DRAMA

Drama: comes from a Greek word meaning “action,” derived from the verb meaning “to act”
Masks: The two famous masks of drama represent the division between comedy and tragedy
They are symbols of ancient Greek muses, Thalia (comedy) and Melpomene (drama)
Earliest dramatic theory: Aristote’s Poetics
Then, drama was considered poetry and was contrasted with epics and lyrics

Greek Drama
Western drama originated in classical Greece
The theatrical culture of the city-state of Athens produced three genres of drama:
Tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play
The origins of drama go back to competitions held as part of festivities celebrating the god Dionysus . In March
of every year, a dramatic festival was held in City Dionysia in Athens

What’s the difference between ritual and drama?

In ancient world, rituals required animal sacrifice. In tragic drama, the hero is sacrificed on the stage
Unlike plays, rituals do not involve us by way of identification with a character
Unlike plays, rituals do not depend on surprise or suspense

Why drama?
It is perhaps because ancient Greek religion strongly emphasized the power of the gods to surprise us, to
intervene in our lives and sometimes overturn them, that drama became a chosen form for the honoring of the
divine

Major Greek Dramatists

Only a small fraction of the work of five dramatists has survived to this day:
The tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides
Comic writers Aristophanes and Menander

Aeschylus
(525-456 BC) Father of tragedy Sophocles
Oresteia (trilogy of Agamemnon, The Libation (497-406)
Bearers and The Eumenides)
Theban plays: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at
Each play is a chapter in a continuous dramatic Colonus, Antigone
narrative
These plays concern the fate of Thebes during and
after the reign of King Oedipus

Aristophanes
(446-386 BC)
Euripides
Known as the Prince of Ancient Comedy
(480-406 BC)
The Clouds, The Babylonians, The Knights
Most influential Greek dramatist on modern
dramatists
Menander
Medea, Electra, Bacchae, The Trojan Women
(342-290 BC)
Theatrical innovations and depth of tragedy
Athenian New Comedy
Focus on the inner recesses of characters
Dyskolos
Chorus
Among the ancient Greeks, the chorus was a group of people, wearing masks, who sang or chanted verses while
performing dance-like movements at religious festivals
A similar chorus played a part in Greek tragedies, where they served as commentators on traditional moral,
religious and social attitudes

Satyr Play
An ancient reek form of tragicomedy, similar in spirit to the burlesque. They featured choruses of satyrs, were
based on Greek mythology, and were rife with mock drunkenness, brazen sexuality and general merriment

Roman Drama
Following the expression of the Roman Republic (509-27 BC) into several Greek territories between 270-240
BC, Rome encountered Greek drama
In re-working the Greek originals, the Roman comic dramatists abolished the role of the chorus
They divided the drama into episodes and introduced musical accompaniment to its dialogue
Playwrights: Plautus (comedies in the form of farces), Terence (comedies), Seneca (tragedian and Stoic
philosopher: Phaedra)

Medieval Drama
Emerging hundreds of years after the original tragedies and comedies, medieval drama was a new creation
rather than a rebirth, the drama of earlier times having has almost no influence on it
Middle Ages in Europe 5th century (collapse of the Western Roman Empire) – 15th century (Renaissance)
The Christian church had traditionally opposed any form of theater. But little by little, in the Easter and
Christmas services, bits of chanted dialogues (called tropes) were interpolated into liturgy. Priests,
impersonating biblical figures, acted out scenes from the holiday stories
Eventually, these plays grew more elaborate and moved out of the church. Secular elements crept in as the
artisan guilds took responsibility for these performances; although the glorification of God and redemption of
humanity remained prime concerns, the celebration of local industry was not neglected
Renaissance Drama
The Renaissance saw a huge resurgence in all types of art, including theater. IT was during this time that
Commedia dell’arte flourished and the first Elizabethan playhouse opened

Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Shakespeare was one of the first to weave comic elements into tragedies. He also developed a structure and
several types of characters that are still common in modern drama

18th century drama

 The 18th century was a time when more plays were being written for and about middle class
 At first the theaters relied on the pre-Civil War repertoire; before long, however, they felt called upon to
bring these plays into line with their more refined, French influenced sensibilities
 The themes, languages, and dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s plays were now considered out-of-date, so that
during the next two centuries Shakespeare’s works were never produced intact
 Owing much to Moliere, the English comedy of manners was typically a witty satire of current mores ,
especially of relations between the sexes
 Toward the end of the 18 th century the Romantic period began in Western Europe, which influenced the
theatre of that era
 In its purest form, Romanticism concentrated on the spiritual, which would allow humankind to
transcend the limitations of the physical world and body and find an ideal truth
 Subject matter was drawn from nature and natural man
 One of the best examples of romantics Drama is Goethe’s Faust
 Romanticism first appeared in Germany. By the 1820s Romanticism dominated the theater of most of
Europe
 These plays were strongly emotional and in their experimentation with form, rejected Neo-Classicism

Modern Drama
 Romanticism gave way to Realism during the 19 th century paving the way for the era of contemporary
drama in the 20th century
 Contemporary drama shows the influence of all that has come before
 Modern drama involved much experimentation with new forms and ideas
 Many movements – generally lumped together as the avant-garde, attempted to suggest alternatives to
the realistic drama and production

*Farce comedy, vaudeville

Realism
“… any artistic or literary portrayal of life in a faithful, accurate manner, unclouded by false ideals, literary
conventions, or misplaced aesthetic glorification and beautification of the world. It is a theory/tendency in
writing to depict events in human life in a matter of fact, straightforward manner. It is an attempt to reflect life
‘as it actually is’
  In 1909, Edward Gordon Craig wrote about turn of the century actors and acting methods in On the Art
of Theatre
 Chronologically progressing, he wrote about Edmund Kean, known as a natural actor who was
surpassed in being natural by Macready, who seemed artificial when Henry Irving arrived
 In time, Antoine made Irving artificial, and in turn Antoine’s acting became mere artifice in comparison
to the acting of Stanislavsky
 Craig asks: “What, then, does it mean to be natural?”
 He answers: “I find them one and all to be mere examples of a new artificiality – artificiality of
naturalism
 As it is with acting, so it is with playwriting: the old gives way to the new, which in turn grows old.
Each generation feels that its theater is in some ways more real than the last: Euripides over Sophocles,
Molière over Commedia dell’arte, Ibsen over Goethe, Brecht over Ibsen…
 It is the conception of reality which changes and realism must finally be evaluated, not by the style of a
play or performance, but by the image of truth its audience perceives
 As a movement, realism began towards the end of the 19 th century as an experiment to make drama
more appealing to the society

Roots and Contributing Factors

 Rejection of Romantic idealism
 Revolution and wars in Europe portrayed the need for social, economic and political reform
 Technological advances
 Pragmatism
 Common man demanded recognition
 Working/middle class demanded more rights

Contributors to Realism

Auguste Compte (1798-1857)

French philosopher, coined the term ‘sociology,’ founder of the theory of positivism
Positivism: philosophical theory stating that positive knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their
properties and relations. Thus, information derived from sensory experience, interpreted through reason and
logic, forms the exclusive source of all authoritative knowledge
Positivism also holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to general laws, introspective and
intuitive knowledge is rejected as metaphysics and theology. Comte argued that, much as the physical world
operates according to gravity and other absolute laws, so does society, and further developed positivism into a
Religion of Humanity

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

English naturalists and geologist whose scientific theory of evolution by natural selection became the
foundation of modern evolutionary studies
Darwin shocked religious Victorian society by suggesting that animals and humans shared a common ancestry
Origin of Species (1859) made many people believe that science could provide the answers in life. A seminal
work of nonreligious biology
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Founder of communism
The philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary, Karl Marx, is without a doubt the most influential
socialist thinker to emerge in the 19th century. Although he was largely ignored by scholars in his own lifetime,
his social, economic and political ideas gained rapid acceptance in the socialist movement after his death in
1883. He argued for equal distribution of wealth
“Das Kapital” (1867) The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production
increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever-cheaper commodity the more commodities he
creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the
world of the men. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity –
and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally

Scientific Revolution: Compte, Darwin and Marx’s beliefs lead to an overall change in social thought
Society began to question religious, political and economic beliefs
Scientific methodology was thought to apply human problem solving

From Science to Art

The scientific revolution found parallel revolutionary movements/trends in all arts
The parallel literary movement in France turned out to be a major force: the theory of naturalism promoted by
novelists like Balzac, Flaubert and Zola
Like the new novel, the new play: a new kind of text and a new kind of performance to match it
In conscious rebellion against the popular romantic drama of the time

