This work examines the committed theatre that flourished in modern France from 1944 to the mid-1950s. During these years, authors such as Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus, along with other lesser-known dramatists, responded to the issues of their time by contributing a number of tense controversial plays to a distinctive genre of realist theatre. These plays dealt with the ideological, political and moral issues arising from World War II, the Cold War and a series of disastrous colonial wars. The text combines historical contextualization, pointing up the moral and political debate of the theatre of the period, with analysis of specific plays.