20th Century Spanish Theater

Posted on Oct 9, 2024 in Latin

Commercial Theater

General Trends and Relevant Authors

a) High Comedy

High comedy offers a mild critique of bourgeois moral conflicts, featuring luxurious settings and careful language. Its leader was Jacinto Benavente, Nobel laureate in 1922. His best-known works include Vested Interests, The Unloved, and The Butterfly Flew Over the Sea.

b) Poetic Drama

This mixed-romantic, historical drama uses modern language. Prominent writers include Francisco Villaespesa (Doña María de Padilla), Eduardo Marquina (The Daughters of the Cid, Teresa of Jesus), and the Machado brothers, Manuel and Antonio (Lola is Going to Ports), whose works delve into character psychology.

c) Comic Theater

Comic theater depicts customs in a humorous way. Notable representatives include:

  • Carlos Arniches: Known for Madrid-themed farces and operettas like The Saint of Isidro, The Highlands of Roses, and The Miracles of Wages. He also excels in grotesque tragedy, blending tragic and comic elements, as seen in Miss Trevélez.
  • Álvarez Quintero brothers: Focused on Andalusian customs, exemplified by The Joyful Genius.
  • Pedro Muñoz Seca: Created the Astrakhan, a humorous genre based on obvious jokes and absurd situations. His most relevant work is The Revenge of Don Mendo.

Innovative Theater

Influenced by European writers and avant-garde movements, these authors created groundbreaking works. This includes playwrights from the Generation of ’98, the Generation of ’27, and others.

Innovative and Marginalized Theater of the Generation of ’98

Miguel de Unamuno

Unamuno composed philosophical dramas, influenced by classical tragedy, with minimal action. Notable works include Phaedra and The Other.

Azorín

Obsessed with time, Azorín incorporated surrealist techniques, approaching the unreal and symbolic. His most interesting work is The Invisible. Other works include Old Spain and Brandy, Mucho Brandy.

Valle-Inclán

The most representative author of this period, Valle-Inclán’s theater can be divided into three stages:

  • Mythic Cycle: A critical and aggressive phase, with works like Comedy Barbaric and Divine Words, set in a sordid, corrupt rural Galicia.
  • Farce Cycle: Grotesque and caricature-driven, featuring puppet-like characters in ridiculous situations. Works include Farce of the Head of the Dragon, La Marquesa Rosalinda, Italian Farce of Love with the King, and Farce and Rodeo.
  • Grotesque Cycle: Comprising the trilogy The Horns of Don Friolera, Bohemian Lights, and The Captain’s Daughter. This cycle features esperpento, an aesthetic emphasizing the grotesque and deforming reality to reveal social degradation. Key features of esperpento include: the use of contrasts, mixing tragic and comic scenes; deformation and caricature of reality; creation of absurd and exaggerated situations; use of irony and satire; and rich language, stylizing different registers.

Theater of the Generation of ’27

The Generation of ’27 adopted a combative stance, aiming to create a new audience by bringing theater to the people. Main authors include:

  • Rafael Alberti: Uninhabited Man, The Night Eyesore, and War in the Prado Museum.
  • Pedro Salinas: Judith and the Tyrant and The Director.
  • Miguel Hernández: Who Has Seen and Who Sees You and Shadow of What They Were, and the vindictive The Farmer of More Air.
  • Alejandro Casona: Again, the Devil, Our Natasha, and his most important work, The Lady of the Dawn.
  • Max Aub: Crime and Mirror of Greed.
  • Federico García Lorca: The most representative author, Lorca experimented with various genres:
    • Puppet shows and earlier works: The Curse of the Butterfly, Mariana Pineda, and puppet plays like Tragicomedy of Don Cristobal and Rosita and The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife.
    • Avant-garde theater: The Public and Passing Five Years, critiquing conventional theater and societal norms.
    • Tragedies: Works with female protagonists in rural settings, including Blood Wedding, Yerma, Doña Rosita the Spinster, and The House of Bernarda Alba, exploring themes of freedom, repression, and morality.

Other Playwrights

  • Jacinto Grau: The Prodigal Son, The Count Alarcos, The Trickster is Not Mockery, and his most praised work, The Lord of Pygmalion.
  • Ramón Gomez de la Serna: Explored human frustrations.

The Experimental Novel (1960-1975)

The experimental novel arose from the exhaustion of social realism and was influenced by European authors like Proust, Joyce, and Kafka, as well as Latin American writers like Vargas Llosa and García Márquez. It is a formal and opaque novel, difficult to read and enjoyed by a minority. The renewal of narrative forms affects many aspects:

  • Argument: The story becomes increasingly irrelevant, with minimal action.
  • Narrative Point of View: Perspectivism is employed, with the narrator using different viewpoints and grammatical persons.
  • Characters: Characters diminish in importance, with techniques like interior monologue and free indirect style used to explore their inner lives.
  • Time: Non-linear storytelling with jumps in time, flashbacks, and prolepsis.
  • Space: Becomes imprecise.
  • External Structure: Chapters shift from sequences, and a kaleidoscopic technique is used internally, presenting multiple stories simultaneously.
  • Narrative Technique: The argument loses its central role, with digressions and mixed tones.
  • Style: Innovations include altered syntax, invented words, elimination of punctuation, and arbitrary typography.

Various age groups coincided in this renewal. Key authors and works include:

  • Luis Martín Santos: Time of Silence pioneered this trend.
  • 1966 saw three impactful novels: Juan Goytisolo’s Marks of Identity, Juan Marsé’s Last Evenings with Teresa, and Miguel Delibes’ Five Hours with Mario.
  • Generation of ’40: Delibes (Five Hours with Mario), Cela (San Camilo 1936), and Torrente Ballester (La Saga/Fuga de J.B.).
  • Generation of ’50s: Juan Goytisolo (Marks of Identity).
  • Generation of ’60s: Juan Benet (Will Come Back to Region, A Winter Trip) and Juan Marsé (Last Evenings with Teresa, The Dark History of the Premium Montse, If They Say They Fell).
  • Generation of ’70s: Many realistic narrators from the ’50s evolved into experimental forms, including Juan Goytisolo, Benet, Marsé, Ana María Matute, Carmen Martín Gaite, Jesús Fernández Santos, José Manuel Caballero Bonald, and Juan García Hortelano. New narrators also emerged, notably Luis Goytisolo (The Anger of Achilles, Theory of Knowledge) and Francisco Umbral (Mortal and Pink, Trilogy of Madrid).