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Naturalistic

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 Why do think "realism" (as represented by Ibsen and Shaw) becomes the basis for much of modern drama instead of "naturalism" (as defined and advocated for by Zola)? Can you think of any contemporary theatrical productions or plays you would describe as naturalism? Or plays/productions that have elements of naturalism?

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Who is the “System” of acting associated with?

 		
Constantin Stanislavski
 		
Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold
 		
The Beijing Opera

 		
William Shakespeare

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Made way for modern theatre

Mirrored real life

Characters behaved, spoke, and dressed like ordinary people

Subjects included:

Economic injustice

The sexual double standard

Unhappy marriages

Venereal diseases

Religious hypocrisy

Called the audience’s attention to social problems to bring about change

Morality and immorality were relative – not black and white

Complex characters were molded by hereditary and environment

Language was conversational

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Henrik Ibsen

“the founder of modern realism”

Known for psychological insights, mastery of dramatic technique, and symbolism

First plays were romantic dramas

Plays he wrote in his prime were all controversial, realistic social drama

The Pillars of Society (1877)

A Doll’s House (1879)

Hedda Gabler (1891)

Later plays were filled with symbolism and mysticism

“All have common theme: the individual amid conflicting social pressures."

A Doll’s House (1879)

As a woman living in the nineteenth-century, Nora feels imprisoned in her own home, comparing herself to a doll living in a doll’s house. She leaves her husband at the end of the play, slamming the door behind her.

Tackled subjects of economic injustice, the sexual double standard, and unhappy marriages

“Used many traditional elements of the well-made play, including clearly developed exposition, withheld secrets, and theatrical devices such as a letter.”

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George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Was an eccentric man (lived off his mother, was a vegetarian and socialist, published five unsuccessful novels)

In 1895, became a theatre critic and wrote for a magazine

“set a new standard of excellence in dramatic criticism"

Championed realistic plays – condemned commercial plays of the time

Began writing plays to reflects his own views

Looked at social conflicts and philosophical concepts

Extremely witty, engaging, lively, and scandalous

“In 1905, a Brooklyn production of Mrs. Warren’s Profession (prostitution) led to the arrest of the entire cast.”

“realistic comedies-of-manners”

Pygmalion (1914) was most his famous – later adapted into musical My Fair Lady

Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

Wrote short stories to provide for his family and put him through medical school (never practiced)

“Interested in ordinary incidents of middle-class provincial life, and in the outside forces that change people’s lives.”

“His dramatic technique relied on indirect action and character development to create tension.”

The Sea Gull

Uncle Vanya (1899)

The Three Sisters (1900)

The Cherry Orchard (1904)

Produced by the Moscow Art Theatre

Directed by Stanislavski

Berated by Chekhov for neglecting the humor in them

“Perfect examples of modern tragicomedies”

Blend tragedy and comedy

“Part of Chekhov’s genius is his ability to make us see that underneath comedy there is often tragedy.”

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George Bernard Shaw

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Anton Chekhov

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Anti-realistic theatre is any form of theatre which rejects realism. Anti-realism was rooted in symbolism, metaphor, and themes versus straightforward storytelling.

