Foire, Théâtres de la. Term used to cover a variety of popular entertainments which from the late 16th c. were presented at the two main Parisian fairs, the Foire Saint-Germain in winter and the Foire Saint-Martin in summer. The forains included jugglers, rope-dancers, and so on, but they also produced plays, above all farces; by the late 17th c. these were rivalling the appeal of the official theatres, the Comédie-Française and the Opéra, whose monopoly of sung and spoken theatre they infringed, and who repeatedly had them outlawed. To get around legal bans the forains had recourse to such expedients as puppet plays, monologues, and in particular the pièce à écriteaux, in which a dumbshow was accompanied by placards of vaudevilles for the audience to sing.
Their repertoire was essentially comic (with Arlequin playing a central role); often their productions mocked and parodied the serious theatre of the time. Many of the shows were spectacular, enchantment being an important element; and, above all, music and words were closely interwoven. From 1715 the term opéra-comique begins to be used for the fairground shows; the genre was subsequently developed by Favart, whose Opéra-Comique fused with the Comédie-Italienne in 1762. The théâtres de boulevard were the direct descendents of the théâtres de la foire.
Among the authors who wrote for the Foire were Piron (see his remarkable monologue, Arlequin-Deucalion, 1722) and Lesage, who wrote or collaborated on approximately 100 scripts between 1712 and 1735, and wrote the preface to the 10-vol. Le Théâtre de la foire ou l'Opéra-comique (1721-37).
[Peter France]
