20th Century Spanish Theater: From Post-War to Present
The Theater from the Post-War to Present
The situation of the theater after the war faced particular constraints due to censorship and the commercial interests of employers who followed the demands of an innovative bourgeois theater. The public from before 1936 disappeared, as did exiled writers, to which must be added film competition.
1940s Traditional bourgeois theater triumphed, aiming only to entertain the public. However, two other parallel renovating trends emerged:
- Comic Theater: Characterized by improbable, absurd, or ludicrous and humorous plays. This genre played with the possibilities of language, while providing a critical and unconventional view of society. Key authors include Enrique Jardiel Poncela and Miguel Mihura.
- Ideological Theater: A serious and unconventional genre aligned with existential concerns.
1950s This critical theater evolved into Social Realism, encompassing both social and ethical aspects, as well as a more directly political approach. This trend continued into the early 1960s. It maintained its social criticism but incorporated new aesthetic forms, such as symbolic trends or grotesque farce.
1970s New authors and theater groups or companies emerged with a clear experimental avant-garde approach, marking a break with commercial European trends. They embraced theater and drama, seeking new formulas such as theater-show and the mixing of genres. New symbolic languages accompanied by special stage effects highlighted cutting-edge playwrights. Notable figures include Francisco Nieva (The Hot Lead Float, 1971) and Fernando Arrabal (Panic theater, Picnic, 1961).
1980s Freedom of expression allowed for the staging of works silenced during Franco’s regime (Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, etc.). Among the diversity of contemporary trends, some notable works include more traditional pieces on the Civil War (Fernando Fernán Gómez, Bicycles Are for the Summer, 1982), realist works with a periodic or farcical tone (José Luis Alonso de Santos, Get Off the Moor, 1985), and avant-garde experiments and experimental theater groups from the 1970s (La Fura dels Baus).
Miguel Mihura
Miguel Mihura (1906-1977) is one of the most representative figures of Spanish comic theater after the war.
In 1932, he wrote his first play, Three Hats, which presents an unusual humor, absurdity, and nonsense mixed with a certain underlying sadness. However, due to its avant-garde treatment of humor, it was misunderstood in its time and could not be premiered until twenty years later.
Mihura had to resign himself in his later work to tempering the audacity of his ingenuity to adapt to the taste of the theater audience at the time. However, he maintained his amazing humor, his great imagination in dialogue and plots, his use of intricate police entanglements, and his skillful stage resource techniques.
Some of Mihura’s best-known comedies are Peach in Syrup (1958), Maribel and the Strange Family (1959), and Ninette and M. de Murcia (1964).
Antonio Machado
Antonio Machado (1875-1939) presents a path of personal evolution from the modernist trends of his time. Literarily, he began in the style of the Generation of ’98 with Soledades. Galerías. Otros poemas (1907), but with an intimate character that he would always maintain. His symbolist poetry – “the essential word in time” – evoked, through symbols such as “afternoon,” “sleep,” or “the way,” a psychic identification with the landscape and the deep concerns of human beings.
His next book, Campos de Castilla (1912), offers a lyrical vision of the rugged landscape of Soria in tune with the soul of a poet, but also open to social issues such as meditation on the decline of Castile. Machado’s vision coincides with the critical ideas of the Generation of ’98. He also included a group of poems dedicated to Leonor, his young wife who had died prematurely, and Proverbs and Songs, philosophical poetry. His poetic inclination aims to achieve universal communication of deep feelings through a simple, popular language with roots in varied metrics. His favorite stanza was the assonanced silva.
Miguel Delibes
Born in 1920, Miguel Delibes demonstrates a narrative trajectory that largely reflects the various phases through which the Spanish novel has passed since the Civil War. Delibes has always maintained the same ethos and social criticism, and, with his humanistic approach and his love of nature, he has portrayed rural environments and the bourgeois world with great expressive mastery. The Shadow of the Cypress is Long, which won the Nadal Prize in 1947, marked his debut. This work, along with The Road (1950), has a more Christian tone. One of his most important novels is Rats (1962), which offers a stark testimony to the harsh social realities and rural poverty.