Theatrical Styles

Collected lecture/discussion notes. Some parts are very fragmented, but offered here as a study aid, not a primary learning source. Citations are lost. None of the thoughts are original.

Theatrical Styles:
    Presentational vs. Representational

• Realism
• Romanticism
• Neoclassicism
• Naturalism
• Expressionism
• Impressionism
• Symbolism
• Theatricalism

Theatrical styles:

Illusionism: 19th century to present

• -Realism: 19th century attempt to give illusion of reality.
  • Focused on special effects, spectacle
  • Generally not a critical posture
• -Naturalism: late 19th century
  • Followup to positivism - art is history; life is determined by heredity, environment and economics; theatre should show how it works.
  • Focused on seamier side of life, poor, downtrodden, tragedy-prone, and criminal.

20th Century reacts against illusionism:

• Symbolism: not popular but influential
  • -There's got to be more to life than phenomena; tended toward idealism, romanticism and spiritualism.
  • -Very poetic. Celebrations of the "beautiful and sublime"
  • -Plays are very spare, literary, "intellectual" and often difficult to understand.
  • -Poets making aesthetic statements of beauty.
• Expressionism: Originated in post-WWI Germany
  • -Generally focused upon subjective reality-the reality as perceived by one figure.
  • -Tended toward distortion, grotesqueness
  • -Became politicised: central figure was oppressed, therefore viewed oppressive world as distorted and grotesque.
  • -Artists making more political statements.
• Theatre of Cruelty: originated by Artaud; not popular but influential. 1920s.
  • -Theatre essentially as ritual-like experience in which spectator contacts his own psyche, shocking usually, sometimes brutally aggressive. Attempt to alter spectator through experience of the play.
• Absurdism: post WWII grouping of writers.
  • Generally illustrates futility of all human activity and its menainglesness. Celebrates or explores the fragility of meaning in human intercourse and challenges human explanations for phenomena.
  • -Product of surrealism and late 40s European disillusionment with WWII (similar to earlier dadaism)
  • -Comparable to abstract expressionsim, new music, John Cage, San Francisco poets, beat movement.

Current styles

• No strong coherence; too early to tell what is most influential. No compelling manifestos.
• Lots of dipping into old styles.
• Current heavy dipping into tech, special effects, cenematic time blending, narrative style story telling, avoidance of heavy psychological realism.
• Revivals are overproduced.

Symbolism:

Express man's inner suffering, exploration of mind and mind's manner of defining reality.

Expressionism:

Revolt against objective view of world (as in symbolism); reaction to mechanization and dehumanizaiton.

1. Dramatization of subjective aspects of character (soliloquoy)
2. Building a climax through sound, movement, color
3. Stylization of acting and staging
4. Generalization of character

Existentialism:

Man defined not by environment and heredity, but by his choices (choices being the one element distinguishing him from lower forms of life). Generally characterized by the hero's opposition to prevailing social direction.

Absurdists:

Breakdown of communication, confusion, no way for man to assert identity and become heroic through doing so. Emphasis upon banality of life.