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Chapter 12. Modern Theatre. Western Influence on World Theatre. Spoken Drama in India China Japan The Arab World Pre-colonial Africa. The Advent of Realism Antecedents. William Fox Talbot (1800-1877) Invented the photographic negative around 1840 Thomas Edison
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Chapter 12 Modern Theatre
Western Influence on World Theatre • Spoken Drama in • India • China • Japan • The Arab World • Pre-colonial Africa
The Advent of RealismAntecedents • William Fox Talbot (1800-1877) • Invented the photographic negative around 1840 • Thomas Edison • Invented the incandescent light bulb in 1879 • Charles Darwin (1809-1882) • Wrote about evolution in The Origin of Species in 1859 • Karl Marx (1818-1883) • Critiqued capitalism and other aspects of the Industrial revolution in Das Kapital in 1867 • Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • Wrote about the complexity of human psychology in The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900 • August Strindberg (1849-1912) • Problem plays
Realism in the Modern Theatre • Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) • Father of Realism • A Doll’s House (1879) • Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) • Moscow Art Theatre • The Seagull (1896) • Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) • The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) • George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) • Pygmalion (1912) • Box Sets and Fourth Walls • Olympic Theatre in London Oscar Wilde
Naturalism in the Theatre • Emile Zola (1840-1902) • Naturalism as a documentary of everyday life • “Slice of life,” or photographic reality • Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) • The Lower Depths (1902) • André Antoine,(1858-1943) • Theatre Libre • Comedies rosses
Avant-garde Theatre • Definition • To be ahead of • To experiment with • To break conventional expectations • To explore new realities
Avant-garde TheatreSymbolism/FuturismImpressionism/Expressionism • Symbolism – emphasized the suggestive and metaphoric over the literal and real • Futurism – glorified power and speed of the Industrial revolution • Impressionism – emphasized the subjectivity of perception over that of objectivity • Expressionism – used subjective theatrical metaphors to create a sense of how a character experiences his or her subjective reality • Elmer Rice’s (1892-1967) The Adding Machine (1923) • Eugene O’Neill’s (1888-1953) The Hairy Ape (1922)
Avant-garde TheatreDadaism and Surrealism • Dadaism – made us of sound poems and nonliteral images to underscore the madness of their perception of the reality of World War I • Surrealism – sought to portray the fantastic images associated with the unconscious mind as a way by which to reveal deeper realities • Theatre of Cruelty • Antonin Artuad (1896-1948) • The Theatre and Its Double (1938)
Avant-Garde TheatreAbsurdism • Absurdism • Fatalist • Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) • Waiting for Godot (1953) • Endgame (1957) • Existentialist • Jean-Paul Sarte (1905-1980) • No Exit (1943) • Hilarious • Eugene Ionesco (1912-1994) • The Bald Soprano (1949) • Rhinoceros (1959)
Avant-Garde TheatreEpic Theatre • Epic Theatre • Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) • Emphasis on the underlining causes for a story rather than the story itself • Alienation effect – distancing the audience from theatrical illusion so they can analyze and discuss the reasons for what is happening to the characters on the stage • Understands that all art is fundamentally political and that the artist and his audience share responsibility for that fact of life • The Three Penny Opera (1928) and Mother Courage and Her Children (1941)
American Theatre 1945- 1960 • Arthur Miller (1915-2005) • Death of a Salesman (1949) • Mixes Realism with Expressionism • Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) • The Glass Menagerie (1945) • Poetic realism • Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) • A Raisin in the Sun (1959) • Employs Realism to dramatize the plight of an African-American family in Chicago in the 1950s
American Theatre in the 1960s • Little Theatre Movement • Subscription audience based theatres that permitted American to see example of the “new stagecraft” artists from Europe and America • Off-Broadway • Staged noncommercial productions of artistically important plays in small theatres • Off-off-Broadway • Staged noncommercial productions that are often experimental in theatres of 99 seats or less • Happenings • Jerzy Grotowski (1933-1999) and the Polish Lab Theatre
Contemporary Theatre:Regional Theatre • Alley Theatre in Houston • First permanent professional regional theatre in the U.S. founded in 1947 by Margo Jones • Others include: • Arena Theatre in Washington, D.C. • Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis • Actors Theatre of Louisville • Mark Taper Forum in Los Angles • Alliance Theatre in Atlanta
Contemporary Theatre:Performance Art • Characteristics • mixes theatre, visual arts, music, dance, gesture and ritual • Rejects traditional elements of drama such as plot, dialogue, characters and setting • Most interested in conveying a state of being • Examples of Performance Artists include: • Laurie Anderson • Tim Miller
Contemporary Theatre:Political and Cultural Theatre • David Henry Hwang (b. 1957) • M. Butterfly (1988) • Caryl Churchill (b. 1938) • Cloud Nine (1979) and Top Girls (1982) • David Mamet • Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Oleanna (1992) • August Wilson (1945-2005) • Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984) to Golf (2005) • Sam Shepard (b. 1943) • Buried Child (1978) and Fool for Love (1982)
Contemporary Theatre:Recent Nobel Prize Winning Playwrights • Wole Soyinka (Nigeria) • Dario Fo (Italy) • Goa Xingjian (China) • Harold Pinter (England)