French Administration Confronts Antisemitic Past Through Immersive Theater Based on 1940 Archives — Music

Since 2021, an immersive play has brought to life the verbatim transcript of a December 1940 interministerial meeting where French officials planned the exclusion of Jews from public service under the Vichy regime. The production aims to help current high-ranking administrators examine their historical responsibilities and the dehumanizing nature of bureaucratic machinery.

Since 2021, an immersive theatrical production has reconstructed the verbatim dialogue of a pivotal interministerial meeting held on December 16, 1940, at the Thermal Palace hotel in Vichy. The event focused on implementing the law of October 3 regarding the status of Jews, specifically preparing measures to exclude them from the French civil service just three days before the legislation took effect.

During the meeting, Julienne Laveissière, representing the State Secretariat for Industrial Production and Labor, made a seemingly innocuous request for a carefully drafted official record. This specific dialogue was preserved because the verbatim transcript was unusually annexed to the meeting minutes. The document remained in the archives of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Council until historian Marc Olivier Baruch discovered it in 1993 while researching his thesis on the French administration under the Vichy regime.

The play, titled "Jouer l'archive, octobre-décembre 1940," was created and directed by Keti Irubetagoyena with students from the National Superior Conservatory of Dramatic Art. The production transforms the archival text into a performance that reveals the cold, dehumanized mechanisms of the Vichy technocratic machine beneath a surface that sometimes resembles vaudeville. While the play has been performed in diverse settings such as middle schools, high schools, and the Shoah Memorial, it has found significant resonance within the state apparatus itself.

The troupe has presented the work to current high officials at the Council of State, the Court of Auditors, and various ministries, forcing them to confront the dilemmas and deviations of their predecessors. Claire Landais, speaking in October 2025 shortly before leaving her post at the General Secretariat of the Government, noted that the performance highlighted the chilling detachment possible within bureaucratic machines that lose their soul. The project serves as a meeting point between theater and history to assist the high administration in examining both its past and its present responsibilities.

Sources: Le Monde Culture.