Writer and actress Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni wrote to fellow author and salon-frequenter Denis Diderot in 1758 to take him to task for failing to consult her before publishing his Discours de la poésie dramatique (1758). If he had done so, she could have explained the practical necessity behind many of the acting techniques he criticized. Diderot betrayed his ignorance of stagecraft, Riccoboni writes, in his critiques of declamation and his recommendation that actors should make stage conversation appear more "natural" by looking at each other rather than out at the audience when they speak. Drawing on her professional expertise, she points out that if actors delivered their lines this way, "only a quarter of the spectators" would be able to hear their words. 1 In his response, Diderot shows he has in fact contemplated the material constraints of contemporary playhouses, whose design he deems ridiculous (10: 437). He contends that rather than have actors adapt to the theaters, theaters should adapt to a more natural style of acting. Anticipating the architectural innovations to be proposed by Charles-Nicolas Cochin, Alexandre de Chaumont, and Pierre Patte in the following decades, Diderot demands "salles mieux construites" (better constructed theaters), capable of carrying voices regardless of the way actors' heads and bodies were turned (10: 441). 2 Considered in light of these remarks, the private or salon performance scenario vaunted in the frame narrative to Diderot's drama Le Fils naturel (1757) appears not only as a revision of the terms of theatrical illusion (as many critics have discussed) but also as a renovation of theatrical acoustics wherein actors and audience members share a small space in which even whispers may be easily heard. 3
