THAR 281 1st Edition Lecture 8 Outline of Last Lecture I Anton Chekhov II Moscow Art Theatre III Konstantin Stanislavski Outline of Current Lecture I Anti Realism a The Dream Play II Maurice Maeterlink III The Ubu Plays IV Meyerhold a Biomechanics Current Lecture Anti Realism I Anti Realism wanted to create a whole new theater The most influential type of theater in this period was Symbolism This was initially started in France but spread through Europe This type of theater meant that everything had a meaning They wanted to capture the mood and quality of a play rather that the plot and characters This period does not get far and is short lived This was because the symbolism was too abstract and not consistent throughout all of the plays August Stringberg who was part of realism too wrote two influential plays called The Dream Play and Miss Julie a The Dream Play moved away from textual theater to the audience having to pay attention to the settings to fully understand the play The idea of materialism is shown here the always wanting of more than what you have There is a lot of symbolism in this play especially dealing with biblical features These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute II III IV Maurice Maeterlink was Belgium and the most successful symbolist He thought theater should present a shadow reflection a projection of symbolic forms This means that what is suggested in the text is more important than the words actually spoken His famous works are the Intruders and The Blind The Ubu Plays were very grotesque plays The most important Ubu Play is the Ubu Roi This play combines Macbeth and Julius Caesar plays The most common symbol was of the modern man to portray him as greedy ugly stupid fat and evil These plays were initially banned and illegal so they were moved to puppet plays which led to obsurdism Meyerhold was an anti realist director He was at once an original member of the Moscow Art Theater but once it grew he left He wanted to free the theater from rules and conventions He was influenced by comedia circuses and English musicals a Meyerhold created a system of acting called Biomechanics This was to train actors as machines Its goal was to reduce tension Relaxation of movements improve balance and increase kinesthetic awareness through etudes These etudes were simple sketches that eventually got more complex This was to increase the preciseness of an actor This method was completely opposite of the Realism method of Stanislavski