Florent Masse is a Professor of the Practice in the Department of French and Italian and the Director of L’Avant-Scène, the French Theater Workshop. Since 2012, he has served as Artistic Director of Seuls en Scène, Princeton French Theater Festival, which he has produced annually in partnership with the Lewis Center for the Arts. He earned a master’s degree in American Literature and Civilization at the University of Lille and trained as an actor and director at Lille National Theater with Daniel Mesguich. Later he pursued his theater studies at Amherst College, MA as a Levy-Despas Fellow and teaching assistant in the Department of French (1999-2001). This is when he created the program of L’Avant-Scène, which originally mixes linguistic and dramatic training. At Princeton since 2001, he has developed and enriched L’Avant-Scène’s curricular and co-curricular programs. He has directed nearly eighty full-length productions of popular and celebrated plays in the French theatrical canon, including plays by Feydeau, Molière, Racine, Corneille, Claudel, Marivaux, Musset, Ionesco, Duras, Lagarce, Mouawad, Pommerat, Reza, Rambert, and NDiaye. He has initiated several enrichment programs abroad for his students and has brought to Princeton a list of prominent French theater artists to perform, direct master classes or teach for a semester. In January 2017, he was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by French Minister of Culture Audrey Azoulay for his attachment to French culture and his action in favor of its promotion in the United States.

Current Projects

Masse will direct Le Iench by Eva Doumbia, Andromaque by Racine, and Le Dindon by Feydeau. In the fall of 2023, Florent Masse will produce the twelfth annual edition of Seuls en Scène, Princeton French Theater Festival in partnership with the Lewis Center for the Arts, Villa Albertine and Festival d'Automne in Paris. This edition of the festival will bring to campus David Lescot, Penda Diouf, Munstrum Théâtre, Fanny de Chaillé, Karima El Kharraze, Clément Hervieu-Léger, Marine Bachelot Nguyen, Wanjiru Kamuyu, Audrey Bonnet, Mathieu Genet, Léo Cohen-Paperman and Julien Campani. In the spring of 2024, he will organize the celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of L'Avant-Scène and direct Le Dindon by Georges Feydeau, which was the program's first play in 2004. Longstanding partners, special guests and alumni will join in the celebrations in late April 2024. In the fall of 2024, Florent Masse will inaugurate a new partnership between Seuls en Scène and Festival d'Avignon.