1. Theatre of the Absurd

2. Epic theatre/theatre of alienation (Brecht)

3. Theatre of Cruelty/surrealism (Artaud)

4. Theatre of the Oppressed. It came later, but doesn’t fit in the category of realistic theatre

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August Strindberg (1849-1912)  was the son of a steamship agent and a former waitress and servant. He had and unhappy, insecure childhood, and his youthful unhappiness was a prelude to a troubled adulthood that included frequent episodes of mental illness; but he was able to use these experiences as a basis for his writings.  After some study at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, Strindberg moved to Stockholm and worked as a teacher, librarian, and journalist while revising Master Olaf (1872,) his first play.  When he was 26 he met Siri von Essen, and they married.   Their stormy marriage lasted for 14 years and provided may situations for his novels and plays, especially the dramas The Father (1887) and Miss Julie (1888) In 1884 Strindberg was prosecuted for blasphemy because of the publication of Married, a collection of his stories.  This increased his paranoia and his dislike for Sweden, and as a result he spent much time abroad, particularly in Paris until 1897.  When his second marriage failed in 1894, he went through a period of severe stress and mental instability - often referred to as his "inferno crisis," after Inferno, his auto biography of this time in his life. He then went through a conversion to religious mysticism. His plays written after 1897 were expressionistic, using symbolism and unrealistic shifts in action, and were steeped in his new beliefs. The plays from this period would influence the surrealist movement and, later, theater of the absurd. Some of Strindberg's most experimental and influential plays were written for the Intimate Theater in Stockholm, which he and August Flack ran for a time. His chamber plays, like The Ghost Sonata (1907,) reflected his interest in music, particularly Beethoven, and showed a preoccupation with removing facades to reveal grotesque elements beneath the surface. When Strindberg died in 1912, the Swedish Academy ignored him as they always had, but the Swedish people mourned him as their greatest writer.

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Before realistic drama of the late 1800's , no one had devised a method for living believably onstage. Few individual actors and actresses had achieved it by sheer genius, but no one had developed a system whereby all actors could achieve believability onstage.  Stanislavski pioneered the most successful method for believable acting. We might assume that believable acting would simply be a matter of being natural onstage but Stanislavski discovered that acting realistically onstage is extremely artificial and difficult.  He wrote:

"All of our acts, even the simplest, which are so familiar to us in everyday life, become strained when we appear behind the footlights before a public of a thousand people. That is why it is necessary to correct ourselves and learn again how to walk, sit, or lie down. it is essential to reeducate ourselves to look and see, on the stage, to listen and to hear."

To achieve this "reeducation," Stanislavski said "The actor must first of all believe in everything that takes place onstage, and most of all, he must believe what he himself is doing. And one can believe only in the truth."
Stanislavski studied how people acted in everyday life and how they communicated feelings and emotions; and then he found ways to accomplish the same things onstage. He developed a series of exercises and techniques for the actor, which had the following broad aims.

1. To make the outward behavior of the performer natural and convincing
2. To have the actor or actress convey the goals and objectives of a character.
3. To make the life of the character onstage not only dynamic but also continuous.  Some performers tend to emphasize only the high points of a part; in between, the life of the character stops, in real life, however, people do not stop living.
4. To develop a strong sense of ensemble playing with other performers in a scene

TECHNIQUES:
Relaxation:  When Stanislavski observed the great actors of his day, he noticed how fluid and lifelike their movements were.  They seemed to be in a state of complete freedom and relaxation, letting the behavior of the character come through effortlessly.  He concluded that unwanted tension has to be eliminated and that the performer must at all times attain a state of physical and vocal relaxation.

Concentration and Observation: He also discovered that gifted performers always appeared fully concentrated on some object, person, or event while onstage. Stanislavski referred to the extent or range of concentration as The Circle of Attention, which was was a small tight circle containing the actor and his/her scene partner or a piece of furniture.

Importance of Specifics:  Stanislavski put an emphasis on concrete details.  A performer should never try to act in general, or try to convey a feeling (love, anger, fear) in a vague way.  In life we express emotions in terms of specifics. The performer must create for themselves the specifics of the situation they are put in.  What does the space the event takes place in feel like to you? Is it formal, domestic, public?  What is the temperature like? What has happened in the moment before this scene? What does your character expect to happen next?  All of these questions must be answered in concrete terms.

Inner Truth: Inner Truth deals with the internal or subjective world of characters - their thoughts and emotions. The early phase of this technique took place while he was directing Chekhov plays like The Sea Gull and The Cherry Orchard which have less to do with external action and more to do with internal emotions that are not often verbalized. His main idea on how to achieve a sense of inner truth is called the "Magic If." If is a word that allows us to imagine ourselves in virtually any situation. "IF I were rich..." "IF that person would just disappear..." The word If becomes a trigger that can give us a sense of absolute certainty about imaginary circumstances.

