Cormier, LeandraThis dissertation focuses on Malagasy experimental theater written and performed from the 1950s to the 1990s. This timeframe is important because it draws a parallel between the 1947 political revolution, leading to the independence of Madagascar in 1960 and, at the same time, the rebirth of classical (traditional) theatrical production; theatre silenced by the colonizer because it was in the Malagasy language. Ironically, the Malagasy Cultural Revolution also led to the rebirth of literary and theatrical production in the French language, thus establishing the sociocultural and linguistic multivalent qualities of Malagasy society’s collective memory denied by the colonizer and betrayed by the revolution of 1972. During this time, the theatrical oeuvre produced fostered thinking about Malagasy history as a braid of different sociopolitical, cultural, and linguistic pasts.frDissertationFrench literature