19th Century Romantic Drama

Associated with political dissent and unrest after the French Revolution
A new-found spirit of freedom; challenging established values

Germany: The drama of Sturm und Drand in Goethe and Schiller. Plays of passionate nationalism that
glorified figures of heroic proportions
France: Victor Hugo’s “Preface to Cromwell” (1827), famous manifesto of romantic ideal for drama

Victor Hugo scorned the neo-classical laws of dramatic unity. The only laws should be those of nature. Taking
Shakespeare as its model, the stage should claim its natural freedom of time and place, and allow the sublime
and the grotesque, tragedy and comedy to meet and mingle in life
1830: Hugo applied these new principles at the Theatre Francaise in his romantic historical melodrama
“Hernani.” This event is the most important event in 19th century dramatic history. RIOT!!
Although the play was far from representing real life on stage, it paved the way for the coming of modern
realism
Romantic Theatre
Sensational drama of strong emotions and moral sentiment
Extensions: domestic drama and melodrama
Formula: goodness, virtue x villainy, evil (social injustice, wealth and power)… Moral temptation and
torment. In the process, audience suffers. Comforting knowledge: Providence will eventually intervene
and virtue will triumph

Eugene Scribe
French dramatist Eugene Scribe codified a dramatic genre called la piece bien faite (the well-made play.) It
drew upon popular formula of the romantic play
Alexander Dumas, Victorien Sardou and Emile Augier wrote within the genre. It was a popular form of
entertainment. Yet, by mid-19th century, it was somewhat scorned
But realistic dramatists of the later 19 th century, Zola, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekov, built upon its technique of
careful construction in the genre problem play. Through their example, the well-made play became the
traditional model of play construction

The well-made play

Form: strong neo-classical flavor (ie. Tight plot and a climax near the end of the play)

Shape: Aristotle’s ideal Greek tragedy model outlined in Poetics

Common features: The story depends upon key info kept secret from some characters but known to others/most
of the story takes place before the action on stage / exhibition in act I explain previous actions / audience
sympathy is promoted for the hero or heroine over their rivals / Climax: reversal of fortune / Denouement: plot
unravels

Common motives: use of letter or papers falling into unintended hands / mysterious identities

“Unlike other influential theatre thinkers, Scribe did not write prefaces or manifestos advocating their ideas.
Scribe influenced the theater with his craftsmanship”
Scribe created a dramatic mold that could be applied not only to different content but to different content from a
variety of playwrights

The Realistic Rebellion

Late 19th century: Rebellion against romantic situations and characterization; emphasis on ordinary life
Middle-class life
Avoidance of poetic flights and excessive sentiment
Genuine, plain language spoken in real life

Naturalism
Like realistic, naturalistic is also a critical term applied more specifically to the so-called naturalistic movement
The scientific naturalist tried to show that powerful forces governed human lives – forces of hereditary and
environment
Naturalistic plays bore witness to the instinctive behavior of men and women and the characters, and their
situations seemed representative of their class or age group, sex, or economic group, with the consequent loss of
that essential individuality we know to be characteristic of life

Emile Zola and Theory of Naturalism

Novelist Emile Zola(1840-1902) was the first to outline a theory of naturalism in literature
Novels – clinical laboratories in which he might scientifically explore the consequences upon his characters of
their birth and background
Inevitably, Zola’s characters appeared to be victims of society, and all his conclusions seemed pessimistic

Therese Raquin
Zola wrote challenging theoretical prefaces to his plays. His most famous preface is to Therese Raquin (1867.)
Milestone of naturalism

The play exemplified Zola’s recurrent theme: the pressure of character and the past on the events but it was
hardly the realistic slice of life he aimed at

Zola’s philosophy: absolute objectivity with setting, characterization and dialogue rendered so close to actual
life that audience would be convinced by the illusion to its reality

Zola’s target: the established French theatre of the romantic drama

Now it was time for the theatre to be stripped of its falseness, of content/playwriting/performance, and
artificiality
For Zola, the language of the play was the key to change. His essential requirement was that the theatre should
not lie; he claimed to be the honest soldier of truth
Literature-science incorporating poetry
Zola awaited the arrival of a genius, a true innovator who would change a stage soaked with the ‘gray rain of
stale mediocrity’ and speed the rebirth of the theatre

*This innovator was to Henrik Ibsen, who greatly disliked being compared to Zola
“Zola descends into to the sewer to bathe in it; I to cleanse it”
Review of Semiotics
Application to Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

Semiotics / semiology is the study of signs – objects by which humans communicate meaning: words, images,
behaviour…

Ex: If I stick my tongue at you… Signs in nature…

There has to be a human being to read these signs and theatre semiotics is predominantly the study of signs put
on the stage for an audience to interpret.

According to Michel Foucault, semiotics is the ‘ensemble of knowledge and technical skills that enable us to
perceive where signs might be, to define what constitutes them as signs and to understand the relationship
between them and the laws governing their interaction.’

For the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, semiotics is a ‘science that studies the life of signs’ and
demonstrates ‘what signs consist of and what laws govern them.’

The theatre semioticians Elaine Aston and George Savona write that ‘ the usefulness of the approach lies in its
potential to make us more aware of how drama and theatre are made.

Almost all semiological work in the 20th century borrows from Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics
(1916). Saussure defines the signs as having two parts:
1. Signifier – material phenomenon we perceive (ie. words, gestures)
2. Signified – the concept evoked by the signifier.

Saussure is interested in synchronic, rather than diachronic aspects of language; ie. in the abstract pattern of
language as a system frozen in a moment of time rather than in history, change and event.
The other founding figure of 20th c. sign theory is the American Charles Peirce who argued that signs are
related to objects in different ways and to varying degrees (ex: a word, an index, an icon…)
Peirce insists that a sign is always a sign for somebody; therefore, interpretation is part of the sign itself. So,
semiotics is made situational, activated only by people in actual situations. (if a traffic light turns red….)
Each act of interpretation begets another and leads to what Peirce calls ‘unlimited semiosis’ – the endless play
of meaning and regeneration of signs in time. This interest in interpretation makes P’s work quite different in
emphasis from Saussure’s.
Writing between 1950s and 1970s, Roland Barthes applied semiotic analysis to specific cultural activities and
to verbal and nonverbal signification. Politically, Barthes begins with a sense of myth, which is a semiological
system in which ideology is imposed on a society through its images (ex; a photo of a black French soldier
saluting the French flag signifies that French imperialism is good.)
Theatre Semiotics
Keir Elam (1980) The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama

‘All that is on the stage is a sign’ [ smiles, gestures, tones of voice, music, light, character development…..]
Every sound, action, object, or costume …. Involves the production of a meaning.

* Stage directions

Elam presents elaborate charts to account for signification in the theater and for the structures of signification
in dramatic discourse: human emotions, for ex. Can be reduced to a complex system of gestures and tones.
Hence, theatre becomes analyzable and understandable, readable. The sensual thickness of theatre becomes for
semiotics a density of signs.

Saussure is one of the founding fathers of structuralism, which aims to carry out a scientific and objective
analysis of the basic abstract patterns that underlie and activate all cultural activities.
Saussure started this abstraction in linguistics and the study of signs, and much semiological analysis - in
theatre and elsewhere – continues in this - mode of mapping abstract patterns. The works of theatre
semioticians like
Elam’s – are full of graphs and charts that reduce theatrical activity to generalized structures which claim to see
the big picture.

The French theatre semiologist Patrice Pavis has moved away from this attempt to grasp the big picture. Pavis
argues that a global systematization of theatrical signs is extremely problematic esp. in the face of the absurd /
avant garde which distrust all meaning and signification.
Although he does not reject the notion that semiology is in some way scientific, Pavis expresses a healthy state
of suspicion about any universal model.
A more manageable task for semiotic analysis is to study moments of theatrical signification in all their
localized specificity, without attempting to account for meaning in theatre as a totality.
Hence, semiology must be conducted amidst an anarchy of meanings.

In this opening, several notions are already being signified.

1) We realize we’re in the realm of realism, art which tries to mimic closely the real world around it.
Here we are in a house very much like any house in late 19 th century Norway. There’s the mention
of a stove to provide heat against the cold climate of the winter.
2) “The room is comfortable and tasteful.” --- signifying middle class.
3) ‘decorated inexpensively’ ----- money problems that haunt the Helmer family.
 4) ‘a door leading to Helmer’s study’ --- realm of masculine seriousness excluding the wife and mother
Nora. We are being shown how gender structures this household.
5) Nora enters with a porter and maid. Class structures are being shown to us.

