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20
Century Modern
1915-1945
Time of Unrest
 World War I (1915-1918)
 8.5 million deaths
 Russian revolution (1917)
 Establishment of Soviet government
 Inflation and Depression in Europe and America
 Rise of Totalitarianism
 A form of government under which the individual is totally
subservient to the state – dictators
 Adolf Hitler in Germany
 Benito Mussolini in Italy
 Francisco Franco in Spain
 Joseph Stalin in Russia
 Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo in Japan
 Fascism
 Believed in dictatorial government and forcible suppression of
opposition
 Nation and race were more important than the individual
Theatre of Unrest
 Theatre mirrored the general unrest of the world
 Many movements defined by their political, social or
economic ideologies
 Artists rebelling against commercial theatre
 Artists rebelling against realism
 Expressionism
 Futurism
 Dada
 Surrealism
 Theatre of Cruelty
 Epic Theatre
Expressionism
 Movement in art and literature in which the
representation of reality is distorted to
communicate inner feelings
 The goal of Expressionism was to evoke the
subjective responses that the artist has to objects or
events.
 Expressionism did not attempt a realistic portrayal of
the world.
 The artist's response to the environment was so
intense that it affected the form of the art
 Surface elements are distorted or exaggerated by
subjective pressures
 Expressionist painting tended to be vivid and violent,
with jarring images.
Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh
The Scream by Edward Munch
Expressionism in Theatre
 Because we are losing our roots in nature and
agriculture, were losing our soul
 We need to find an artistic way of expressing an inner
state and it has to involve our sense of loss over the
way in which we’ve been damaged and
industrialization
 Often highly subjective – dramatic action as
seen through the eyes of the protagonist and
therefore seems distorted or dreamlike
 Opposed to society and family
 Protagonist journeys through a series of
incidents that are often not casually related
Structure of Expressionism
 Characters are emblematic
 Characters are not realistic characters, but
abstractions, symbolic
 One main character
 A man (a cog, a gear, a wheel, a part of the
industrialized society, one part of the machine)
 Disrupted spiritually
 Most often by a woman who represents spirituality,
morality, virtue
 ***Quest for the Spiritual Core***
 Protagonist is destroyed in the end
 Everything is from the view of the protagonist –
world is skewed
The Hairy Ape by Eugene O’Neill
 The play tells the story of a brutish,
unthinking laborer known as Yank, as
he searches for a sense of belonging in
a world controlled by the rich.
 At first Yank feels secure as he stokes
the engines of an oceanliner, and is
highly confident in his physical power
over the ship's engines. However, when
a weak but rich daughter of an
industrialist in the steel business refers
to him as a "filthy beast," Yank
undergoes a crisis of identity.
 He leaves the ship and wanders into
Manhattan, only to find he does not
belong anywhere; neither with the
socialites on Fifth Avenue, nor with the
labor organizers on the waterfront.
 Finally he is reduced to seeking a
kindred being in the gorilla in the zoo
and dies in the animal's embrace.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)
Futurism (1905-1914)
 The world is changing because of industrialization – the pace is
quicker, more violent, so let’s embrace it
 Celebrate noise, speed, violence, the clanking of machinery
 “We will fight with all our might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish
religion of the past, a religion encouraged by the vicious existence of
museums. We rebel against that spineless worshiping of old canvases,
old statues and old bric-a-brac, against everything which is filthy and
worm-ridden and corroded by time. We consider the habitual contempt
for everything which is young, new and burning with life to be unjust and
even criminal.”
– Umberto Boccioni in Manifesto of Futurist Painters (1910) –
 Every work of art should destroy the past and replace it with speed
and energy and power
 Celebrate masculine energy – blowing things up because it’s COOL!
 Very fast, very loud, an “assault upon the senses” and mock things
from the past, anything to create noise and energy
Dada
 They were opposed to everything – anti-art
 Was based on the principles of deliberate irrationality,
anarchy, and cynicism and the rejection of laws of beauty
and social organization
 Dada sought to fight art with art - For everything that art
stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite
 Where art was concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics
 If art were to have at least an implicit or latent message, Dada strove to
have no meaning — interpretation of Dada is dependent entirely on the
viewer
 If art is to appeal to sensibilities, Dada is to offend
 A Complete and utter rejection or rules, balance, harmony,
logic, politics, responsibility, morality, religion – all systems
have been proved pointless by WWI
 They hoped to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics
 Seen in performance art – happenings – whatever happens,
happens and it becomes works of art
Ms. Franklin’s Dada Play
 Curtain rises to an empty stage. A man enters, pushing
a chalkboard. He wears all white with a stethoscope
around his neck. He looks around and runs his
fingernails down the board. Then he exits.
 He returns pushing a large fish tank that contains a
mannequin. The man begins to dismember the
mannequin, throwing the pieces around the stage. He
takes the arm and runs the mannequin’s hand down the
chalkboard. Out of frustration, he throws it into the
audience.
 He takes the torso of the mannequin and holds the
stethoscope to its “heart.” Polka music is heard. The
man then begins to dance the polka with the torso
around the stage. The music stops abruptly and the
man drops the torso. Curtain.
 Problem with Dada: It has to turn into SOMETHING – turned
into expressionism and surrealism
Bicycle Wheel by
Marcel Duchamp (1913)
Cut with a Kitchen Knife by Hannah
Höch (1919)
Excerpt from a Dada Manifesto
 You are all indicted; stand up! Stand up as you would for the
Marseillaise or God Save the King....
