The Comédie-Française Registers Project (CFRP) at Harvard (Website Content in English and French)

The Comédie-Française Registers Project (CFRP) centers around the intersection of modern technologies and the humanities, and the historical archives related to the French theatrical heritage tradition. It aims to bring together academic research, artistic creation, and participatory pedagogy.Since its establishment in 1680, the Comédie-Française has produced and preserved daily registers documenting the company’s income and expenses, as well as the plays performed and their casting. The heart of the project comprises these archives, stretching from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, as well as a corpus of theatrical criticism of the company’s productions drawn from the contemporary press. The digitization of these archives, the transcription of selected periodicals, and the creation of a collection of data interrogation interfaces together afford an expansive yet detailed exploration of the everyday history of France’s first theatrical institution. The project’s tools are complemented by pedagogically oriented reflections on academic research, mediation, and artistic creation.