As we discuss the semiotics of stage directions, we can break the discussion into two sections:
1. Text 2. Performance
The text tells us there’s a porter and a maid; the performance must come up with signs – uniforms, gestures – to
indicate status to us.
6) The porter carries a Christmas tree. Here we are in the realm of what Barthes calls the cultural code;
ie. the knowledge that a culturally literate audience brings to the play: one needs to know that a
coniferous tree in a house is a Christmas tree, part of the ritual associated with that time of year.

That we recognize the tree as a Christmas tree also helps us understand that it is a winter day. That Nora is in
charge of the tree identifies her once again with the festive rather than the serious and masculine aspects of the
household. The stage directions as text and performance provide us with all this signification before a word has
been spoken.

Semiotics can be made to work fairly well with traditional and rationalist drama such as Ibsen’s and brings out
a clear pattern of communication and meaning through verbal and non-verbal elements. What about the
semiotics of avant-garde theatre? Very problematic
In reaction to the encroachment of semiotics, Jean-Francois Lyotard called for a generalized de-semiotics which
would see theatre as energy and event rather than signification. It is not easy to escape sings. It is also not easy
to reduce all physical and theatrical reality to signification alone

HENRIK IBSEN (1828-1906)

Norwegian playwright, theatre director and poet.

‘father of realism” / one of the founders of modernism in theater.

His drama was considered scandalous to many people in his period. At the time European theatre was expected
to conform to the conventional morality of the times. Ibsen’s drama, however, penetrated to the realities behind
the facades, the truth locked behind appearances,,,, Deep examination of issues of morality.

Biographical overtones in his plays: his father’s financial ruin has a strong influence on his work. The
characters often mirror his parents. His themes often deal with issues of financial difficulty and moral conflicts
stemming from dark secrets hidden from society. A central theme in his drama is suffering women who arouse
pity in their powerlessness.

Ibsen began writing plays when he was 20 and had his first play produced at the Oslo Theatre two years later.
For six years he was director at the National Theatre Bergen where he directed 150 productions, more than half
which was by Scribe or in the Scribean manner. Until 1877, the staging of “The Pillars of Society”, Ibsen had a
strong apprenticeship in the old kind of professional theatre, producing and writing within the romantic
tradition. “The Pillars of Society” is his revolutionary departure to realism. Eventually, Ibsen’s art passed from
plays of social realism to those of more symbolic vision: “The Wild Duck” and “Hedda Gabler”.

Although Ibsen repeatedly disclaimed any sort of partisanship, his plays – particularly “A Doll’s House”,
“Ghosts”, and “An Enemy of the People” – contributed significantly to the change of social attitudes toward the
end of the 19th century. They demonstrated, perhaps for the first time in the history of theatre, the power of the
stage in motivating social conduct.
Ibsen was an excellent workman, dedicated and methodical. For a long period, he brought out one play
punctually every two years, timing its publication precisely so as to catch the Christmas trade. By the end of his
life, he had published 26 plays and was generally considered the major dramatist of the age.

“A Doll’s House” 1879

The moral rigidity of Helmer is tragically contrasted with the freedom of Nora’s romantic sensibility, and in the
celebrated final scene the continuance of their marriage is made to hinge on the possibility of reconciling their
antithetical viewpoints in a synthesis.

The play aroused strong reaction. It was interpreted as a shockingly immoral attack on the sanctity of marriage
and an obscene denial of a wife’s primary duty to her husband and children.

The vehemence of the reaction to this play, esp. among the Lutheran clergy”, directly prompted Ibsen’s
counterblast against conventional idealism in his next play – “Ghosts” 1881 – which powerfully exploited the
interest aroused by “A Doll’s house”.

As a realistic play, A Doll’s House places characterization above plot in the rate of importance.
In realistic drama there’s reflection instead of action, there’s thought instead of motion. In the last scene
of the play, there’s just talk, no action. In classical tragedy, all the action is a trust to the future. Now,
however, the action is not forward-going but backward-going (flashback technique). Now characters
rather than plot are important.

Social issues are realistically discussed.

Causal relationships are foregrounded.
Elements of heredity and environment.

Issues: Marriage as an institution. What does it mean? Ideal marriage? Place of women in the society?

Melodrama:
The good and the evil.
Evil turning into angel all of a sudden (Krogstad)
Act 4: BAM !!! scene. Melodramatic act.
Is Nora of this act who discusses the false foundation of their marriage the same as the one who flirts with
everyone attractively?

Feminist Laura? Or is Nora acting even at the end?

4 interpretations:
1. Consistent Nora; changing in the final act. Playing a role until her epiphany.
2. Acting throughout the play – even as a hurt wife.
3. Hero falling off the scale and the wife gathering courage to act properly.
4. Inconsistent Nora. Flawed characterization.

*The area determining its own realism

*Dramatic irony
*Catharsis & hamartia – Aristotle
*Common motifs

Henrik Ibsen
Ibsen, father of modern/realistic drama in Western Financial difficulty with moral difficulties
Literature
Suffering women
Time when theatre was important shaping society
“The Pillars of Society” as a turning point for him
Ibsen’s drama not conforming to the times
Compared to American writer Arthur Miller
Penetrating the realities behind facades
Departure to realism, social realism to symbolism
Truth locked behind appearances
Change in his time’s social mind
Norms of morality examined
Not conservative
Plays aimed to be realistic, biographical aspects
Methodical

Henrik Ibsen - A Doll’s House

 Semiotics, stage directions
 Theatre, non-verbal signs
 Comfortable room, middle-class, inexpensive, may indicate financial issues
 Helmer’s room, a realm of masculine
 Class and gender structures
 Cultural literacy, the tree being Christmas tree
 Nora associated with the festive happiness of Christmas
 Function of light, setting, action, costume, décor…
 Nora is the one who changes, has personal relations with everyone, focus on her inner world
 Realistic play, characterization above plot
 Nora -> protagonist
  Nora’s awakening transformation
 Epiphany, her herp falling of the scale
 Reflection instead of action in realistic drama
 Thought instead of motion, the paly ends with pages of talk, not action
 Aristotle saying a character has to be consistent, or a character can be consistently inconsistent
 Casual relations
 The importance of marriage as an institution
 Effects of hereditary and family
 A problem play, problematizes marriage as an institution
 Nora has no voice in the marriage
 Helmer’s study, own separate corner, they don’t talk
 3 parts of the stage, different sides she shows to other people
 Nora’s relationship with Dr Rank, more authentic, calling each other friends but deeper emotions
 Helmer -> serious, bossy, masculine, role of the father/teacher
 Preaches honesty, morality -> appears, mostly cares about his image
 Wants Krogstad removed because he addressed him with his name, Nora’s father’s wrong doings he
turned a blind eye -> not so moral
 Even a dance instructor, everything, wants other people to look up to/envy his family
 Knitting as practical, embroidery as visually aesthetic -> Helmer, masculine, shows how to do
embroidery to a woman house guest -> Helmer being all for appearance
 Helmer doesn’t want any ugliness, which is all visual for him
 Helmer being thankful that Dr Rank decided to die outside of his peaceful home, even his best friend as
a backdrop
 Off stage dance, tarantella -> Nora dancing like crazy, dancing like her life depends on it
 Foil characters -> the union Mrs. Lindsey and Krogstand present as a foil to this marriage, they know
each other and are honest, know their past mistakes, equal, union of equals
 The last part
 Helmer constantly saying I, my, me, mine
 Rational, no emotion, making plans immediately
 “I am saved”
 Nora's desire for freedom
 Becomes a mouthpiece for feminism
 At the end, epiphanically
 Becomes eloquent, vocal in the end while silent throughout

Anton Chekhov – Uncle Vanya

Realism in Russia Danchenko calling this" sincerity of experience" the
actor living his part rather than presenting" energy
Zola – Utter truthfulness on stage
justification"
Moscow becoming the center of realistic theater
Stanislavsky, 1897, meets with Danchenko rules for
Practical challenges of achieving realism on stage - a new theater, MAT established - complete realism,
the actor, writer sincerity, authenticity

Moscow Art Theater (MAT) creation, new kind of Chekov's play Seagull, seagull becomes symbol for
teacher by Danchenko and Stanislavsky mat

Moscow is the new center of realistic movement Chekov as another realistic playwright

