Download Modern Theater

Modern Theater
Theater experience a turbulent period from the 1940’s through the 1990s. There was an
explosion of experimentation, with new, nonrealistic avant-garde trends developing one after
another. Because these movements are so close to our own lifetime, we are unable to evaluate
their historical significance conclusively. It is clear, however, that established theatrical and
dramatic forms have been question and reworked, and that movements such as absurdism and
environmental theater have forced us to redefine our concept of drama and theater.
Selective Realism
Between 1945 and 1990, there were many playwrights who continued to refine the realistic form
and who created new types of drama based on earlier innovations of Ibsen, Chekov, and Shaw.
One such trend was selective realism. After World War II, two important American writers were
Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Williams’s important realistic plays included A Streetcar
Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Some critics suggest that Miller and Williams write in a form known as selective realism. A type
of realism that heightens certain details of action, scenery, and dialogue while omitting others.
For example, in Miller’s Death of a Salesman, that playwright highlights selected elements of the
world of the main character, Willy Loman - elements which symbolize his down. Moreover,
scenes in Willy’s mind and scenes from the past are interspersed with scenes in the present.
Death of a Salesman is set in a recognizable, realistic world, but the elements have been
carefully chosen to underline thematic concerns. Tennessee Williams combines the theatrical
device of a narrator with realist scenes in his play The Glass Menagerie.
Existentialism and Theater of the Absurd
Existentialism is a philosophy most clearly articulated by two Frenchmen, Jean-Paul Sartre and
Albert Camus, who were reacting, among other things, to World War II. Existentialists believe
that existence has little meaning: that God does not exist; that humanity is alone in an irrational
universe; and that the only significant thing an individual can do is accept responsibility for his
or her own actions. Both Camus and Sartre whose plays illustrating these beliefs.
In the early 1950s, a theatrical approach emerged which combined existentialist philosophy with
revolutionary, avant-garde dramatic form. Although not an organized movement, it was called
Theater of the Absurd by the critic Martin Esslin. Esslin pointed out that playwrights in this
group have certain qualities in common: one is the notion that much of what happens in life is
ridiculous or absurd and cannot be explained logically; another is the belief that this
ridiculousness or absurdity should be reflected in dramatic action. Among the writers taking this
approach are Samual Beckeet, Jean Genet, Edward Albee, Eugene Ionesco and Harold Pinter.
Absurdist playwrights present our existence, including human relations and human language, as
futile and nonsensical. To reinforce this theme, they use seemingly illogical dramatic techniques.
Their plots do not have either traditional climatic structure of episodic structure. Frequently,
nothing seems to happen: the plot moves in a circle, concluding in the same way it began. The
characters are not realistic, and the settings are sometimes strange and unrecognizable. The
language is often telegraphic and sparse; the characters fail to communicate.
Beckett referred to his major work Waiting for Godot as a tragicomedy in two acts, a description
that reveals his tragicomic view of the human condition.
One of the most important aspects of absurd drama is its distrust of language as a means of
communication. Language, it seems to say, has become nothing but a vehicle for
conventionalized, stereotyped, meaningless exchanges. Dr. Culik explains, “Words failed to
express the essence of human experience, not being able to penetrate beyond its surface. The
Theatre of the Absurd constituted first and foremost an onslaught on language, showing it as a
very unreliable and insufficient tool of communication. Absurd drama uses conventionalized
speech, clichés, slogans and technical jargon, which it distorts, parodies and breaks down. By
ridiculing conventionalized and stereotyped speech patterns, the Theatre of the Absurd tries to
make people aware of the possibility of going beyond everyday speech conventions and
communicating more authentically.”
Absurd drama subverts logic. It relishes the unexpected and the logically impossible. According
to Sigmund Freud, there is a feeling of freedom we can enjoy when we are able to abandon the
straitjacket of logic. As Dr. Culik points out, “Rationalist thought, like language, only deals with
the superficial aspects of things. Nonsense, on the other hand, opens up a glimpse of the
infinite.”
The mode of most "absurdist" plays is tragicomedy. As Nell says in Beckett’s Endgame,
"Nothing is funnier than unhappiness ... it's the most comical thing in the world." Esslin cites
William Shakespeare as an influence on this aspect of the "Absurd drama." Shakespeare's
influence is acknowledged directly in the titles of Ionesco's Macbett and Stoppard's Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead. Friedrich Dürrenmatt says in his essay "Problems of the Theatre",
"Comedy alone is suitable for us ... But the tragic is still possible even if pure tragedy is not. We
can achieve the tragic out of comedy. We can bring it forth as a frightening moment, as an abyss
that opens suddenly; indeed, many of Shakespeare's tragedies are already really comedies out of
which the tragic arises."
Though layered with a significant amount of tragedy, the Theatre of the Absurd echoes other
great forms of comedic performance, according to Esslin, from Commedia dell'arte to
Vaudeville. Similarly, Esslin cites early film comedians such as Charlie Chaplin, The Keystone
Cops and Buster Keaton as direct influences (Keaton even starred in Beckett's Film in 1965).
Effects of Theater of the Absurd
Happenings were what the name suggests: unstructured events that occurred with a minimum of
planning and organization.
Multimedia a joining of theater with other arts, particularly dance, film and television
Environmental Theater is a performance which can only be done in a particular place or site.
The physical constraints and characteristics of the site are used as part of the performance. One
of the greatest dramatic opportunities of site-specific theatre is that, by staging its action in
appropriate real-world settings rather than in emulations of those settings within traditional
theatre spaces, it may invest its performances with greater authenticity and audience engagement.
It is believed that much early theatre that took place before the advent of the professional theatre
and the now familiar theatre space could be seen as site-specific. In more recent years, sitespecific theatre has been garnering increasing amounts of mainstream support. The opening
passage of Peter Brook's "The Empty Space" can be linked directly to site-specific work, and
many Universities are including site-specific work in their theatre degree programs, in turn
encouraging an up-surge of site-specific work being performed by new companies.