Theatre II
Theatre history speed notes
Spanish Golden Era 1550 – 1650
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Spanish Armada, Spanish Inquisition, very Catholic
Secular and religious developed together, but the Church and the monarchy always very
important even in secular
Nobility, honor, love, urban vs rural and rural is better
Lope de Vega, Caleron de la Barca
Corrales
o Outdoors, originally in the inner courtyards of inns
o Surrounded by audience on 3 sides
o Women on stage but audiences segregated
o Floor was usually a stone patio
Fuente Ovejuna the rural town resists evil military guy, lots of raping lots of revenge for honor,
mob kills the bad guy, when King and Queen send in torturers all they will say is the town,
Fuente Ovejuna, did the killing, King and Queen relent, all is well and still loyal to the monarchy
French Neoclassicism, late 1600s
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First since Romans to build permanent theatres
Religious civil wars delayed Renaissance
Academie Francaise – Richelieu
Neoclassicism – “new classics”
o Had to be just like the Greeks
o Climactic structure
o Unities of time, place, and action
o Rationalism is the key to modern thinking – extremes lead you to error, the golden
mean
Racine tragedy, Moliere comedy
Moliere – best of them
o Changed his name as to not embarrass his family
o Died on stage
o Satirized own audience – manners (The Misanthrope), religious hypocrisy (Tartuffe),
greed (The Miser)
Comedy of manners
o women on stage, emphasis on reputation, looser morals, breech roles
o poke fun at the very upper class audience they attracted
o very much about the unities
o wit in dialogue
The Restoration (England) 1660 - 1700
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English Civil War, 1642-1649, Puritan religious war, tortured and beheaded Charles I, Charles II
sent to exile in France
Government called the Commonwealth; eliminate monarchy, set up religious rule, banned
theatre and all other fun things
1660 – Commonwealth overthrown, Charles II comes back to the throne, brings French
influence including to the stage
Comedy of manners –
o part French – women on stage, emphasis on reputation, looser morals, breech roles
o part Elizabethan – subplots, multiple characters and scenes, none of the unities, the
thrust stage
o part Italian – stock characters, names reflecting characteristics, Roman comedy, the
proscenium
actors paid a per show salary, gov’t licensed the theatres
½ stage in front of proscenium, doors either side of the proscenium, perspective painting,
indoors, candles for lights, footlights, limelight
18th century, the 1700s
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More wealth, more middle class morality
Age of Enlightenment – faith in humankind, American & French revolutions
Forms
o Drama – bourgeois morality and sentimentality
o Sentimental comedy – a moral version of comedy of manners (Full House?)
o Laughing comedy – satire, points out how absurd society is
o “Sturm und Drang” – based on Shakespeare, more overwrought, leads to Romanticism
Director – first emerges as an important part of theatre
o Garrick – actor, championed natural style, created the idea of a rehearsal schedule,
actor training, memorization, a reformer
o Goethe - writer and philosopher, dictatorial type, long rehearsals, set rules for stage
movement and vocalization; my hero – set strict expectations for audience behavior,
not a natural style fan
19th century, the 1800s
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Enormous social change
o Industrial revolution
o Darwin & Marx
o Urbanization
o Beginnings of drama for the masses, not just upper and middle class
Astor Place Riot – deadly riot over acting style, 22 killed
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Romanticism
o Rejected neoclassical rules
o Melodramatic, sentimental
o Nature with a capital N
o Individuality
o Atmosphere
Melodrama – literally melody and drama, Romantic roots, Dudley Doright
The Well Made Play
o It wasn’t
o Cookie cuter construction (specific things happen in specific acts, a secret the audience
knows, everything turns out fine with sudden turns of fortune usually because of a
mundane object like a scrap of paper or a glass of water)
Modern 1875 – today
Part 1, 1875 – 1945
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Two categories; Realism and Not realism
Realism
o Back to Darwin and Marx, add Freud; entirely new ways of thinking
o WWI, Bolshevik Revolution, global depressions, totalitarianism
o Reaction: world isn’t about pretty stories and neat endings
o Ordinary, lower class characters, stage directions added, verse dropped, emphasis on
psyche
o 4th wall, realistic sets, authentic costuming
Naturalism
o Outgrowth of realism
o Extra real, about the poor and hungry and oppressed
o Man is not inherently good, man is a “beast’
Stanislovsky
o Moscow Art Theatre
o Method Acting
 Inner justification,
 sense memory,
 realism
Playwrights
o Ibsen
 Norwegian
 A Doll’s House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabbler
 ADH – tyranny of marriage against women;; HG – super bright woman trapped
in gender roles, people die
 Tough choices, no easy way out, individual vs. society
o Stridberg
 Swedish
 The Father, Miss Julie
 Individual vs. society or self
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No painted scenery, fragmented dialogue, no intermission, all for naturalism
Also focused on gender battles but not on the side off women like Ibsen
TF – parents in power battle, use son; MJ – falls in love w/ butler, butler uses
her
Chekhov
 Russian
 The Sea Gull, The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters
 Super realist; fragmented dialogue, contrasts, societies in transition, class
struggle
Part 2, 1945 - ?
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A bomb, Cold War, Middle East, SE Asia, Africa, E Europe
Civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights
Tech explosion
WWII – the bomb, the camps – we are capable of enormous evil
Realism gets a little funky, Not Realism does a backlash
American Selective Realism
o Some parts very, some parts totally not
o Playwrights
 Tennessee Williams – The Glass Menagerie
 Arthur Miller – Death of a Salesman
 Edward Albee – Three Tall Women
Not Realism - Reactions to the immense awfulness of WWII and all of the above
o Existentialism
 Life has no meaning, universe doesn’t care about you, God doesn’t exist, only
you can accept your own responsibility
 Satre – No Exit
o Theatre of the Absurd
 Outgrowth of existentialism
 Life cannot be explained; don’t try
 Communication is meaningless, plot serves no purpose
Playwrights
o Beckett – Waiting for Godot
o Ionesco – The Bald Soprano – 3 langs