Quiz 3 Flashcards
August Comte
(1798-1857)
- -“father of sociology”
- -encouraged the study of nature through precise observation
- important towards emergence of realism
Karl Marx
(1818-1883)
- wrote on class conflict and economics
- important towards emergence of realism
George Brandes
(1842 - 1927)
- Danish literary critic – “literature should be an organ of the great thoughts of liberty and the progress of humanity”
- important towards emergence of realism
Factors that led to the emergence of realism
- Darwin
- August Comte
- Karl Marx
- George Brandes
- big shift in the idea of the purpose of art:
- questioning religious, political, economic beliefs
- questioning man’s place in and responsibility to the world
Realism
- Characters who look and act like real people
- relatable characters, NOT stereotypes or stock characters
- complicated impulses and motivations
- real life speech (not verse))
- still dominant today (20th Century is realism or a reaction against it)
Realism vs. Naturalism
In realism, the stories were shaped, often using the classical Greek dramatic structure
Henrik Ibsen
(1828 - 1906)
- “Father of Realistic, Contemporary Drama”
- A Norwegian who wrote in Danish
- A Doll’s House
- Hedda Gabler
- Ghosts
- The Wild Duck
Anton Chekhov
(1860 - 1904)
- [HS] one of the first great modern ironists” tragic comedy
- Good relationship with The Moscow Art theater and Konstantin Stanislavsky
- The Seagull (1896)
- Uncle Vanya (1899)
- The Three Sisters (1901)
- The Cherry Orchard (1904)
The Seagull
- by Anton Chekhov
- Opened December 17, 1898
- Starred (among others) Konstantin Stanislavski
- Critically acclaimed, so led to more collaborations between Chekov and Stanislavski
– Stanislavsky thought it was a tragedy, but Checkhov thought it was a comedy
Stansislavksy Method Acting
- Conscious and professional approach to acting
- acting can be learnt and create a system, which enables a person to train as an actor step by step.
- an actor with great talent and subtle means and nuances needs more technique than others
- teaches actors how to bring themselves into a natural, alive state on the stage.
Important 19th Century Historical Trends
- Industrial Revolution
- factories
- steam engine => increased mobility
- agrarian to urban societies
- more social mobility and literacy
- rise of the middle class
Minstrel Show
- form of entertainment in the 19th century
- the white people in black face
- comic and sentimental songs, dramatic and farcical skits, jigs and shuffle dances, dialect jokes
- Black troupes in the 1870s
Burlesques
- form of entertainment in the 19th century
- Concert hall, saloon, playhouse varieties
- P.T. Barnum’s museum, then circus
- Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show
- Medicine Shows
Types of Entertainment in the 19th Century
- minstrel shows
- burlesques
- variety
- vaudeville
- circus
Audiences in the 19th century
- more playhouses
- better transportation
- writers of other genres wrote drama
- think like today TV, movies, and rock concerts
19th Century Touring companies
- result of urbanization
- they built international reputations
- local repertory companies and combination companies
Madame Vestris
(1797 - 1856)
- British Actress, opera singer, manager
- Managed Olympic Theater, Covent Garden and Lyceum
- [HS] produced play with the first “Box Set”
- High production standards for sets, costumes, and backstage
Ira Aldridge
(1807 - 1867)
- First African-American actor to become International Superstar
- Preeminent Shakespearean actor of his age
- born in NYC, but left because of Racism
- Toured internationally, especially Europe, and the people loved him
- Memorial plaque to him @ RSC
Edwin Booth
(1833 - 1893)
- Most famous American actor of the 19th century
- Toured nationally and internationally, most famous as HAMLET
- also a theater manager
- founded The Players Club
Sarah Bernhardt
(1844 - 1923)
- Most famous actress of the 19th century
- legendary eccentricities and temperament (aka a diva)
- Master of stage technique
- Golden voice
- Also a theater manager, sculptor, and poetry/play writer
Edmund Kean
(1789 - 1833)
- Mercurial, romantic style
- Shylock, “The Merchant of Venice”
- Turbulent, energized portraits of Shakespeare’s villains and tragic heroes
- Highly emotional transitions, explosive highs and lows
Charles Kean
(1811 - 1868)
- Managed the Princess Theater
- Artistic unity of scenery and lighting based on extensive historical research for each play
Francois Delsarte
(1811 - 1871)
- A ‘scientific’ approach to acting
- Pre-established gestures and body movements
- vocal inflections
The role of Actor-Managers and Playwright-Managers
- Unified stage picture
- more rehearsal time
- more attention to production details
- basically production managers?