What? Why? How?:  Another important principal is that all action onstage must have a purpose.  The performers attention must always be focused on a series of physical actions liked together by the circumstances of the play.  He determined the actions by asking the questions What? Why? and  How?
Examples:
What? - A letter is opened
Why? - The letter is said to contain damaging information about a character
How? - The letter is opened anxiously or fearfully.

Through Line of a Role:  According to Stanislavski in order to develop continuity in a role the actor must have a Superobjective.  The superobjective asks what, above all else, does the character want or need throughout the play.  Stanislavski urged performers to divide scenes into units/beats and give each unit an objective which all work together to achieve the characters overall objective in the play.

Psychophysical Action: Stanislavski began playing around with various ways of getting in touch with a performers unconscious.  He began to look at more purposeful action, or what he called psychophysical action.  Rather that seeing emotions leading to actions Stanislavski came to believe that purposeful action, used to fulfill the character's main goals was the most direct route to emotions.  When an action is performed as a result of the given circumstances, in order to initiate change, emotion will follow.

Stanislavski's influence on modern theater cannot be overstated.  Most actors in the United States are trained with some variation on the Stanislavskian system.

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Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern international theatre. Meyerhold’s career began as an actor performing roles in Constantin Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre productions at the beginning of the 20th century.
He left the Moscow Art Theatre in 1902 because he wanted to direct plays.
He believed in a presentational style of acting, as opposed to Stanislavski’s representational style of performance. His Biomechanics became the principle behind a non-realistic, stylised and movement-centred system of actor training developed between 1913 and 1922.
It contrasted clearly with Stanislavski’s system, in which the actor first created a character from within (internal character creation). The biomechanics instructed the actor to develop a character from without, first employing external movements.
His biomechanics included:

-preparation for an action
-the state of mind and body at the moment of action, and
-the reaction to what follows

The basic skills of a biomechanical actor were:
-precision
-balance
-coordination
-efficiency
-rhythm
-expressiveness
-responsiveness
-playfulness and discipline

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Stanislavski, The Man, The If, The Legend

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Stanislavski, The Man, The If, The Legend

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Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938) was the Co-Founder of the Moscow Art Theater and often directed many of Chekhov's major plays.  Stanislavski had a grandmother who was a french actress, and from an early age he took an interest in theater.  When he was 15 he founded the Alekseev Circle, an amateur acting group consisting of many members of his family.  He later attended a theatrical school and observed many contemporary actors before finally studying with F. P. Komissarzhevsky who was a dramatist and producer.  In 1888 Stanislavski and Komissarzhevsky founded another amateur group named The Society of Art and Literature which became noted for its productions of  Aleksey Tolstoy (Not Leo Tolstoy the War and Peace guy) and Fyodor Dostoevsky.  The Meinigen players visited Russia  and Stanislavski became fascinated with their realistic staging  and  began to model his own productions after theirs.  In 1898 the playwright V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, who was the director of drama school of the Moscow Philharmonic Society, invited Stanislavski to join him in forming a new theater group which they called the Moscow Art Theater.  Nemirovich-D was responsible for literary and administrative duties while Stanislavski handled staging and production.  While working with the Moscow Art Theater, Stanislavski was able to refine his system of realistic acting.  The Moscow Art Theater had early success with productions of Aleksey Tolstoy but it became famous for its production of Checkov's plays.  Most of Stanislavski's work was with realistic drama but he also staged symbolist plays and encouraged the work of other anti-realist theater artists.  He worked with the designer Edward Gordon Craig on an experimental production of Hamlet.  The leaders of Russian Avant-Garde theater of the 1920's all worked Moscow Art Theater during their careers.  After the Russian Revolution, the Moscow Art Theater confined itself strictly to reaism and Stanislavski, though he was no longer acting continued to develop his acting systems until his death in 1938.

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Max Reinhardt and Yevgeny Vakhtangov were eclectic directors know for trying to connect realism and anti-realism.

*Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) began his career as an actor and was a major director in Austrian and German theater.

