20th Century Spanish Theater (Up to 1939)
In the early decades of the 20th century, there were several attempts to renew the theater scene, which in the last decades of the previous century had been dominated by the model of realistic drama and the works of José Echegaray.
European theatrical trends were related to innovative efforts like poetic drama, consolidated with the premiere in Paris of The Intruder. Avant-garde groups in Spain sought to create a new concept of drama. However, attempts to renew the drama were not as successful as other theatrical events favored by viewers:
A. Commercial Theater
a. Jacinto Benavente
Faced with the exuberance of Echegaray, Benavente composed works characterized by moderation in the composition of situations and characters, and the meticulous realism of the staging of his plays. He focused on the concerns of his usual audience, the gentry, and had great success with them in the first decades of the century.
b. Comic Theater
This was one of the favorites for the public. It included music, singing, and dancing, and brought together a large variety of genres. In this vein, highlights include the brothers Álvarez Quintero, Pedro Muñoz Seca, and the grotesque tragedies of Carlos Arniches.
c. Theater in Verse
This followed the fleeting fashion of French theater, with the model of Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. It addressed historical issues or employed modernist meters and fantasy. Its main representatives are Eduardo Marquina, Francisco Villaespesa, and the Machado brothers.
B. Attempts at Renewal and Playwrights
The first attempts at stage renewal were carried out, among other dramatists, by Jacinto Grau, who tried various methods, Miguel de Unamuno, with his naked theater, and Azorín, with his alleged anti-realism.
However, Spanish theater of the first decades of the 20th century only reached its peak with the work of Ramón María del Valle-Inclán and Federico García Lorca. They are the ones that achieved the undoubted quality theatrical renewal that many had sought. Their works, besides having a decisive influence on later Spanish drama, are still performed today, increasingly worldwide.
1. Jacinto Benavente
The fertile dramatic production of Jacinto Benavente (172 works) enjoyed the favor of his usual audience, the bourgeoisie. Generally, his plays make up a chronicle, almost always friendly, of the concerns and prejudices of this class, through the use of gentle irony.
His dramas respond to what he himself wrote that the theater should be: a means or instrument of illusion and escape. In all his works, dialogue excels – natural, fluid, tending to the sententious. Benavente replaced narrative action with reference and dialogue, and the climax of his plays always occur offstage or between acts.
Some of his best-known works are:
- Vested Interests (1907) is a farce that develops the theme of the power of money through characters such as Crispin and Leandro, rogues who pretend to be a nobleman and his servant in an imaginary city. In his claim for social advancement, Leandro falls in love with Silvia, daughter of Polichinela, the richest man in town. The latter finally agrees to the marriage as long as no one knows that he too was a rogue.
- The Unloved Woman (1913) fits within the rural drama, which emphasizes the sense of honor. The characters are peasants, and human passions are embodied in their most elementary form, uncontrolled by the rules of urban education. The language attempts to emulate the popular. In this work, there converge, on the one hand, the struggle between passion (Esteban for his stepdaughter Acacia, which he hides from her) and its prohibition due to kinship ties and, on the other, a police intrigue (discovering the murderer of Acacia’s boyfriend). The language is direct and sober.
2. Comic Theater
In the early decades of the 20th century, the comic genre dominated, often accompanied by lyrical elements (music, singing, and dancing). The basic purpose of this theater, which achieved significant box office success, was the entertainment of the public.
Genres of Comic Theater:
Works with Music:
- Operetta: Presents frivolous issues and attaches great importance to visual aspects and cosmopolitan music.
- Revista: A series of almost independent shows, with special emphasis on erotic elements and colorful cosmopolitan environments.
- Vaudeville: Frivolous, light, and spicy comedy, which has a very complex plot.
Works without Music:
- Juguete Cómico: Degeneration of comedy that emphasizes chaos and dispenses with any plausibility.
- Sainete: Based on characters from the popular world of Madrid, it deals with conflicts of love, jealousy, honor, and power.
- Astracán: Genre based on comic absurdity, in which actions, situations, and characters are contingent.
Unamuno and Azorín
Miguel de Unamuno
Coinciding with European renovating currents, Unamuno decided to take the audience into an essential drama, far from stage decoration. His works were not well received by theater companies, as they considered their commercial success unlikely.
Unamuno called for a bare stage, which involved a return to the source of poetic drama. This concept involves the elimination of any effects not directly dependent on the word (sets, costumes, etc.), and also the rhetoric of verbal ornamentation. They involved the reduction of characters to the minimum, the essence of their passions, and the schematic representation of the action. In his work, a fixed pattern is repeated with opposing forces. The dramatic action barely exists and is replaced by the word.
As for the scenery, Unamuno is sparse in his stage directions. If any exist, they are characterized by imprecision and vagueness. Usually, there are indications on the furniture, clothing, and appearance of the characters, as well as the lighting. However, they are referred to important objects that focus on the core of the conflict. He also attaches importance to external movements and, even more so, to those that express moods.
Azorín
He also sought to incorporate Spanish theater into new trends in Europe, especially France. He fought against naturalist aesthetics in theater to include the subconscious, the anti-realist, and the marvelous.
For Azorín, the theater should find “another reality, more subtle, softer, more ethereal” and yet “more consistent, more durable,” in the words of the author. He felt that the themes should be sought in the inner world, in the spirit and imagination. He called this new aesthetic Surrealism.
He advocated the transformation of technical and theatrical structure, considering that the new playwright was disorienting to the public. Three aspects stand out in his renewal:
- Dialogue must contain the character, customs, and peculiarities of the characters. It should approximate spoken dialogue, with all the features present in ordinary conversation (repetitions, setbacks, false starts, etc.).
- Themes: The basic subjects are the pursuit of happiness, time, and death.
- Lighting: He used it in his works to highlight what lies beyond reality. Its temporary absence is used to mark the passage of years.