Realism/Theatricalism Flashcards
Theatrical Contract
Implied mood, attitude, customs of the theatre. How audience and actors work together.
Different styles take this concept further, and ask audience to believe in different world.
Theatrical Style
Distinctive manner in which a playwright chooses to describe, express, interpret, or present his worldview. Furthers the theatrical contract. Every production is different.
Theatrical Contract Components
- Suspension of Disbelief: Accept the contract
- Presentational (actors acknowledge audience) or Representational (Realism/Fish Bowl)
- Realism vs. Theatricality (can be both Represent or Presentational)
No type is superior, however, Realism is dominant contemporary style
Realism
Introduced to modern world in 1800s during the
1. Industrial/Technological Revolutions,
2. New science of Psychology,
3.US growing and British settlements all over the world.
4.No expression for the lower/middle classes, and writer wanted to capture that.
5Theory of Evolution
6.Marxism and Socialism
7. Psychological Realism
8.Products of Environment looked at, what makes people who they are?
9.Rejection of Sentimentality (rose colored glasses)
10.No longer happy with melodrama and stock characters
Psych Realism
Mirrors every day life, not reality but a style of performance. Began in 1850s in Europe. Based on the common people and meant to understand human behavior in terms of natural cause/effect upon characterization and structure.
Naturalism
1870s. Hyper Realism- incredibly detailed. Playwrights were: Strindberg, Ibsen, Chekov, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. Tought artificial plot structure was not right, should be just a watching of every day life.
Henrik Ibsen
1826-1906. Norweigian playwright from a poor family who ran away with his baby mama to Oslow, and joined a theatre company there.
1st Success: Pillars of Society (bad guy won)
Most successful was A Doll’s House (1879), Ghost (1881), Hedda Gabler (1890), and The Wild Duck (1884).
A Dolls House is about an oppressed woman, Nora, who leaves her husband.
Ghosts is about syphilis and incest in upper class.
He was banished from Norway for a time for his brutally honest plays. Was the basis for realism in 20th century.
August Strindberg
1849-1912. Swedish Naturalist. Wrote 58 plays, 12 novels, more than 100 short stories contained in a 55 volume collection. His work is generally broken into two parts; pre1894 and after 1897.
1. Pre1894 Naturalism (slice of Life)
2. Post 1897 Expressionism (focused more on dream, myths, and symbolism and subtext)
He had a very difficult life probably struggled from a mental illness. He was interested in emotional motivations of characters but acknowledged social class as a force.
Miss Julie (1888) is his most famous about a wealthy heiress who sleeps with a farm boy on midsummer’s eve who pressures her to marry him, she commits suicide. Very Naturalism
He wrote with no intermissions.
Anton Chekov
1860-1904. Russian and born into poverty (grandad was a surf). Upheaval in Russia that got rid of surfs because fall of aristocracy. He studied medicine (not wealthy profession), and wrote 300 short stories to support his family
Looks at the fall and transformation in plays, through many characters all with different backgrounds. His plays were not normal during his times, wrote about tough subjects.
Works:The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1897), Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1903, most famous, this was abut a wealthy estate with a woman who has lost everything but will not sale the cherry orchard, lives in fairytale. Merchant buys it out from under her.
He called his plays comedy but the humor was very bitter and sarcastic. Looked at subtext, what was going on beneath the surface and was very famous by the time he passed away.
Konstantin Stanislavski
1865-1938. Russia Focused on inner reality:trueness to acting. In America known as “Method Acting”. Headed Moscow Arts Theatre, brought the Chekov plays to life there. Wrote An Actor Prepares
Beat
unit of meaning in a scene, where the energy shifts. Ones for every scene and ones for each actor.
Through line
Linked to super objective; thread for linking story. The road in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
Objective
Important for beats; every character wants something, can vary throughout the play
Super Objective
What is all the little objectives leading up to, self discovery in JTCAG
Magic “IF”
Stanislavski’s idea that you did not have to believe in the plays scenes but you needed to believe that the circumstances could possibly happen. Think what would I do? To connect to the inner reality. Must be relaxed to do this!
