Comédie-Française, National theater company in 1st arrondissement, France.
Comédie-Française is a national theater company in the first arrondissement of Paris with three performance venues across the city. The main Richelieu hall seats audiences in a tiered historic interior.
Louis XIV founded the theater in 1680 by uniting several Paris theater groups after the death of Molière. The venue moved locations multiple times during the Revolutionary period and only later received its permanent home at the Palais-Royal.
The name comes from the historic term for French-language plays as opposed to Italian performances of that era. The actors work together as a permanent ensemble and preserve classical French performance traditions in their daily work.
Performances take place on different days across all three venues and usually run between two and three hours with an interval. Visitors can wait in the foyer before the show or explore the public areas of the building.
Each actor in the troupe goes through a special admission process and can become a societaire after twenty years of service. These members hold a say in artistic decisions and share the theater's revenue.
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