Romanticism
19th century drama form
- inflluenced by “storm and stress”
- rejection of neoclassical (and all) rules
- Episodic and epic
- no purity of genre
- supernatural elements
- social outcast hero
Melodrama
19th century dramatic form
- most popular form of drama in 19th century
- “Song drama” or “music drama”
- Popularized by French
- Moral battle between good and evil,, where good would triumph and bring morality or justice in society
- Ex. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Hero (Melodrama)
- moral, handsome, and manly.
- acts on intuiting
- in-tune to nature
- believes in justice, but does not always follow the less-important rules of society
Heroine (Melodrama)
- moral in that she is innocent
- - beautiful and courageous, but likely needs saving
Villain (Melodrama)
- dishonest, greedy, vengeful, corrupt, evil character
- - has an accomplice, who is usually rather idiotic and serves as comic relief.
Faithful Servant (Melodrama)
- helps the hero uncover needed information about the villain.
- Comic relief, but is not idiotic
Maidservant (Melodrama)
Flirty, fun, and loyal to the heroine
Well-Made Play (19th century)
- More realistic and socially relevant matter
- - usually a bit more realistic (per the era)
The Box Set
- Stage action all takes places behind the proscenium “fourth wall”
- flats are hinged together to represent a room
Theater of Unrest
- Theater mirrored general unrest of the pre-war times
- Some artists rebelled against commercial theater
- Many rebelled against realism
- New forms of theater
- Plays about specific political concerns
Bertolt Brecht
(1898 - 1956)
- German poet, playwright, director, and Marxist
- Produced and wrote 3 Penny Opera
- Founded the Berliner Ensemble
- a founder of Epic Theater
- Had kids with like 6 different women
Expressionism
- represents a distorted reality to communicate inner feelings
- Dramatic action seen through the eyes of the protagonist
- opposed to society and the family
- characters as representative types
Jurgen Fehling
(1890 - 1968)
Expressionistic Director
– Man and the Masses
Leopold Jessner
(1878 - 1945)
Expressionistic Director
– Changed lighting and costumes to reflect emotions
Futurism
Dramatic Innocation in the Theater of Unrest
- “Synthetic” theater of short, seemingly illogical dramatic pieces
- No separation of performers and audience
- Wanted to incorporate new electronic media, puppetry, and visual arts into theatre
- Idealized war and machines
- originatied in Italy in 1909
Filippo Marinetti
(1876 - 1944)
Founder of the futurist movement
Dada
Dramatic Innovation during Theater of Unrest
- Goal is to confuse and antagonize audiences with Nonsense and the irrational
- Questioned conventional definitions of art; almost anything could be art.
- Artistic reaction to World War I
- originated in Switzerland in 1916
Tristan Tzara
(1896 - 1963)
A founder of Dada
Surrealism
Dramatic Innovation During Theater of Unrest
- Subconscious highest plane of reality; attempted to recreate its workings dramatically
- Dream world, mixing recognizeable events with fantastic happenings
Erwin Piscator
- German Playwright and director,
- -a contemporary of Brecht
- pioneer of epic theater and documentary drama
- plays full of political and social commentary (he had leftist views)
- used projectors and mechanized sets in his productions
Documentary Drama
used preexisting documentary material in order to tell a story, blurring the lines between nonfiction and fiction
Epic Theater
- employ a large narrative, spanning many locations and time frames
- non-linear fractured plots
- usually ends up creating a more critical audience
Verfremdung
The process/effect of alienating your characters from your audience.
The exact opposite of trying to transport / draw you in to a fantastical world.
