Beginning of Realism and Naturalism in Theatre 1875

Beginning of Realism and Naturalism in Theatre 1875 -1900

Overview of the Time Period • 1881 - Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company • 1884 - Labor Day is considered a national holiday • 1887 - Anne Sullivan begins teaching Helen Keller. • 1896 - H. L. Smith takes the 1 st X-ray picture. • 1900 - Hawaii becomes a territory of the Untied States.

Ideas Dominating the Century • Darwin--Origin of Species. • Freudian psychology. • Scientific methodology can apply to human problem solving. • Lower and middle classes were now seen as heroes.

Realism Defined • Realism is commonly defined as a concern for fact or reality and a rejection of the impractical and creative thinker • People move and talk in a manner similar to that of our everyday behavior. • The stage seen as an environment, rather than as an acting platform. • The style has been dominant for the last 120 years.

Realism Defined • Versimilitude – appearance of truth • Realist theater moved away from exaggerated acting styles and overblown melodrama to create theatrical productions truer to the lives of the people in the audience. • Likeness to life is realism's goal - free of conventions and abstractions • Every aspect of theatre was fashioned into apparent lifelikeness.

Influences of Realism • Developed from earlier forms: melodramas, spectacle plays, comedy, operas, and vaudeville. • Rejected neoclassical form through 18 thcentury sentimental dramas and comedies and continued in the artistic rebelliousness of Romantic drama. • “Scientific method" would allow an "objective" presentation of the nature of relationships or the ills of society.

Influences • Realism's early phase was Romantic using spectacular theatrical innovations such as realistic scenery, box sets, attention to detail, and electric lighting • As the 19 th century progressed elements of social, and political ideas, new playwrighting structure, and scientific inquiry developed the style

Playwrights • The major realist playwrights treated subjects of middle-class life in everyday, contemporary settings, featuring characters that face circumstances akin to those of average people • Early - Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw • Later – O’Neil, Miller, Williams, Wilson, Simon

Henrik Ibsen “Father of Realistic Drama” Ibsen around 1870. • Norwegian playwright 1828 -1906 • Henrik Ibsen launched the movement in 1879 with plays whose psychological detail and social concern other playwrights soon began to emulate across Europe.

Ibsen {cont. } • Subjects of Ibsen’s plays were war, business, question of women’s rights, corruption, and hereditary disease. • Ibsen changed play format; no more soliloquies, asides, etc. Everything was motivated; it contained psychological motivation, the environment, and also influenced characters.

Ibsen {cont. } • Earliest plays were more melodramatic • Known best for his eight plays written between 1877 and 1890. Some of which were: Ghosts, Hedda Gabbler, A Doll’s House, and An Enemy of the People. Ibsen’s older days.

A Doll’s House “There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man's law, as though she were not a woman but a man. --HENRIK IBSEN

George Bernard Shaw • Famed as a playwright, he wrote sixty-three plays. Later works in realistic style. • He was a strong advocate for socialism and women's rights, and a vocal enemy of formal education. • One of his influences is Henrik Ibsen.

Anton Chekhov • The Seagull -1896. • His brief playwriting career produced four classics of the realistic repertoire, including The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters. • Deeply complex character relationships and developied plots and themes between the lines,

Naturalism • Concurrent but essentially independent realistic movement. • Naturalism is of crucial importance in fine art, literature and drama. • Plays were based on ideas found in Darwinism: human beings are abiological phenomena, entirely determined by their heredity and environment.

Naturalism • It was the attempt to mimic the form of the everyday world without the intervention of preconceived ideas or conventions. • An attempt to present human reality without any appearance of dramatic convention. • All characters were the product of their environment; decisions were made based on what nature had caused.

Naturalism • • Playwrights: August Strindberg (Sweden) Emile Zola (Russia) Rejected the elements of conventional dramatic structure, such as climaxes and conclusions. Instead, theatre was to offer an unadulterated "slice of life. "

Johann August Strindberg • Swedish writer, playwright, and painter. • Known as one of the fathers of modern theatre and one of the pioneers of the Modern European stage. • Strindberg was admired by the working classes as a radical writer. • His best-known play from his Naturalism period is Miss Julie.

Emile Zola • Émile François Zola (French) 1840 – 1902 • Important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism. Rougon-Macquart cycle (18711893) about the suffering of the Parisian working-class • Nana, about a young Parisian prostitute, took the reader to the world of sexual exploitation • Important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. "I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. - EZ

American Playwrights • Since the United States is a relatively young country, its major dramatic development took place during realism's rise to prominence. • Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and other playwrights wrote works that reveal the social and personal characteristics and issues of America • Their works helped make realism the basic language of the American theatre today.

Bibliography • Mc. Leish, Kenneth. “Naturalism. ” Guide to Human Thought. 1995. Bloomsbury. 22 Feb. 2007 <http: //www. bloomsbury. com/RC/etail. asp? Entry. ID=1 02523&bid=2>. • “Sparknotes: A Doll’s House. ” Sparknotes. Summer 2006. 2 Feb. 2007 <http: //www. sparknotes. com/it/ollhouse/acts. html>. • Trumbull, Eric W, Dr. Introduction to Theatre. Course home page. 19 Oct. 2002. Northern Virgina Community College. 2 Feb. 2007 <http: //novaonline. nv. cc. va. us/li/pd 130 et/ealism. htm>. • http: //highered. mcgrawhill. com/sites/0767430069/student_view 0/part 3/chapte r 8/true_or_false. html