*He staged King Oedipus and Lysistrata.

*He experimented with adaptations of the Elizabethan stage for Shakespearean and Asian theatrical conventions.

*He staged over 500 productions and managed more than 30 playhouses and companies.

Yevgeny Vakhtangov (1833-1922) was able to combine Stanislavsky's psychological realism with Meyerhold’s theatricality.

*Staged the most significant works for studios in Moscow Art Theater.

*Some best-known productions are The Miracle of Saint Anthony and Carlo Gozzi’s Turandot.

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Between 1875 and 1915 there were many non-realistic experiments opposed to the concept of showing a "slice of life" onstage.  These adventurous dramatists included Strindberg and Ibsen.  The leading anti-realist movement between 1880 and 1910 was called Symbolism.  The major movement was in France but symbolism influenced playwrights and theater artists throughout the world. The well-made play had become predominant in theater of the time and it relied upon suspenseful, often complex plots, the symbolists turned away from literal realism and from dependence of events that mirrored observable life. They sought to replace these plays with depictions of inner life. Symbolist drama had almost no plot action but instead often took the form of lyric drama (poetry like.) It attempted to get at the inexpressible; things that could not be expressed literally but must be suggested through symbols, metaphors, poetry and music.  There was a strong element of mysticism and spirituality.  The chief influences on symbolist playwrights were Richard Wagner and Steohane Mallarme.
Two important playwrights, influenced by symbolism, are Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg.  Both men are remembered for their realistic plays but later in their careers they began to move away from realism.  In plays like The Master Builder Ibsen followed many symbolist tenets.  August Strindberg's later antirealistic dramas have been more influential than Ibsen's.  His two best known symbolist plays are A Dream Play (1902) and The Ghost Sonata (1907.)  As its title indicates, A Dream Play evokes the world of a dream.  We see a christlike goddess journeying through a variety of human situations and experiencing continual suffering.  The scenes are not always casually related but rather are a series of stages in the journey.  Time, place, and characters are transformed suddenly and unexpectedly.  Characters such as the Officer, the Attorney, the Poet, He, She, and the Dean of Philosophy are representatives, not individuals and are referred to by titles or pronouns rather than names.  Symbols abound: a castle grows out of a dunghill; a shawl holds all human suffering; the Attorneys face becomes hideously lined by the torment of those who haven engaged him.  In A Dream Play Strindberg deals with many of the concerns found in his realistic dramas like the destruction of marriage, materialism, and the class struggle, but he dramatizes these concerns.  He says in the play's preface that "... (in) the incoherent but outwardly logical form of dreams anything can occur, everything is possible and everything is probable..."

A Dream Play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8UKEGS6LE0

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Max Reinhardt

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African American Stock Companies: The Lafayette Players (1915-1932)

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African American Stock Companies: The Lafayette Players (1915-1932)

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The Lafayette Players were a dramatic stock company composed entirely of African American actors.  Originally from Harlem, this first of its kind group introduced audiences to the idea that black actors were capable of taking on a variety of roles and displaying a much greater range than previously considered possible.

The concept of a black actors company originated with Anita Bush, the daughter of a Harlem costumer. As a child, she was given the task of delivering wardrobes from her father to professional actors and thus given the opportunity to experience serious theater firsthand. As a young woman, she pursued a career in dancing. That career was cut short when she sustained a back injury from a backstage accident. Frustrated and directionless after a year of recuperation, Bush attended a play at the Lincoln Theater (one of two in Harlem which attracted exclusively black audiences) in 1915. Though the theater had been recently refurbished, it was painfully lacking in attendance due to a dying interest in Vaudeville and the increasing popularity of cinema.

Bush presented the idea of a dramatic theater troupe to the Lincoln Theater’s manager, Marie Downs. She said the idea of black actors presenting more challenging, respectable roles to predominately black audiences would be a great draw. Downs agreed mostly because she hoped Bush’s idea would improve her floundering business. Based on this new opportunity, Bush immediately started searching for actors in Harlem and found a group in two days that would eventually become the core of the “The Bush Players.” They included Charles Gilpin, Carlotta Freeman, Andrew Bishop, and Dooley Wilson (who later found success in Hollywood and is remembered principally for his iconic role as “Sam” in the 1942 classic film, Casablanca.

