20th and 21st Century Spanish Theater
A. The Theater in the Franco Era
The Theater of Exile
Many playwrights developed dramatic activity outside Spain. The most outstanding work (with the theme of war) is Night of War in the Prado Museum by Rafael Alberti. Other important authors of the theater-in-exile are Max Aub and Alejandro Casona.Bourgeois Drama
This theater was influenced by Jacinto Benavente’s high comedy. It features perfect construction with touches of tenderness, humor, and kindness. Its function is to entertain and educate. Its main theme is love, and its public belongs to the bourgeoisie.Successful Commercial Theater
Post-war commercial theater has a name: Alfonso Paso. His public is the middle class, and the author identifies with it. He wrote over 200 different dramatic models, mostly comedies. Other authors who stand out at this stage are A. Gala, J. Salom, and Ana Diosdado.Modern Literature or Humor
Related to commercial theater, the post-war successor creates a strong body of farce and bourgeois comedy with touches of humor, embodied by Alfonso Paso and Miguel Mihura. Enrique Jardiel Poncela stands out, seeking a theater with universal humor, absurd situations, witty dialogue, and ambiguous signals that make the viewer reflect. Mihura incorporates the improbable and mixes verbal humor with situational humor. His work uses the association of improbable elements, exaggeration, distortion of reality, fantasy, and imagination.Realistic Tragedy: From Existential to Social Drama
The premiere of History of a Staircase (1949) marked a change in Spanish theater. With this work comes realistic drama, which speaks of reality on stage based on a context, a plot, and characters. The two most important representatives are Antonio Buero Vallejo and Alfonso Sastre. Antonio uses a theater in which the author obeys some social mandates. His characters represent an attempt at a union between realism and symbolism. Sastre is a supporter of a theater of social agitation. He is a playwright whose political-social complaint stands out over the artistic.Experimental Theater
A group of authors sought to connect realism with the scenic avant-garde of the world. Heirs to the theater of the absurd and cruelty, with a thick epic accent. Fernando Arrabal and Francisco Nieva stand out. Arrabal uses short, primitive, and humorous language reminiscent of the theater of the absurd. His search is based on the formal, spatial, and gestural, and incorporates surrealist elements into the language. The themes are religion, sexuality, politics, love, and death. Francisco Nieva supports Arrabal’s regenerative and liberating theater.
B. The Theater Since Democracy
In this era, many important events take place, such as the approval of the constitution, the attempted coup, Spanish integration into the European Community, and the development of autonomy, which ends the Spanish transition. There is an abundance of works that speak of the civil war and the Franco regime, but above all, the theater’s ‘coming out’ stands out. There is a conflict between the author’s rights and the director’s theater. There is also what is called street theater, which includes parades, processions, and stops, blurring the barrier between the audience and the stage.