Studies in 20th Century Literature Volume 27 Issue 1 Article 2 1-1-2003 Cocteau au cirque: The Poetics of Parade and "Le Numéro Barbette" Jennifer Forrest Southwest Texas State University Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons, and the French and Francophone Literature Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Forrest, Jennifer (2003) "Cocteau au cirque: The Poetics of Parade and "Le Numéro Barbette" ," Studies in 20th Century Literature: Vol. 27: Iss. 1, Article 2. https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1544 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in 20th Century Literature by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Cocteau au cirque: The Poetics of Parade and "Le Numéro Barbette" Abstract Parade (1917) was a joint effort production with libretto by Jean Cocteau music by Erik Satie, decor, costumes, and curtain by Pablo Picasso, and choreography by Léonide Massine. It was not only Cocteau's first truly original work, but, as Pierre Gobin contends, Parade is central to an understanding of the structures that would inform all of his subsequent work. Equally central, proposes Lydia Crowson, is Cocteau's July 1926 Nouvelle Revue Française article on "Le Numéro Barbette." The essay on the transvestite striptease trapezist Barbette offers a poetics of the theater that will have changed little by the time of his last play, L'Impromptu du Palais Royal.