The stock company opened with its first performance, “The Girl at the Fort,” in November 1915. Over time the group continued to perform challenging plays that could be found on Broadway or in Shakespearean theatre.  Their performances soon garnered them a fair amount of attention from audiences and some theater critics. As they grew more successful, Marie Downs attempted to rename the group “The Marie Downs Players,” to which Bush responded by re-locating them to the other black Harlem theatre, “The Lafayette,” The acting troupe soon adopted the name of the theater as their moniker.

The Lafayette Players became so successful that Bush was invited to form a second theater group in Chicago and another in Philadelphia.  A fourth group was formed in the South. By 1924, these four groups had introduced serious drama to black audiences in twenty five major cities with significant black populations.
The Depression, however, hit the entertainment industry hard and by 1932 the Lafayette Players and the other three companies had disappeared.

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Edward Henry Gordon Craig (born Edward Godwin, 16 January 1872 – 29 July 1966), sometimes known as Gordon Craig, was an English modernist theatre practitioner; he was as an actor, director and scenic designer. Craig was the son of actress Dame Ellen Terry.
Craig spent his childhood backstage at the Lyceum Theatre, where his mother was the leading lady to actor Sir Henry Irving. Craig later wrote a vivid, book-length tribute to Irving. In 1893 Craig married Helen Mary (May) Gibson, with whom he had five children: Philip, Rosemary, Henry, John, and Peter. After that, he had many illegitimate children after that with a lot of different women.
He began his career as an actor, but abandoned it shortly after to become a scenic designer instead. He designed many productions like: Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1900) and George Frideric Handel’s Acis and Galatea (1902), for the Purcell Operatic Society and Henrik Ibsen’s The Vikings (1903), for Terry’s company at the Imperial Theatre, London. In his sets, decor, and costumes for these productions, Craig pushed his revolutionary theories of theatrical design. His productions were marked by simplicity and unity of concept, with the emphasis being placed on the movement of actors and of light. However, his productions ended up being commercial failures.
He traveled all around Europe designing sets so that he could really get his ideas out there.  . While there he wrote his best-known essay, The Art of the Theatre (1905; republished, with articles from The Mask, as On the Art of the Theatre, 1911). He finally arrived in Italy, where he created the sets for a production of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm for Eleonora Duse and settled in Florence. There he invented (1907) the portable folding screens used in set designs for a co-production with Konstantin Stanislavsky of Hamlet at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1912. He took part in some outstanding productions, directing and designing scenery for Ibsen’s The Pretenders (Copenhagen, 1926) and for Macbeth (New York, 1928). He went on to live in France and that's where he wrote essays about his work and memoirs of his life before he died.
He established his School for the Art of the Theatre in 1903, and the Gordon Craig Theatre, built in Stevenage (the town of his birth), was named in his honor in 1975.

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Henry Irving was one of the most famous English actors and theater managers of the late nineteenth century. He was born on Feb 6, 1838 in Somerset and his original name was John Henry Brodribb. His parents were Samuel Brodribb, a salesman, and Mary Behenna, daughter of a Cornish farming family. He began acting in 1856, appearing with various provincial stock companies and in 1871 he found fame in acting in the melodrama “The Bells”. Ellen Terry was his partner, and both became one of the most known stage duos of the century. Irving was a master at using gesture and pantomime to portray characters’ feelings. He was manager of the Lyceum Theater in 1878. For twenty-one years he staged many productions that were known for amazing scenery.  His last performance was in 1905 at the Drury lane theater. Irving died on October 13, 1905 while on tour.

