Analysing a performance from the viewpoint of what is presented to the public always overlooks the creative work which led to it, the preliminary work which leads up to the performance in question and is made up of explorations, trials and errors, forward and backward moves during which the basis for the final performance is laid down. These moments are witness to the life animating a performance's preparation and explain its development. This means that to study any representation of a performance with a view to analysing it will always remain a single moment in a process which constantly needs to be reaffirmed. This ‘genealogical’ work of preparation; the phases of the staging's constructive work; the research carried out by the actor on his or her text; and the hesitancies, erasures, choices and discoveries generated by a collective work are fundamental to comprehending the representation. They bring its meaning to light and allow us to observe creation at work: creation of the stage setting, of a part, of a character and so on. This procedure is not only indispensable for a better understanding of the performance under study, but also affords a better comprehension of the phases of the creative act itself. Therefore the following essay, an introduction to those that follow, attempts to lay down the basis for defining what should be the tools and corpus for such a field of study.

Making a preliminary dictinction between contemporary theatre and non-contemporary theatre, this article draws the limits of the twofold field of investigation for a theatrical genetics in process. In so doing, it underlines more particularly the inquiries and stakes of the genetic analysis of non-contemporary theatre; that is, the theatre antedating the age of the stage director. Relying on a body of significant documents, it puts forward some possible ways of gathering, preserving and interpreting heterogeneous, uncertain and unstable tracks discarded in the outburst of creations which were then little concerned about their preservation. Lastly, a third part brings out the conditions for possible methods of analysis which, by pairing the genetic study of the text and the stage, try to evade the traps of parcelling, of what is aleatory and mobile, in order to retrieve the theatre's creative processes.

There is precious little documentary evidence regarding the way in which Molière and his company went about preparing themselves for performance in seventeenth-century Paris. After all, rehearsal has always been by definition an intensely private activity. However, in respect of his last play, Le Malade imaginaire, we are more fortunate, for a number of documents exist to illuminate for us if not the rehearsals themselves, at least their circumstances. They are, mostly, mémoires submitted by company suppliers, for lighting and heating and the like. Together with La Grange's Registre, a daily performance calendar, these give us some idea of the complex logistical operation that was the preparation of a comédie-ballet. Comparison of Molière's schedule with that of Préville, his comic counterpart a century later, suggests that – at least as an actor – his time for both study and group preparation was considerably less intense than for the actors of the Comédie-Française a hundred years later.

It was as a branch of ‘genetic criticism’ that a genetics of the theatre first established itself in France as a scientific field of study. Applied to literature alone in the first place, it has since then gradually widened its scope of investigation. Taking Marguerite Duras's first play, Le Square (1956) as an example, this essay aims to demonstrate the main effects of such a disciplinary gestation on the ‘French’ approach to the creative processes as regards the theatre. On the one hand, the existence of well-tried methodological procedures for the study of manuscripts permits both a dynamic re-examination of dramatic works and a criticism of the myths which often surround them. On the other, apprehending the different textual materials and the other kinds of genetic documents produced around the stage according to a methodologically coherent manner reveals the constant interdependence of techniques and arts, and the need to improve models constructed for altogether different studies.

Observation of the rehearsal process provides vivid insights into the dynamically shifting and contingent nature of theatrical meaning-making. Drawing on my experience as an observer of the work process involved in the 2004 production by Brink Productions of Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis, I provide a detailed description of a single work session and an overview of the set design process. Influenced by Clifford Geertz's concept of ‘thick description’, I use these two differently structured aspects of the work process to provide insights into the nature of creative agency in theatre-making process and to argue for the value of ethnographic theory and practice in the emerging field of rehearsal studies.

The aim of this article is to establish a classification for the various written documents produced by assistant directors (before and during the rehearsals, during the run-throughs, from the first performance onwards and so on). It also underlines theatrical work as an autonomous subject of interest. These written documents are useful, and even indispensable according to certain directors. The notes may differ in nature at different times in the production process. In their finality they preserve a record of what is to be redone, a record of the work whose existence the audience does not suspect. Contrary to what one might believe, it is not always the actors who retain the truest memory of their work. The following is based partly on my own experience as assistant director, or intern, to Yves Beaunesne, Denis Marleau, Matthias Langhoff and Robert Wilson.

In French, the term reprise (revival) is polysemous to a high degree. Starting with a short redefinition of the term, our present concern is to make clear its historical evolution and to analyse the contexts in which theatre directors are using it today. Whether the motives for a revival be economic, emotional or aesthetical, the phenomenon becomes more and more important in the perspective of a globalization of the major theatrical productions. From Giorgio Strehler's seven revivals of Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters to the several versions in different languages of one performance by Robert Wilson or Robert Lepage, what is at stake in a revival has changed considerably: this is what this article will attempt to clarify.