Gestus
A display of emotion from a character that also displays social commentary, and is usually jarring because it is not an every day reaction
(e.g. Mother Courage’s silent scream)
Existensialism
- existence precedes essence
- man defines his reality
- life is meaningless except I choose ___ meaning
– Individual human beings are understood as having full responsibility for creating the meanings of their own lives
Theater of Cruelty
Language is insufficient to convey emotions or trauma, replace some text with sounds
– Allowed audiences to purge destructive feelings and allowed them to expereince joy that society forces them to repress
Antonin Artaud
Key figure in Theater of Cruelty
wrote “The Theater and its Double” about a man who suffered from mental illness and heroin addiction
- Les Censi
- Spurt of Blood or Jet of Blood
Absurdism
- purpose is to convince us that some abstraction or another is absurd / meaningless
- idea is that much of what happens in life cannot be explained logically
- The play then becomes “the objective correlative of their argument”
Samuel Beckett
(1906 - 1989)
- Dramas deal with dullness of routine
- futility of human action
- inability of humans to communicate
- Waiting for Godot (1953)
- Endgame (1957)
- Krapp’s Last Tape (1958)
- Play (1963)
Eugene Ionesco
(1912 - 1994)
- Concerned with the futility of communication
- Often turned his characters into caricatures and presented comic characters who lose control of their own existence
- The Bald Soprano
- The Lesson
- The Chairs
- The Rhinoceros
The Lesson
1951 play by Eugene Ionesco
– woman is good at addition and multiplication but not subtraction, so her male teacher kills her
The Bald Soprano
1949 play by Eugene Ionesco
- continuous loop of people having parties with pointless banter
- everyone is too frantic trying to say their thing to hear anyone else
Harold Pinter
(1930 - )
Popularized the comedy of menace
- The Dumb-waiter
- The Birthday Party
- The Homecoming
Happenings
Non-structured events that occurred with a minimum of planning and organization
–Idea is that art should not be restricted to museums, galleries, or concert halls
Selective Realism
–A form of realism that heightens certain details of the play while omitting others.
– Set in a realistic world but with unrealistic elements
Arthur Miller
Tennessee Williams
Arthur Miller
(1915 - 2005)
Focuses on failure, guilt, responsibility for one’s own actions, and the effects of society on the individual
- Death of a Salesman (1949)
- The Crucible (1953)
Tennessee Williams
(1911 - 1983)
- Common theme is plight of society’s outcasts
- Lyrical and poetic language and symbolism to create compassion for characters
- The Glass Menagerie (1945)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1954)
Comedy of Menace
Dramatic form popularized by Harold Pinter
- Feels no need to explain why something happens or who a character is
- Characters lack explanation of backgrounds or motives
- Introduction of menacing outside forces
Pinter Pause
A long pause in dialogue that, when played correctly, can be just as eloquent as dialogue
Named after Harold Pinter
(think Obama Pause)
Edward Albee
(1928 - 2016)
- Similar to absurdist writers of Europe
- mixed selective realism and symbolism
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?
- Three Tall Women, The Play about the Baby
Sam Shepard
Plays blend images of the American West, pop, sci fi, and other pop culture
- Buried Child (1978)
- True West (1980)
- A Lie of the Mind (1985)
David Mamet
- plays question humans’ ability to communicate and interact honestly
- naturalistic language and settings
- down and out characters who struggles are easily recognizeable
- The Cryptogram (1994)
- The Anarchist (2012)
- China Doll (2015)
- Oleanna
Lorraine Hansberry
(1930 - 1965)
– first black female writer to win NY Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play of the Year
- A Raisin in the Sun
- To Be Young, Gifted, and Black
Amiri Baraka
(1934 - 2014)
– Allegory and lyricism into black protest drama
- A Good Girl is Hard to Find
- Dante
- Dutchman
August Wilson
(1945 - 2005)
- Richly poetic texts
- The Coldest Day of the Year
- The Homecoming
Federal Theater Project
- created in 1935 as part of the New Deal
- produced wide variety of genres
- suffered from some federal overreach and caused concern for propaganda and censorship
- House Un-American Activities Committee didn’t like them.
John Dryden
1631-1700;
graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge
– Dominant literary figure of the Restoration; poet, tranaslator, playwright, essaysist
– 1668 (Poet Laureate)
–All For Love (1678); a tragedy based on Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra
– Marriage a la Mode (1672) ; comedy
Comedies of Intrigue
Restoration Comedy with daring exploits of romance and adventure, and complicated plots.
– Aphra Behn (1640 - 1689)
Comedies of Manners
Restoration Comedy with focus on the fashions and foibles of the upper class
(influenced by Moiliere)
Rakes
Restoration Comedy trope:
- opportunistic young men, attractive to women and on the prowl;
- selfish, witty, used people
- initiated the action
Fops
Restoration Comedy trope:
- fools, would-be rakes, had a penchant for fashion and silliness
- source of humor, but oblivious to their own silliness
William Congreve
- Love for Love (1695) [biggest hit]
- - The Way of the World (1700) [considered quintessential Restoration Comedy]
