardonic humor make her drama more interesting and performable today than the plays of some of her more famous contemporaries.
