Abstract
Because they constitute a fundamentally interdisciplinary field of research, theatre studies have, in the course of their development, challenged the terms of the traditional opposition between text and context, in particular by decentering the focus from text to performance and with greater account taken of the concrete space of the theatre. However, while the study of audience and place, and the aesthetic analysis of text and performance are no longer hierarchical in theatre studies as they are practised today, the place of the audience and the creation of the performance are kept more or less separate. This article aims to question this separation by reflecting on the benefits that can be derived from the notion of milieu applied to the study of theatre. A triple case study, centred on Olympe de Gouges, Koltès and Mette Ingvartsen, chosen for the important differences between them, leads to the formulation of a number of theoretical propositions, the outlines of a ‘dramaturgical ecophysiology’.