Natural speech patterns and behavior Ibsen's realism as old fashioned in contrast with
Chekov
 Our lives do not contain such big conflicts, only Relationships and interactions
quiets already, no preconceived plots
Stanislavsky calls the Chekhovian drama
Sensational characters "Orchestrated and symphonic"
No curtains scenes Only a true repertoire theater can depict a
Chekhovian play
Did not opt for didactic, also wasn't a fan of Ibsen's
seriousness, need for humor Semiotics in A Doll's House
Was not moralist Keeping life in theater live - phenomenology,
philosophical movement
Open mind to his characters, flexible
What it is like for human beings to be alive in the
Freedom from false and falsehood however they
world
manifest themselves
The body as the actor's instrument
No devil and no angel, "I didn't accuse nor justify
anyone" Theater to be observed by the audience's senses
A lot of characters Chekhov's plays as character plays
No moral position, puts the audience in the position Language as a tool to get access to truth -
of Jerry, our own interpretation phenomenology
"Brevity is the sister of talent" Chekov To exist in the world coma we have to encounter
with other people, they perceive us, constraints
Was not a symbolist but used suggestive settings
from judgment
Chekhov rejecting the traditional structure of
How we act in the sight of others, like Du Bois'
suspense/excitement
"double consciousness"
Makes it harder for the audience to immerse
"Hell is other people"
Instead he created memorable characters, not bigger
Time and memory, lived and unlived past Tacoma
than life, but his talent of observing real people
how is it depicted
Plays of characterization
How to play ends? Is it hopeful or not?
No Central characters / protagonist
Futility, stagnation, pessimistic
Chekhov's drama as acquired taste
The Chekov WORD!!!

 The only action in the play, Vanya taking the gun and trying to shoot the professor chroma which takes
place offstage - and he misses, and in nothing
 What is the play about? A professor and his wife come to a country estate owned by professors first wife
who passed away, disrupting the routine of the house
 Circular plots, on the surface, things seem to turn back to normal
 Characters that have wasted their potential/lives
 Issue of faith
 Sonya's memorable ending speech - what you say versus what you think
 The function of language does not always revealing truth but concealing it
 Telegin as having the most fate, intent on the other life
 And the nurse
 Madam Voynitsky
 Faithful characters in a religious sense, looking at the afterlife as the permanent
 Dr Astrov, overworked, bored with life, losing his idealism, worn off, a wasted life
 Vanya - a man of regret
 Telegin - faithful, comforting sense of faith wasted life & old age coming fast
  Helen - internalized loyalty and faith for her husband, know her situation but won't act

Act 2
 Serebryakov - elderly man who is suffering and constantly complaining, pities himself
 Marina - praying, offering compassion, s needs that
 The missing mother of the household, Marina takes on the role of giving compassion
 Sonya skeptical with Helen, the conversation between them - the only moments they have joy, ends with
professors no, they want to enjoy music, Professor making everyone around him miserable
 The actions not leading to anything in the play
 Professor wants to sell the land for money, Vanya worked for it, triggers him to take up a gun professor
being self-centered, his lack of judgments, not an antagonist
 Helen is objectified, Young and Beautiful, is not seen as an individual who can make decisions, is the
heart of the conflicts, her name
 Anti-climax barely disturbs the flatness of the plot
 Revelation of Vanya " you are my worst enemy"
 Helen snatching a pencil, semiotics, showing that she cared for the doctor
 Sonya's final monologue - repetition, sounds like a lullaby to numb the senses, language used in a poetic
way, not as a vehicle for communication but something that will tell the senses
 Look for the afterlife, we will work until then

Modernist Theatre
Origins in the revolutions in theatrical practice centered in Paris in the late 1880s.
Two strong trends were created at this time - SYMBOLISM and NATURALISM

SYMBOLISM
Lugne-Poe’s Theatre de l’Oeuvre (1893)
Maurice Maeterlick’s drama. He rejected theatrical concentration on the surface of life and instead attempted to
create plays of internal action and psychological power.
Human reality is beyond the material, the observable or the rational.
Uses suggestion and ambiguity to represent multiple levels of reality. Often lyrical and dream-like.

NATURALISM
19th c. French novelist Emile Zola.
His principles were first set out in the Preface to Therese Raquin (1893).
He wanted to abolish all existing conventions in the theatre, and to create plays that were an exact ‘fragment of
life’ rather than a fancy or an escape from life.
To do this, he urged a change in the conventions of acting, more verisimilitude in scenery and staging, and
realistic costumes.

Cradle of Naturalism
THEATRE-LIBRE, the first of Europe’s modern laboratory theatres.
Founded by ANDRE ANTOINE in 1887.
This theatre carried the banner for Zola and Ibsen in France.
Antoine became director of Theatre Libre in 1897 and director of the Odeon in 1907.
Antoine was the first to make amateur acting a respectable activity. He broke down the star system.

Antoine rejected the established acting style of the Paris Conservatoire, the acting school of the Comedie
Francaise and the classical French theatre as a whole.

August Strindberg 1849-1912

Up to a point, the playwriting career of Strindberg runs parallel to Ibsen’s.
S’s early plays were romantic plays in the fashion of the time.
In 1884 he wrote Getting Married, two volumes of short stories with a preface on women’s and men’s rights, as
an answer to ‘A Doll’s House’.

Then, like Ibsen, he startled the Scandinavian public with two plays of uncompromising realism.
These plays were written partly as a reaction to Ibsen’s feminism:
The Father 1887
Miss Julie 1888
Creditors 1888

The realism of these plays carried the seeds of its own dissolution because the achievements of S’s later years
were frankly experimental and unrealistic:
To Damascus 1898
A Dream Play 1902
The Ghost Sonata 1907

Strindberg was an acute analyst of the French naturalistic school which immediately preceded him.
Antoine’s Theatre-Libre set him an impressive example. He admired the simplicity of its settings, which were
quite unlike those of the commercial theatre. A table and two chairs were all that were needed to present the
“most powerful conflicts life had to offer.”
At the Theatre Libre, S. recognized that the new theatre had an opportunity to explore new themes and forms.
Strindberg’s CHARACTERS:
My souls (characters) are conglomerations of past and present stages of civilization, bits from books and
newspapers, scraps of humanity, rags and tatters of fine clothing, patched together as is the human soul. And I
have added a little evolutionary history by making the weaker steal and repeat the words of the stronger, and by
making the characters borrow ideas or suggestions from one another. (Preface to Miss Julie)

August Strindberg – Miss Julie

 Miss Julie is the one who changes,  Sub-textual/metaphorical foreshadowing
protagonist  Doesn’t set out to be a moralist/didactic, but
 A new type of character, “modern”, living in the end shows his anger, seems didactic
an age of transition  Kristin as the moral voice of the play
 The characters Julie and Jean, a mix  Signifiers, Jean not just any servant, has a
between the old & new while being modern refined taste, semiology
characters  Miss Jule cannot even tolerate her dog
 Miss Julie as a half-woman giving birth by the gatekeeper’s dog
 It is her destiny to end in death, her chivalric  Hereditary, naturalism
nobility leads her to suicide  Jean as the self-made gentil, but is a servant
 Jean as the slave, Julie as the knight – wants to transcend his social class
 Slave can live without honor, but the knight  Asking him to sit down, same level
cannot, expected to commit suicide  “Let her alone” imperative
 Several motives at work for characters  “These people,” actually his people but
 Before Freud, Freudian subconscious distancing
 Called his characters “soul”, soul-complex  “Plunder(ing) the bird’s nest”
of a character – effects of the past on the  Calling Jean “Monsieur,” same level
present  Metaphorical, “paradise garden”
 In a way, explaining his anti-feminism  The artificial world of the two penetrated by
 “An eminent misogynist” for Strindberg reality, the singers
 Jean’s urge to climb up the stairs merging  Powdering her face, something happened,
with Julie falling down “we”
 Social class & sex  Julie being the “mistress,” Jean having the
 Jean as an aristocrat sexually power now
 Julie may be mistress in the class order, but  Chage in Miss Julie after sex, fragile
Jean is the master in the sex war woman, how artificial feminism is for
 Class war and sex war, the hidden structure Strindberg
of the play, on pattern imposed on the other,  “The conquest” who to who?
parallels, the culture of the time  Bell as a symbol, back to reality, Jean
 Partially autobiographical play, Jean -> changing his coat and wearing his servant
Strindberg uniform
 Closing scene, lyrical rather than mechanic  Julie like hypnotized

Expressionism
Expressionism, artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective
emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person. The artist accomplishes this aim through
distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic application
of formal elements. In a broader sense Expressionism is one of the main currents of art in the later 19th and the
20th centuries, and its qualities of highly subjective, personal, spontaneous self-expression are typical of a wide
range of modern artists and art movements.