Dada alone does not smell: it is nothing, nothing, nothing.
It is like your hopes: nothing.
like your paradise: nothing.
like your idols: nothing.
like your politicians: nothing.
like your heroes: nothing.
like your artists: nothing.
like your religions: nothing.
Hiss, shout, kick my teeth in, so what? I shall still tell you that you
are half-wits. In three months my friends and I will be selling you our
pictures for a few francs.
- (Manifeste cannibale dada by Francis Picabia, read at the Dada
soirée at the Théâtre de la Maison de l'Oeuvre, Paris, 27 March
1920.) -
Surrealism
 The subconscious was the highest plane of reality and attempted to
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re-create its workings dramatically
Plays set in a dream world, mixing recognizable events with
fantastic happenings
Liberation of the human mind, and subsequent liberation of the
individual and society, can be achieved by exercising the
imaginative faculties of the "unconscious mind" to the attainment of
a dream-like state different from, or ultimately "truer" than, everyday
reality
Surrealists believe that this more truthful reality can bring about
personal, cultural, and social revolution
Theatrical Surrealists declared the inner world of symbol the highest
plane of truth. Their focus was in bringing to dramatic life the
deepest workings of the dream state, boldly melding fantastic
elements within recognizable situations.
Surrealists tried to break the bonds of familiar reality with the
introduction of a theatrical form uninhibited by the restraints of the
ego.
Surrealist Thought
 The subconscious is the real repository of truth
 The need to distinguish between the conscious
and the subconscious led to the exploration of
the conflict between the two in the belief that
truth is most apt to surface when the ego's
"logic" and the superego's "censorship" have
been neutralized.
 In moments of truth, life's contradictions and
paradoxes are transcended.
 Truth and falsehood are aspects of the same thing.
The Persistence of Memory by Salvator
Dali
Epic Theatre
 Bertolt Brecht – Communist/Marxist and believed that all the
problems in the world were caused by private ownership of property
 Marxism – Based on the wish for equality and dislike of social classes
and the difference in wages between factory workers and owners, this
political theory said that the factories and farms should be owned by the
people. Government should be a dictatorship by the Communist Party.
Communism would spread from country to country by revolution. When
all countries were communist then nations and governments and
classes and possessions would not be needed.
 Epic Theatre assumes that the purpose of a play, more than
entertainment or the imitation of reality, is to present ideas and invite
the audience to make judgments on them.
 Characters are not intended to mimic real people, but to represent
opposing sides of an argument, archetypes, or stereotypes.
 The audience should always be aware that it is watching a play, and
should remain at an emotional distance from the action
Epic Theatre Elements
 Entertainment
 Abstract, intellectual, robotic, unrealistic is wrong and
not enjoyable and fun
 Artificial alienation
 Acknowledge at all times the artificiality of the piece;
set should be playful, cartoonish, fun, lighting should
be visible, anything to remind us that we are seeing
an artificial, conscious creation
 Series of competing emotional engagements –
when you feel a normal response, Brecht throws
in an unusual feeling
Epic Theatre Elements
 Music
 Heightens emotional states – easier to communicate
for the actors
 BRECHT DOES NOT DO THIS!
 Death scene with an upbeat tempo
 trying to ruin the conventional mood on purpose to evoke
change
 Historicism
 Should take place in the past, in a time different than
our era, to promote objectivity
 Watching a piece in an unconventional way – makes
the audience ask “Why is this wrong? Why is this not
good?”
Epic Theatre Elements
 Episodic, non-causal
 Each scene for itself, doesn’t lead into each other
 At times, it seems a little random
 Announces scene’s title, labels, captions, so you focus on the
why and not the how
 Gestus/Gestic Acting Style
 Acting that is built upon physicality, specific body language
 Building a character around a physical choice
 Acting in epic theater requires actors to play characters
believably without convincing either the audience or themselves
that they are truly the characters
 Actors often address the audience directly out of character
("breaking the fourth wall") and play multiple roles
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
 During a civil war, the infant son of the
deposed governor is forgotten by his
mother, Natella, in her haste to flee the
new regime with her wardrobe intact. The
child, Michael, is rescued by Grusha, one
of the palace maids, and carried beyond
the mountains for protection. This proves
to be a deed of kindness filled with
enormous risk for Grusha, who is
ultimately charged with kidnapping and
brought back to a court presided over by
Azdak, a corrupt and drunken rascal of a
judge who devises a scheme to decide
who should be awarded custody of the
child; should he return to his actual
mother, who abandoned him, or to his
adopted mother, who loved and protected
him? The judge chooses the selfless
commitment of Grusha acting over the
natural right of Natella, the selfish
biological mother.
Mother Courage and Her Children
 It follows the fortunes of Anna
Fierling, nicknamed "Mother
Courage," —a wily canteen
woman with the Swedish Army
who is determined to make her
living from the war. Over the
course of the play, she loses all
three of her children, Swiss
Cheese, Eilif, and Katrin, to the
same war from which she sought
to profit.
 His work attempts to show the
dreadfulness of war and the idea
that virtues are not rewarded in
corrupt times. He used an epic
structure so that the audience
focuses on the issues being
displayed rather than getting
involved with the characters and
emotions.