It has only been in the last few years that the plays of Michel Vinaver have begun to be discovered and produced in Britain. Yet he has been working as a playwright in his native France since 1955, and has become increasingly respected and widely produced there since overcoming a seven-year ‘writer's block’ in 1967. Here, David Bradby's introduction to Vinaver's dramaturgy is followed by a detailed analysis of one of his most recent plays, L'Emission de télévision, and this critical material is complemented by a chronology of Vinaver's career, excerpted statements by and about the writer – including an ‘auto-interview’ of Vinaver by Vinaver – and a bibliography. David Bradby is Professor of Drama and Head of the Department of Drama and Theatre Studies at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London: he has published widely, especially on the French theatre, and his major study, Modern French Drama, 1940–1990, has recently appeared in a revised edition from Cambridge University Press. He is currently working on a study of Vinaver for the University of Michigan Press. Michel Vinaver's own assessment of the present state of French theatre funding was included in NTQ25 (1991).