In Painting
The term was first applied to painting. Coined by the French painter Julien-August Herve in 1901.
Contrast to impressionist painting.
Van Gogh, Matisse: refused to render exactly what they saw. Instead, they expressed themselves with force.
Impressionists: external reality X Expressionists: inner vision, private experience
No interest in realistic depictions, objective reality, surface detail, aesthetic philosophy
Defiantly subjective, intense, eccentric view of the world.

In Other Art Forms

Music/Architecture/Poetry
Imagistic, lyric verse (parts of Eliot’s The Wasteland)
Joyce’s Ulysses (Nighttown episode)
Kafka’s nightmarish stories

In Theater
A basic mode of perceiving and representing the world around us.
Rigorous anti-realism
Cradle: Youthful German drama of the 1910s
Forerunners: Buchner, Strindberg, Wedekind
Adoption of the style by Eugene O’Neill
Experiments by T. Williams and A. Miller
Flourished with a radical variation in Brecht’s drama

Ideological Background
In German theatre: drama of protest, reacting against the pre-war authority of the family and community, rigid
lines of the social order and the industrialization of the society and the mechanization of life.
Violent drama of youth against age; freedom against authority.
Following Nietzsche, it glorified the individual and idealized the creative personality.
Advent of Freudian and Jungian psychology : channel to the playwright to disclose his secret and hidden states
of mind.
New (later) expressionism: personal and subjective content is gradually undermined.
Impact of WWI, mass slaughter
Result: more sophisticated concern for man and society.
At this point, expressionist drama assumed a politically radical and Marxist temper.

Characteristics and Techniques

Dreamlike and nightmarish atmosphere (shadowy, unrealistic lighting & visual distortions of the set; pauses and
silences)
Unrealistic settings with simplified images. Décor made up of bizarre shapes and bright colors.
Disjointed, episodic plot, incidents and tableaux. No single dramatic conflict. Instead, a sequence of dramatic
statements made by the dreamer, usually the dramatist himself.
Characters identified by nameless designations (‘The Man’, ‘The Father’, ‘The workman’…) Stereotypes,
caricatures, reps of social groups X Individuals.
Poetical, rhapsodic dialogue X realistic conversation. Sometimes long lyrical monologues.
Peculiar style of acting (deliberate deviation from Stanislavsky’s realism. ) Puppet-like; sense of burlesque.

On Expressionist Acting
Paul Kornfeld (1889-1942; Czech dramatist) Spokesman for the movement. His “Epilogue to the Actor” is the
manifesto of expressionist acting.
Kornfeld coined the term Seelendrama ( drama of the soul) believing that realistic character psychology was
miserably earthbound, and that the ‘soul pertained to Heaven’.

How Should the Actor Act?

Let him dare to stretch his arms out wide and with a sense of soaring speak as he has never spoken in life; let
him not be an imitator or seek his models in a world alien to the actor. In short, let him not be ashamed of the
fact that he is acting. Let him not deny the theatre or try to feign reality.
In short: actors were to find a new freedom from the restrictions of realism. / Creative experimentation.
Reinhardt, Piscator, Brecht.

Eugene O'Neill – Hairy Ape

 O’Neill worked on ships, on sea
 Expressionism, perspective, Marxism - subjective
 Images projected are those of Mildred, white bourgeois
 Yanks perspective of these people
 O'Neill not trying to achieve a realistic life in the play
 Mark says historical materialism, Human Society is progress through class struggle
 While representing the "common good", seeking the ruler class's favor
 Marxist criticism
 The start of the play
 Yank's vulnerability link to his pride
  A play that harbors an epiphany in its heart, sudden transformation
 Stooping structure of workers as reclining / relaxing image of Mildred
 Yank who makes the ship go, and others who enjoy it
 Mildred trespasses
 " contemptuously," Pride from Yank's pov
 Metallic presence of the chorus voices, expressionism
 " artificial figures, disharmonious"
 Yank the fearing from the others
 The thinker position but cannot think, but he can feel, feels shattered
 Brazen metallic quality of words " love"
 Yank different from the others because he doesn't understand
 Scene 5, the stage changes to land, sea is unstable, changing; soil as still
 Ship workers as proletarians, wage earners, dirty; struggling with their identity, with modernity
 Yank's struggle in the society, lack of Education, but is needed with the fireman, the source of his pride,
identifying himself with material, steel
 Yank becoming a Marxist spokesperson
 Mildred as artificial, clean, smooth, benefits from Yanks labor
 Mildred's symbolic descent to Hell, barbarity, repulsed and faints, the image of the laborer is something
she hasn't encountered before although she lives her life the way it is thanks to those people
 Yank losing his pride and his sense of belonging
 He is able to grasp that the ruling class can exist because of people like him
 Long trying to teach Yank that his encounter with Mildred is not unique
 Yank grasping with feelings not intellect, trying to start his own Revolution
 Long giving Yank a larger Target
 Yank is helpless
 The Bourgeois is self-centered, detached, removed from nature
 Not pulling but yanking, thoughtless action
 Concept of self / will
 Nietzsche (self regarding will) vs Levinas (other regarding will)
 Only by approaching the other that I attend to myself versus the presence of the other which makes will
vulnerable and makes it redefine itself
 The face of the other
 Unified subject at the start, after he faces Mildred his fragmented, his self undergoes a transformation
 Yank attaining and otherness by taking a wound to his core, wants to cause the same to Mildred
 Perspective of the play, expressionism
 Subject manner Marxist
 Episodic play, aspect of expressionist drama
 Last soliloquy
 Yank’s change, his realization of classes
 Learned a Marxist lesson, first by Long, then his experiences
 Too ape for humans and too emotional for an ape
 His transformation!
 Messages in his expressionist in the plays, this last soliloquy as the writer’s message
 Lovinas, the face of the other, gaining consciousness by facing another
 Tries to establish the “secret violent rebellion” with the ape who he finds similar

Political Theatre
Narrow definition: theatre used for political purposes, usually as part of a campaign or movement or work of a
political party.
Loose definition: community theatre/consciousness-raising theatre by groups that have specific identities –
women’s groups, black groups, LGBT groups.

Each country has its own tradition of political theatre

COMMON THEMES:
- Peace against war
- Democracy against tyranny
- Justice against exploitation

Inspirational Practitioners
Erwin Piscator
German dramatist/theatrical producer/director.
Expressionistic staging techniques
Originator of the epic theatre style developed by Brecht
Used the theatre to convey radical political instruction

Bertold Brecht

Joan Littlewood : British theatrical director who rejected the social content of commercial theatre in favor of
experimental plays concerned with contemporary social and political issues for working class audiences.

Augusto Boal
Brazilian theatre director/writer/politician
Founder of the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’
Aim: social/political liberation
Method: to transform spectators to ‘spect-actors’ – active participants in the theatrical experience
Exiled from Brazil to Peru and Argentina
Techniques: Forum theatre and Invisible Theatre

Peter Weiss
Politically engaged German dramatist. Influenced by Brecht.
Plays: Marat/Sade ; Investigation (known as his Auschwitz Oratorium. Broadened the debates over the politics
of history. )
Arthur Miller 1915-2005
American context
Less radical versions of political theatre
Within mainstream modern repertory
Probes the behavior of human beings as social and political animals
Known as America’s Ibsen
Miller – Biography
Son of a Jewish family of Polish immigrants
English major at the University of Michigan
In the public eye throughout his life
Refusal to name names before the House of Un-American Activities
Married three times
Second marriage to Marilyn Monroe

The Crucible
Salem witch trials of 1692
Allegorical play
Parallelism between the witch hunts and the House of Un-American Activities Committee ( Witches //
communists; Red Scare)
After the play opened in 1953, Miller was called to testify before the HUAC.

Death of a Salesman
1949- Group Actors. Directed by Elia Kazan
Representative American play of mid-century
Tragedy of the common man
Realistic dialogue
Moralistic tendency
Social criticism
Debunking of the American Dream

All My Sons (1949)

Political criticism: against the capitalist system
Social criticism: opposing the diluted version of the American Dream
Commonly read as a play heavily indebted to Ibsen
Universal theme of social responsibility/morality
“AMS has a resonance that transcends its contemporary society and immediate situation.”

Yet, AMS is also very much a play of its time. Artifact of the 1940s.
Exploration of the central father-son relationship in terms of its historic temporal context and Miller’s own
family background.

