An actor, citizen of the Enlightenment

Abstract

Having as object of reflection the actor in the French Theater of Lights, this text analyzes the different ideas of Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau regarding the actor's craft in that context. From there, it seeks to extract elements that can contribute to the contemporary aesthetic reflection on the actor's craft and his pedagogical training. The purpose of this reflection is to bring to the fore an attribute of a type of actor proposed from the Lights: citizen. The citizen actor rescues the concept of citizenship from the idea of Greek democracy, which was extremely important in eighteenth-century issues. The concept of citizen was the primary factor for the realization of a new state model. And even more, the actor, as a citizen, will also conquer, in the society in which he works, a more just and egalitarian political space.