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Yevgeny Yakhtangov

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The best-known Asian theatre to develop during the nineteenth century was Peking opera in China. (Peking is now known as Beijing, and thus this form might be called by the new name of the city; also, Peking opera has recently been called by its Chinese names, jingju and xiqu being two of them. Although mindful of the rationale for each of these, we will use the traditional term Peking opera.) In Peking opera, elements of folk drama and other genres close to ordinary people form the basis of what is truly a popular theatre—one of the most colorful and striking theatrical forms now practiced in Asia. Though it is called opera, Peking opera combines music, theatre, and dance in its own unique way. Because of its origins in popular entertainment, it has little to offer in terms of high literary merit or philosophical speculation. But it preserves long traditions of popular singing, acrobatics, and acting and thus provides insights into the high development of performance techniques in traditional Chinese theatre. The theatre space traditionally used for Peking opera is something like a modern dinner theatre; audience members are seated at tables and eat and drink during performances. In staging, Peking opera stresses symbolism. h e furniture onstage usually consists only of a table and several chairs, but these few items are used with imagination. Depending on how they are arranged or referred to, they may represent a dining hall, a court of justice, or a throne room. h e table may stand for a cloud, a mountain, or any other high place. A tripod on a table, holding incense, indicates a palace. When the script calls for a long journey, the performers walk in a circle about the stage. Peking Opera is still performed regularly even today.

- (Not so) Fun Fact: To be able to be a performer in Peking Opera required years of studying in order to master the acrobatic, dance, and musical skills that it involves. Children would often be sent to schools to learn at a young age, living at the schools until they became professional performers. Farewell My Concubine is a horrifying move that you will have watched if you took Finelli’s intro to theatre class

- Fun Fact #2: They value diction over vocal quality, which is why it is painful to listen to and the reason I do not like it

- Fun Fact #3: If you watch The King and I, the ballet performed by the King's court and Tuptim (The Small House of Uncle Thomas) is inspired by Peking opera and you can hear similar styles in the music and vocal qualities of the performers.

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By the turn of the twentieth century, Ibsen and Chekhov began to influence intellectuals in India (as they also would in China and Japan). In the last part of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century, the theatre that had been influenced by the English and other Europeans was expanding in India. In several major centers—Calcutta, Mumbai, Madras—there was a proliferation of proscenium-arch theatres with the accoutrements of such theatres in the way of audience seating, backstage equipment, and the like. The plays written for these theatres, however, were often in the local regional languages.

Perhaps the greatest of the Indian writers influenced by both modern European theatre and traditional Indian theatre was Rabindranath Tagore, whose many plays, some in modern style and some in a more traditional mode, formed the basis and inspiration for much of the best work that has followed. Tagore is regarded as a classic writer in India, where his plays are frequently produced. However, attempts to stage his elusive, poetic dramas have met with great difficulty in the west.

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The son of a prominent philosopher and social reformer, he received an excellent education, particularly in Hindu philosophy, and began writing verses while still at home; his first important collection of poetry, Manasi, was published in 1890. In 1891, Tagore became the manager of his father’s estates in Shileida and Sayandupur. Through close contact with the villagers, he learned about their lives and problems and also became familiar with traditional Bengali folk drama. Tagore’s plays, written in Bengali, cover a wide variety of styles and subjects. Nature’s Revenge uses the nature imagery of Sanskrit poetry. The King of the Dark Chamber and Rakta Karaui are allegories. In Vis Barjan, Tagore invents a myth to focus on the issue of nonviolence. In Last Cause and the Bachelor’s Club, he writes realistic comedy and satire. Many of Tagore’s later works, such as Chitrangada, are dance dramas, a form he came to favor late in life. His works include song, mime, dance, and lyrical verse and are tinged with mysticism. Because of these elements, English translations of this plays, even those Tagore did himself, seem stilted and unnatural, therefore, his plays are mostly only performed in India. Known internationally for his collections of poetry and short stories and his lectures in Europe, America, and Asia.
- Received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913
- Knighted in 1915, but he relinquished his title in 1919 to protest the Amritsar massacre
- In 1924, he founded Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan as a center for Indian and international culture.

- Died in 1941