1940s
Traumatic decade for American families (aftermath of Depression and international conflict )
Sons and/or fathers dislocated from their homes by the draft. Return: homecoming stories. Gulf between father
and son.
Societal change: gender issue. Changing role of women and mothers. Mother: disciplinary head of the
household (“master of the house”)

Sons and Fathers: Conflicting ideologies

Fathers: nostalgic look at the 1920s. Prosperous times; emphasis on work and individual family units.
Sons: 1940s – a new community based on society of mutual help, where one’s family is the society itself.
Collective future. New moralistic ideals.

Biographical Echoes
Joe Keller: amalgam of M’s father and uncle (‘who told lies’)

Arthur Miller – All My Sons

 Universal theme of social responsibility & morality
 On the one hand, play of its time 1940s, also explores a cultural/universal/timeless father-son
relationship
 Joe’s fall from grace, like a tragic hero
 Materialist world, expectations of money, taking care of his family
 Starts outside of the house
 Semiotic pov, realistic description
 Expensive house
 Depicted as a common man
 Play starting with a broken tree, the significance – the family will also shatter in the end
 Sensitive Kate will collapse, 3 years since war, broken tree as the last drop
 Idea of waiting and anticipation
 Complex female character of Kate, Miller playing with our depiction of Kate, proves to be the
strongest character of the family
 Central plot as will Chris and Annie get married
 The father’s role in the play
 Chris, moralistic perspective, the idealist but is weak, doesn’t have the guts to reject what he has and
leave
 Function of George – creates and resolves the conflict
  Inclination towards peace/serenity at last, and from the mother “shh,” we’d expect her to shatter but
she becomes the one who embraces the remaining part of her family
 Didactic/moralistic
 Why does Joe commit suicide? Not knowing what to do, questions Chris, escapes this way
o No longer the good father, lost both sons
o How his sins pass onto his sons

ABSURD
Faith – Sense of Belonging / Calm / Conformism / Unity with all Creation
Loss/Absence of Faith – Doubt / Loneliness / Sense of Alienation

Alienation in the city

19th century – Industrial, new urban centers, metropoles
Social and psychological alienation
Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens…
from Engels: The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest becomes the more
repellent and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together, within a limited space. And ,
however much one may be aware that this isolation of the individual, this narrow self-seeking is the
fundamental principle of our society everywhere, it is nowhere so shamelessly barefaced, so self-conscious
as just here in the crowding of the great city. The dissolution of mankind into nomads... Is here carried out
to its utmost extremes.

Karl Marx’s social alienation

Estrangement (entfremdung) of people from their essence due to living in a society of rigidly separated
social classes.
Alienation from the self is an outcome of being a mechanistic part of a social class. Hence estrangement
from one’s essential humanity.
Marx places the foundation of alienation within the capitalist mode of production. The worker is alienated
from his humanity because he works as an instrument, a thing, not a person.
In Marxist theory, alienation is a foundational proposition about man’s progress towards self-actualization.

Philosophical basis
For Hegel, the unhappy consciousness is divided against itself, separated from its ‘essence’, which it has
placed in a ‘beyond’. In other words, ‘alienation’ denotes self-alienation – to be estranged from one’s
essential nature. `
Therefore, alienation is a lack of self-worth, the absence of meaning in one’s life.
In Hegel’s conception, alienation acquires a metaphysical dimension: it is a basic dialectical mechanism
whereby being is externalized (Entausserung) from itself. It comprehends its own externalization (das
Andere) in metaphysical reflection as other and alien (Entfremdung).
From social alienation to…
Subjective alienation in avant-garde art: Divisive, orientation toward extreme subjectivity and the
consciousness that the city is impenetrable. Urban crime (Sir Arthur Canon Doyle’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’)
Breaking free from provincial culture and older, traditional forms which are no longer effective, the
artists/writers/thinkers form a new community.

Alienation of the artist

Fin de siecle concept
Alienation of the Artist from the public
Baudelaire (1821-1867) Les Fleurs du Mal – expresses the
changing nature of beauty in modern industrial Paris of the 19th c.
B. coined the term ‘modernite’ to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban
metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.

From Hegel and Marx to Nietzsche

While Hegel and Marx address alienation from a holistic viewpoint, Nietzsche is much more individualistic.
God is Dead!
Extremely pessimistic – Nihilism! The belief that everything is meaningless; it is a human state of mind
that arises from weariness. When people feel alienated from their values, they find themselves at a loss if
they have not replaced them with new values. Result: Nihilism.
The ground needs clearing first. (Niezsche)
N. sees how the recognition of the egoistic nature of truth and morality disappoint human beings. Hence,
Nietzschean alienation and nihilism. The concept of free will is contradictory. Values seem so fixed that
they are almost untouchable. Any attempt to figure out the truth/reality has become impossible; thus, the
world appears meaningless and valueless.
The nihilist realizes that all criteria by which the ‘real world’ have been measured are categories that refer to
a fictitious, constructed world. This is N. alienation. It leads to exhaustion.
N. regards nihilism as a healthy transitional stage.
For N. , there are two kinds of nihilism:
Passive nihilism: The more traditional belief that all is meaningless. It signifies the end of an era. It is
symptomatic of the declined, receded power of the spirit. All external values are empty and have no true
authority.
Hence, the internal values and the conscience are meaningless as well. Result: loss of personal authority. All
authority gone, the spirit - in hopelessness and with a sense of fatalism – strives to rid itself of all
responsibility.
All trust in society is gone, and the will is weakened.
Aims, motives and goals are gone.
N. concept of self-narcotization – escape to anything that has a semblance of authority. Weakened will
seeking refuge in resignation, generalizations, petty things, fanaticism…Escape rather than action.
 Active nihilism: It goes beyond judgment to deed and destroys existing values. It ushers in a new era. It is
symptomatic of an increased power of the spirit.
The will is strong and rebellious. Destructive towards the empty value systems. Where rationality and
reason have clearly failed, the active nihilist embraces irrationality and freedom from logic.
Active nihilism is not an end; it merely opens the stage for the beginning of a reevaluation of values.

Existentialism
Existential neurosis in psychology: chronic meaninglessness, apathy, and aimlessness. The self is seen as
nothing more than an embodiment of biological needs and a player of social roles. There is always the threat
of an imminent death, social upheaval and acute awareness of superficiality.
Jean Paul Sartre reverses the traditional assumption that ‘essence precedes existence’ to ‘existence precedes
essence.’ (Sartre is an atheist; God does not exist) Man is born at random.
Sartre despises two kinds of man:
1) The man who is like a stone: He makes no choices and he is happy in his no-choice life. He’s passive.
He refuses to commit himself (engagement) to accept responsibility for his life.
2) The man who is like a plant. This is an unhappy man. He lacks the courage to take responsibility for his
actions. He obeys other people and suffers from ‘nausea’.
However, there is a third kind of man whom Sartre admires. He is the kind that suffers from freedom and uses
this freedom to make his life better.
The concept of responsibility is central to Sartre’s existentialism. Man must be committed and engaged. Man
must impose meaning to his otherwise (essentially) empty and dull life.

Albert Camus
Is he an existentialist?
He formulated one of the best-known existentialist statements of the 20thc: “There is only one really serious
philosophical question and that is suicide.”
This idea launches The Myth of Sisyphus: Sisyphus embodies the striking image of human fate. This is the gist
of the philosophy of the absurd.
The Stranger: the novel of the absurd
In a universe suddenly deprived of illusions and enlightenment, man feels himself a stranger. This exile is
without remedy since he is deprived of memories of a lost country or of hope for a promised land. A.C.

Existentialism in Theatre
Sartre and Camus wrote existential plays that reflected the essential premises of the philosophy of
existentialism:
Man is a lonely creature of anxiety and despair living in a meaningless world. He merely exists until he makes a
decisive and critical choice about his future course of action. By such a choice man acquires an identity, a
purpose and dignity as a human being. For preference, existential man should adopt some social and political
cause in order to acquire this dignity and purpose.
Sartre’s theatre: théâtre engagée (theatre committed to positive social or political action) No Exit, Men Without
Shadows, The Assassins ---------- naturalistic plays in their treatment.
Camus’ theatre is centered on le sentiment de l’absurdité. Is suicide the way to end this feeling? No. In the
confrontation with the irrational, it is possible to move beyond nihilism, for there is a wild longing for clarity in
the human heart. ‘If the world were clear, art would not exist’. Caligula (a play of intelligence), The
Flies(modern adaptation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia) – plays of psychological realism.
Absurd Theatre
Term coined by Martin Esslin to refer to a specific kind of theatrical activity that started in the aftermath of
WWII – atrocities, gas chambers, nuclear bombs… Decade of the Cold War.
Cradle: Paris
French theatre after WW II witnessed a short-lived eruption of surrealistic drama – theatre of the absurd.
The sudden outburst of French absurdism – revealed the negative side of Sartre’s existentialism and expresses
the helplessness and futility of a world with no purpose. Man is isolated from his roots.

