Download The Lower Depths - Riverdale Middle School

Theater
Chapter 9:
The Rise of Modern Theatre:
Time for a Movement
Realism
Groundbreaking 19th century theatre
movement that took real, everyday
people and the subjects these people
dealt with in their day-to-day lives and
placed them directly in the spotlight.
The Father of Modern Drama:
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
credited with ushering
Realism into the theatre.
Most well known play: A
Doll’s House (1879); highly
controversial in its time. It
was considered “so
scandalous” that many
theaters refused to do it. It
was also banned from
being produced in England.
Henrik Ibsen
•Ibsen’s plays brought all of society’s
unspoken of ills into the limelight.
•Subject matter of his dramas covered marital
infidelity, disease, pollution, political coverups, and divorce.
•Many critics of the time accused him of
turning the theatre into a sewer.
•Structure of his plays follow a specific format
known as the well made play.
Well Made Play
Originally used by Scribe and Sardou as an
effective structure for comedies and farces,
the well made play has a strong foundation in
the neoclassical rules for the drama. Most
well made plays follow the unities of time,
place, and action. They are very heavily plot
driven and rely heavily upon plot
complications.
Plot Complications
Devices, such as secret letters or papers
that accidentally fall into the wrong hands,
used to further the plot and dramatic
tension of the story.
Realistic Playwrights:
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Henrik Ibsen
Anton Chekhov
Oscar Wilde
John Millington Synge
August Strindberg
Anton
Chekov
Oscar
Wilde
August
Strindberg
John Millington Synge
Moscow Art Theatre
• Groundbreaking
Russian theatre
founded in 1889 by
Constantin Stanislavski
that produced the works
of Anton Chekhov and
also formed a school
and a method for
training actors to be
realistic performers.
Theatrical Terms
• The Fourth Wall: The idea that in a
realistic drama, the audience was like a
voyeur, peering through an invisible wall at
the action within.
• Box Set: Form of stage setting where 3
walls are built to contain the action. The
invisible fourth wall is the proscenium arch
of the stage through which the spectators
observe the play. (See example in next
slide)
Naturalism (1873-1902)
• Theatre movement that suggested
dramatists approach their craft like
scientists, accurately observing, recording,
and examining people.
Emile Zola (1840-1902):
• Chief advocate of Naturalism
Emile Zola
• Believed that the dramatist should expose
social ills so that their causes could be
corrected.
• Naturalists believed that many Realists
were concerned with theatrical
effectiveness than with truth.
• Naturalists called for theater to be “a slice
of Life” exposing everyday life in all of its
ugly details.
Emile Zola
• Unlike realism, naturalism was not
successful in the theatre, possibly due to
its extreme demands.
The Naturalism movement produced few
plays of significance.
• Best known of all Naturalism playwrights
was Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). His most
famous work was The Lower Depths
(1902).
Independent theatre
• as a means of avoiding censorship,
several companies in the late 1800s
decided to start producing plays for only
private, invited audiences. These theatres
were vital to the early survival of realistic
and naturalistic drama.
Theatre Libre
• The first independent theater, founded in
Paris in 1887 by Andre Antoine.
The Emergence of the Director
• Prior to the 19th Century, staging plays was the
last responsibility of the playwright, the head of
the company, or the lead actor.
• Growing need for someone to unify all production
elements, which were becoming more numerous
and more complex.
2 Key figures in the
development and acceptance of
the modern director:
Richard Wagner (pronounced Vag-ner)
(1813-1883)
Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen (18261914)
Richard Wagner
Georg II
Richard Wagner
• Sought to create a “master artwork”
through a fusion of the arts.
• Opposed realism
• Chose stories from German Myths
• Set his drama to music. (Peter and the
Wolf)
• Wanted to audience to be transported
from everyday existence into an idealized,
communal, near religious experience.
Richard Wagner
• Seating as “classless”: a fan shaped
pattern eliminating the box, pit, and gallery
style.
• First to darken auditorium during
performances.
• Strong “unity of production” = all elements
of production filtered through a single
consciousness to achieve a unified artistic
effect.
Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen
• Considered the first director in modern
sense.
• Exerted complete control over all aspects
of production: designed everything
himself.
• Long rehearsal periods
• Convincing crowd scenes, staged with
precision
• Total stage picture worked out carefully
from moment to moment.
Symbolism
• atmospheric, non-realistic theater
movement. Symbolist believed truth was
an abstract quality that could only be
hinted at through symbols.
Symbolism
• First artistic movement to reject
representationalism
• Launched in 1855
• Truth
– beyond objective examination
– cannot be discovered through the 5 senses
– can only be hinted at through a network of
symbols.
Theatrical Conventions
- subjects taken from the past, the realm of the
fancy (fairy tales), & the mysterious present.
- tended to be vague and mysterious
- most important aspect of production was the
mood or atmosphere.
- minimal scenery that lacked detail
- scrim: gauze curtain hung between the audience
and stage; represented the mist or a timeless
void.
Theatrical Conventions
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chose color for mood
text often chanted
actors incorporated unnatural gestures
productions often baffled audiences
symbolist theatre movement ceased by
1900
Significance of Symbolism
• Disrupted practice of using the same
conventions to stage all plays during a
particular period.
• Prior to 20th century, artistic movement
occurred linearly
Significance of Symbolism
• During the 20th century, several artistic
movements occurred simultaneously.
• New movements had its own premises
about nature and truth also its own set of
conventions.
Futurism (1909)
• short lived theatre trend that sought to
replace conventional dramatic forms with
variety theatre which challenged
conventional notions of theatre going.
Promoted the speed and energy of the
new machine age; praised WWI.
Dada (1916)
• a bizarre theater form where logic and
reason were replaced with random,
chance events and illogical behavior. A
typical Dada theatrical event might feature
random, sometimes obscene poetry,
sound poems (people chanting nonverbal
sounds), music & dancing. Highly
experimental; often designed to provoke
the audience. Anti WWI.
Expressionism
• most dominant theater form to come to
prominence during WWI. Expressionist felt
that industry and materialism had warped
human nature and was turning humankind
into machines. Their goal was to reshape
the world reemphasizing what is the best
of the human spirit. Their plays often
skewed reality in order to highlight certain
key elements.
Famous Theatres
• Group Theatre (1931-1941): American
theater and acting skill founded in 1931
by a group of artists inspired by the
teachings of Stanislavski. The Group
Theatre had the greatest impact on acting
and theatre of any dramatic institute
founded in the 20th century.
• Epic Theatre: highly influential theater
movement most closely associated with
Bertolt Brecht. This form used theatre as
a vehicle for social change by making
audiences think more and feel less.
Alienation Techniques
• first employed in Epic Theatre productions,
these techniques were designed to remind
the audience they were watching a play
and not real life.
• Showing the lighting instruments rather
than hid them from the audience.
• Using screens to project words, maps, &
images such as scene titles & locations.
Alienation Techniques
• Actors singing happy-sounding songs with
depressing, serious lyrics
• Actors announcing scenes like boxing
matches and speaking/singing directly to
the audience.
• Keeping musicians in full view of audience
sometimes putting them on stage with
actors.
Theatre of Cruelty
• Surrealist-inspired
theater movement
created by Antonin
Artaud that forced the
audience, like it or
not, to confront itself.