Realism Ibsen Zola and Strindberg Background of Realism Positivism o Put forth by Augueste Comte o Classify all of the sciences by their relative complexity Determined by how helpful a science was to society Super helpful super complex Sociology is the most complex Rise of the working class Scientific advances o Alexander Grambell o Thomas Edison o So many advances that pushes our knowledge of the world Business monopolies o The Robber Barons Realism Seen in France 1853 Seen in every production element o Difference from melodrama o Design writing stories being told are realistic How the way people actually behaved Characters were complex o Environment where they were raised o Heredity who raised them Scandalous o What people didn t like to hear freaked people out o Divorce std s alcoholism o Some plays were banned o Some endings changed Henrik Ibsen Considered the 1st realistic playwright Wrote 25 plays o Hedda Gadler Protagonist Unhappy marriage Shoots herself in the head at end Just found out she s pregnant o A Doll s House Ideology is not the solution but it is the problem o Women protagonist o Advocated for women s rights Constant theme throughout plays o Social problems mainly women Ends with women slamming door and not coming back o Normally a day or 2 so at the end of the conflict Exposition Causation o Cause and effect Internal Motivations o Strong o Acting of a place of psychological honesty Naturalism Idea that theatre should present unedited life on stage Did not last very long o Boring o Animals not good Zola Antoine o Playwriting should become like a scientific method o Plays should experiment society o Had own theatre company which failed o Wanted to realistic plays which were banned o Made his theatre a club and had to buy subscription to get in o Built rooms on his stage o Became head of theatre company in Paris More extreme form of realism o Trapped by environment and heredity could not escape Slice of life Everything practical o Everything on stage was real o Light source were from the play Subscription of tickets Strindberg and Freud Strindberg is a bridge of symbolisms Famous plays o The Father o Miss Julie o Wrote realistic plays that had naturalistic characters but included elements Conflict between men and women inevitable o Made women antagonist but they were EVIL Died of mental illness had bad childhood Freud o Internal unconscious psychological causality Finds way to explain how inter psychology works Subconscious becomes almost more important Id give me nowwww sleep poop eat have sex ego super ego o Text and Subtext Characters mean what they say Realism Stanislavski and Chekhov What the characters don t say But would if they could Not any actual way of acting yet We need psychological honesty on stage and a way to teach acting Russia is still an empire Convergence Stanislavski o Sees Duke of Saxe Mech and falls in love with theatre o Realistic work o Meets ND Nemirovich Danchenko o Super interested in creating new realistic work o Partners with Stan creates MAT Moscow Art Theatre Anton Chekhov o Kinda successful comedy writer o Partnership that changes theatre as we know it o Impacts theatre still today Constantin Stanislavski Background MAT The System o Taught actors how have psychological honesty o How to create character o How to portray that character in a way that is believable o How to do it night after night o Ensemble cohesive group of actors Trust one another Everyone is present listening no one misses a cue pick up the slack o Magic If Question 1 Think of the play and given circumstance Who you are Where you are What is happening If I was in these circumstances how would I behave react o Characters in plays want something 2 Objective goal How you gunna get it o Leads to Emotion 3 Pursing goal Anton Chekhov The Sea Gull o One of the very first productions o Failed when first produced o Got together revamped it huge success put MAT on the map The Cherry Orchard o Family about to lose their house o Lose house The Three Sisters o Deciding to go to Moscow o Some do some dont Uncle Vanya Get reproduced the most from all levels of theatres Based in each characters internal conflict o Internal motivation is very complex All take place in rural Russia Middle class families dealing with change Not technically tragedies but not comedy o Dark comedy Toured Russia and Europe Reactions to Realism 1890 1940 Symbolism Between 1890 1910 Static indirect evocative ceremonial Trying to express the inexpressible Symbols metaphor poetry music Proponents o Maurice Maeterlinck o Lugne Poe Backdrops different color diagonal lines Ubu Roi still performed today mashup of Mac Beth and Julius Caeser stories reflecting the ugliness of society Plays don t have conflict Expressionism Developed in Germany in 1905 as a representation of reality distorted to communicate inner feelings Lasted about 15 years as a distinct Plays have conflict There is action Through art they could do enough to change peoples emotion they could change the external world Dramatic action is seen through eyes of the protagonist Characters have titles not names o Dehumanizes o Father Mother Professor Politically motivated Futurism Dada Idealized war and the developing machine age Originated in Italy 1909 Museum art Plays were very short o Didn t make sense o Didn t work within 4th wall o Directly antagonized the audience members o Puppetry visual art o Influence art Movement About questioning what is art Who gets to say what is and what isn t good art Why can t everything be art Skeptical of a world that could produce WW1 Sanity is the world s true state and expressed it in their art Porcelain urinal is the symbol of Dada Plays short o Don t make sense o Sense of replacing logic and reason with discord and chaos Surrealism Developed out of the Dada movement in 1924 o Post world war I Major proponent the playwright Guillaume Apollinaire o Wanted to create an entire performance event Wanted to combine theatre dancing music light Subconscious is the high point of reality Plays are set in a dream world o Recognizable events but also supernatural fantastic events that are happening in the dream world Theatre of Cruelty Developed by Antonin Artuad in 1930s essays o Associated with the surrealists o Rarely produced plays o Theatre and its Double Book he wrote Overwhelming to the audiences senses o Thought theatre was too bound to literature o Didn t think of scripts as scared o Classical texts should be