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot ( bleak images of life insinuate a human existence which is very much like
an ‘intolerable prisonment’ spent between the ‘ compulsion of birth’ and the worse compulsion of death’.

Features of an Absurd Play:

Plot: No logical plot in the conventional sense. No cause and effect relationship.Hence, a sense of
monotony or repetitiveness of time in human affairs.
Characterization: Characters lack the motivation found in realistic drama, and so emphasize their
purposelessness. They often look like puppets.
Language: No longer an instrument of communication. Dialogue is a series of inconsequential cliches
which reduce those who speak to talking machines. Frequent use of repetitions, pauses, silences…
Language just fills empty spaces. Philosophy is empty chatter. Fossilized forms of language are devoid
of meaning.
Human condition is not rendered discursively but merely presented in terms of images.

Strong opposition to the well-made play ( exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution) WHY? –
Because the well-made play can be seen as conditioned by clear and comforting beliefs, stable scale of values,
and an ethical system in working condition. (it could be a religious or political one, an implicit belief in the
goodness or perfectibility of man or it may just be an acceptance of the moral or political status quo.)
In short, the basis of the well-made play is the assumption that the world makes sense; reality is solid and
secure.
In opposition: absurd drama expresses a sense of shock at the absence or loss of any such clear and well-
defined systems of beliefs or values. Man is alienated – socially, morally, emotionally.

Absurd: a new combination of earlier traditions of drama

Tradition of miming and clowning (mimus of ancient Greece and Rome)
Commedia dell’ arte of Renaissance Italy (masked types)
Pantomime or music-hall
Nonsense poetry
Tradition of dream and nightmare literature
Allegorical and symbolic drama (medieval morality plays)
Ancient tradition of fools and mad scenes in drama (clowns in Shakespeare)
Direct Influences

DADAISM:
Artistic and literary movement that flourished during and after WW I.
Anti-rationalist protest against established forms in art and society. Rejection of logic, reason, and aestheticism
of modern capitalist society.
Its original intentions, entirely negative and anarchic, are seen as a reaction to the mass destruction and
disillusionment that accompanies the war.
Movement begins in 1915 in Zurich (Cabaret Voltaire), moves to New York and Paris in 1921 and dies.

Surrealism:
Some of the spirit of Dada, including its anti-rationalism, was carried into the rising surrealist movement.
Originated in France in the 1920s.
Attempted to express in art and literature the workings of the unconscious mind and to synthesize these
workings with the conscious mind.
The surrealist allows his work to develop non-logically so that the results represent the operations of the
unconscious.
Interested in the study and effects of hallucinations and dreams.
Surrealist painters: Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Marc
Chagall
Leader: Andre Breton (wrote the Surrealist Manifesto)
Objective: to liberate thought, language and human experience from the oppressive boundaries of rationalism.
Founder Breton was a devoted Marxist. He intended surrealism to be a revolutionary movement capable of
unleashing the minds of the masses from the rational order of society.
Surrealism in literature aimed to overcome the contradictions of the conscious and unconscious minds by
creating unreal or bizarre stories full of juxtapositions.

Pioneers of the Absurd

Alfred Jarry (1873-1907)
French symbolist dramatist; forerunner of absurd theatre and postmodernism.
Ubu Roi (1896): shocked the audience with its savage humor and monstrous absurdity. Groundbreaking stage
event. The opening word: ‘Merdre!’ It overturned cultural conventions and norms. A parody of Macbeth.
Precursor to Dada, Surrealism and Absurd.

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) Influenced by symbolic poets. Clash between the modern and the
traditional; juxtaposed different stylistic elements – modern imagery and traditional forms. His play, La
Mamelles de Tiresias: an early example of surrealism.
Dream novels of Joyce and Kafka
Silent film and comedy
Verbal nonsense of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Francois Rabelais

Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) Rejected realism in theatre; called for a return to myth and magic. Theatre of
cruelty. Ionesco’s anti-theatre? Surreal, illogical, confictless, plotless.

Martin Esslin (1918-2002)

Theatre critic and drama scholar
Hungarian-Austrian
Majored in English and philosophy at the U of Vienna
Refuge in England. BBC producer/head of BBC radio drama division
The Theatre of the Absurd (1962): coined the phrase ‘absurd drama/theatre’
Absurd Drama (1965) / The Peopled Wound: The Work of Harold Pinter (1970) / Artaud (1976) / The Age of
Television (1981)

Eugene Ionesco 1909-1994

Romanian; wrote in French.
Better theorist than playwright ?
Like Brecht, I. saw the world as an object of ridicule and pain. Early plays were centered on this paradox.
Popular plays. Stereotyped characters; illogical words; long jokes; overwritten dialogue.
Kenneth Tynan (1958) in ‘London Observer’: I. has no message, no commitment! Harsh criticism. Why?
Tynan was a narrow advocate for social realism in theatre, holding Sartre and Brecht as his examples of
dramatic purposefulness.

Kenneth Tynan encouraged British realists like John Osborne and Arnold Wesker.
E.I. bothered to give a response to Tynan and thus built up a philosophy of the absurd. His reply, pub. In ‘The
Observer’ became a manifesto of the absurd:
“a work of art has nothing to do with doctrine… it adopts its own means of directly apprehending the real.”
Social realism was only one level at which to apprehend reality, and itself an inadequate one.
I’s concern is to express the absence of meaning in life . His plays center on his typically innocent but sensitive
anti-hero figures who show man’s brave but hopeless attempt to bear some responsibility, even inspire some
compassion, for the pointless position in which he finds himself

Eugene Ionesco – Amédée: Or How to Get Rid of It

 The two lines of Amedee’s play, “It wont do by itself,” need for action for something to happen/meaning
to be achieved
 Central image of the play as the corpse
 Corpse, negative, dead, decaying, an image of corruption
 2 ghosts from the past
 A sad play about Amedee’s and Madeline’s marriage, the love that died 15 years ago
 Mushrooms, stifling atmosphere
 Characters tired of living, bitter, disappointed
 The root of their incompatibility with the ghosts, the fundamental misunderstanding – Amedee,
idealistic, hopeful artist – Madeline, unimaginative, materialistic, sensible
 Opposed natures, social realist & aestheticism
 Amedee “we are happy in a house of glass, of light” & Madeline “House of brass, of night” – the
essence of the play
 Amedee repeating Madeline’s words, he yields
 Not a naturalistic play, they do not talk, the image of the corpse instead
 Unaware of they themselves created that corpse
 Attachment to the corpse, Madeline looking at its eyes
 A flying with the corpse after the suffocating feeling, evades a resolution relief?

Samuel Beckett – Krapp’s Lost Tape

 Autonomy, purity, prophetic vision  Beckett is a minimalist, but Krapp is still a
 Krapp’s irony and mockery distinct character
 Modernist theatre about theatre  The tape recorder records voice, lets the
 TS Elliott -> objective & correlative, present remember the past
modernist drama lacks  Analysis of memories, what is true as
 Characterized by nonsense, crap! slippery concept, reality is what you deem
 Absence of stable political agenda true in the moment
 After WWII, no sense on talking about any  Physically imaging of memory
kind of topic  Dualism, Beckettian motif, himself and the
 Nonsense, residential, elegiac man that he remembers
 Repetition, alienation, lack of  Memory imagined as a large tape recorder,
communication we see it, the moment her turns it on, he
 Disembodies speeches remembers it
 Krapp, mediated identity, parody of  How the memory functions and self is
sensibility oriented
 The role silence plays  Comic ironies in trying to locate the right
 Flashbacks, cinematic from brought to wheel, winding and rewinding, dual of the
dramatic form rememberer and memory, objectifying
 No plot but tragic conflict, from outside memory, something new Beckett does
events to an inner consciousness of a man  The voice coming up as a different character
 A play which embodies memory,  Why the last? His farewell to love
dislocations of time, Krapp choosing the  Dual consciousness, a dialogue between the
cassette past
  Conversing with the traumatic past as  Which one is the master? Yew will, but the
another character memory
 Hiding place of the memories as the tape  All that he is left with is his memories
recorder, agency in pulling out whatever  Layers of surface
Krapp wants
Maeterlinck – The Tragical Daily Life
Stillness of everyday life -> tragedy “Pinteresque” language, and his silences
“Static Drama” like a motionless tableau, landscape 2 kinds of silence: Literal silence, no words &
words are used not for communication
Memory, time & communication
Talking in order to not reveal the truth within them,
Jewish writer, holocaust mentality
Pinter’s characters as liars, mendacity
Minimalist, never didactive
Guarding yourself, Pinter’s holocaust mentality
His use of language, repetition, tautology
Pinter’s plays, no common ground & no shared time

Harold Pinter – Landscape

 What is reality, Pinter saying everyone has their own reality, if you remember something, that is your
reality
 Reconstructing of memory as reconstructing reality
 Duff in constant need of being conformed by Beth but doesn’t get it
 Diverging in their incompatible outlooks on life
 Beth, creating a landscape, like an impressionist painting, sensual, romantic
 Duff, rooted in the coarseness of his everyday life
 Two divergent characters, incompatible characters, sharing physical space but no emotionality
 Silences as pulling the strings of memory
 Beth as the landscape painter
 Beth’s relation to time, a peculiar dimension
 Memories as unverifiable guides to past, a dramatic presence that is real
 Beth reshaping her time
 Her ability to fuse past and present while thinking of the future
 Notion of duration; past, present & future are not separate, fused in our minds
 Lyricism, sensuality -> reliving them
 Beth stuck in that landscape
 Creating minute details, a feminine sensibility contrasted with Duff
 Duff’s images, dog, park, piss, beer
 Duff’s memories closer to the present, doesn’t cut ties with the present, isn’t immersed in the past, needs
a response from Beth
 Beth being safe & Duff insecure
 Their estrangement, isolation
 Cinematic effect in the end

Harold Pinter – Betrayal

 Privileging the audience, we know things  Pauses
they don’t
 Minimalistic dialogue, Pinteresque language
  Timeline, a transformation of cinematic time memories, similar to Beckett Samuel kins of
to the stage – Another way would be static betrayal
drama, like Landscape  Based on Dramatic Irony
 Triangular plot used in comedies  Hard of hearing & hard of understanding as
 Pinter’s excessive interest in time, time as a a style in Pinter’s plays
character, what time does, how it creates  Squash as male toe male solidarity, male
eroticism

Fernando Arrabal

Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, Studied law in Madrid

novelist, poet b. 1932
Lived as an expat in France and wrote in French

Panic Movement
 A collective formed by Arrabal, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor in Paris in 1962. Inspired by
the god Pan – the Greek god famous for his sexual prowess and archetype of virility – and Artaud’s
Theatre of Cruelty, the group concentrated on chaotic happenings containing performance art and
surreal imagery, designed to be shocking.
 Aimed to confront the audience’s despicable passivity and neutralization through the imitative condition
of theatre and abstraction of modern art, through an erasure of distance.

Pataphysique
 Absurdist, pseudo-scientific literary trope invented by French writer Alfred Jarry, that enigmatically
resists being pinned down by a simple definition.
 Branch of philosophy or science that examines imaginary phenomena beyond metaphysics.
 Science of imaginary solutions.
 It plays with conventional concepts and interpretations of reality.
 College de Pataphysique: a society committed to learned and useless research.

Arrabal spent three years as a member of Andre Breton’s surrealist group:

Arrabal’s theatre is a wild, brutal, cacophonous, and joyously provocative world. It is a dramatic carnival
in which the carcass of our advanced civilizations is barbecued over the spits of a permanent revolution.
He is the artistic heir of Kafka’s lucidity and Jarry’s humour; in his violence, Arrabal is related to Artaud.
He is deeply political and merrily playful. Both revolutionary and bohemian.

Arrabal’s contribution to the Absurd

Central eye: a child’s perspective
Uncomprehending eyes of childlike simplicity
A’s characters fail to understand the existence of a moral law; like children, they suffer the cruelty of the world
as a meaningless affliction.
Moral Laws ?
The Automobile Graveyard ---- limits of moral laws? From kindness to prostitution?
The Two Executioners ---- Conventional morality is directly attacked as self-contradictory.
Subordination/insubordination/rebellion/loyalty/obedience ???
Preoccupation with the problem of goodness – the relationship between love and cruelty.

Debt to Beckett
Arrabal questions all accepted ethical standards from the standpoint of an innocent who would be only too
eager to accept them if only he could understand them.
Reminiscent of Beckett’s tramps in Waiting for Godot.
Arrabal often expresses his deep admiration for Beckett.

Arthur Adamov 1908-1970

 Born in Russia. Lived in France.
 Avant-garde writer and major playwright of the absurd.
 Armanian. Educated in Germany, Switzerland and France.
 Associated with the surrealist circles in the 1920s.
 Edited a periodical, Discontinuite, and wrote poetry.

1938: Suffered a nervous breakdown, later wrote his autobiography – ‘The Confession’ – that revealed his
tortured conscience obsessed with a terrifying sense of alienation. This prepared his personal, neurotic stage for
his drama.

*Strongly influenced by Strindberg (whose mental crisis he identified with ) and Kafka.
*Began writing plays in 1947.

The Confession
Opens with a brilliant statement of the metaphysical anguish that forms the basis of Existentialist literature and
the Theatre of the Absurd:
What Is there? I know first of all that I am. But who am I? All I know of myself is that I suffer. And if I
suffer it is because at the origin of myself there is mutilation, separation.
I am separated. What I am separated from – I cannot name it. But I am separated.

In a footnote Adamov adds:

Formerly it was called God. Today it no longer has any name.

A deep sense of alienation, the feeling that time weighs on him ‘with its enormous liquid mass, with all its dark
power’, a deep feeling of passivity – these are the symptoms of his spiritual sickness.
It is in dreams and in prayer that the writer of this haunting confession seeks escape – in dreams that are ‘the
great silent movement of the soul through the night’; in prayer that is the ‘desperate need of man, immersed in
time, to seek refuge in the only entity that could save him, the projection outward from himself of that in him
which partakes of eternity.’

PROFESSOR TARANNE
 1951; turning point in Adamov’s development as a playwright.
 Transcription of a dream/nightmare.
 Without an attempt to ‘give it a general meaning, to prove anything’. Everything that happened to
Taranne happened to Adamov himself. The only difference: Instead of shouting “I am Professor
Taranne”, he exclaimed, “I am the author of La Parodie”.
 In transcribing an actual dream, he was forced to cross a decisive threshold: For the first time in one of
his plays, he named an actual place, a place existing in the real world – Belgium. (“This looks like a
trifle but it was the first time that I emerged from the no man’s land of poetry and dared to call things by
their name.”)
 Play – Fraud unmasked? Or … An innocent man confronted by a monstrous conspiracy of
circumstances engineered to destroy his claims?
 Hero: Active scholar? Fraud? Respectable citizen? Exhibitionist?

Adamov’s development from a tormented, deeply

neurotic individual to a highly respected militant of
Man of immense erudition.
the left, is one of the most fascinating and best-
documented case histories in European literature. Translator of Jung, Dostoevski, Strindberg, Gogol,
Gorki, Chekhov…
His early absurdist plays exorcised his neurosis, so
that he gradually became able to deal with the real Author of a book on Strindberg; compiler of an
world. anthology on the Paris Commune.
Archetypal Paris bohemian. Friend of Antonin Artaud; liberated him from the
asylum.

Arthur Adamov – Professor Taranne

 Russian, 1908, wealthy family, left Russia when 4 years old and brought to France, then education in
Switzerland and Germany, 16 years old, surrealist circle in Paris
 Existential/mental crisis, “identity mutilated/separated”
o Deep sense of alienation in his book “The Confession,” passivity, his “illness”
o Seeking to find escape in dreams and prayers
 o Crisis of faith as crisis of language
 A nightmare he had, Professor Taranne
 Doesn’t like realism but naming Belgium
 The ending, shattering of the self-image

Anna Deavere Smith – Twilight Los Angeles 1992

Non-fictional realism Post-modern context the playwright not
inserting her voice
Peter Weiss on document theatre
Race, pauses, truth and justice in the US,
Reportage, captured interviews, leaving some
questions, not giving answers
parts out
Post-modern work but politically purposefully?
Post-Modern play, moving away from macro-
narrative Subverts all discourses on American identity,
America as a melting pot, Smith subverting that,
Her search for US identity
impossible myth
What is reality?
America as a mosaic, also deconstructed,
Fragmentation and juxtaposition rather than fragmentation
unity
Micro-narratives in opposition of the centered
Grand narrative and hegemonic discourse power
rejected