20th Century Western Theatre: Trends and Movements
Traditional Theatre of Court
France
Two prominent French authors of this period, Giraudoux and Anouilh, drew inspiration from historical and mythological sources. Jean Giraudoux, a novelist, playwright, and essayist, possessed a lyrical style, a sharp sense of humor, and a penchant for grand narratives, as seen in his Trojan War fantasia. His tragedy, La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu (The Trojan War Will Not Take Place), explores the dominance of fate over human intentions. Jean Anouilh followed in Giraudoux’s footsteps, employing brilliant and skillful stagecraft to depict the futile struggle between personal ideals and societal impositions. Their works reflect a tragic and pessimistic vision of life, protesting against injustices. Anouilh’s Antigone offers a modern take on the classic theme of rebellion against authority.
England
George Bernard Shaw, with his witty and vibrant style, criticized the prejudices, hypocrisy, and selfishness of English society. While not a formal innovator, his most successful work, Pygmalion, cleverly reinterprets the classic myth of the creator falling in love with his creation. J.B. Priestley is notable for his innovative treatment of time. His dramas, featuring chronological jumps, revolve around personal and social frustrations, often shrouded in an atmosphere of mystery and pathos. An Inspector Calls exposes the vices of a society willing to sacrifice individuals to maintain its well-being. In Eden End, the audience witnesses the characters’ disillusionment as their hopeful dreams confront a bleak future.
United States
Eugene O’Neill, after a diverse and adventurous youth as a sailor, actor, and reporter, turned to playwriting during a period of convalescence from tuberculosis. His work often features modernized Greek myths and biblical narratives, incorporating elements of psychoanalysis and poetic realism with symbolic undertones. In Mourning Becomes Electra, he reimagines the American Civil War as a new Trojan War, fueled by hatred and familial destruction.
Avant-Garde Theatre
The crisis in Europe during the interwar period gave rise to several theatrical movements:
- Epic Theatre: Characterized by social commentary and innovative staging, it aimed to create a distance between the audience and the performance, encouraging critical reflection rather than emotional immersion.
- Theatre of the Absurd: This movement took the existentialist notion of life’s meaninglessness to its extreme, employing absurd plots, empty characters, and both dramatic and comedic tones to confront the audience with the inherent absurdity of existence.
Theatre of the Absurd
This movement delves into the existential absurdity of the human condition. Separated from religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, humanity finds itself adrift, its actions becoming meaningless. The Theatre of the Absurd pushes this further, abandoning logic and reason to present the audience with pure absurdity through nonsensical plots and hollow characters. This movement originated in France with playwrights like Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett.
Independent Theatre
From the 1950s onwards, numerous independent theatre groups emerged in Europe and America, fostering diverse and experimental performances. This movement is characterized by:
- Emphasis on Performance over Text: The text often becomes a product of collective creation, with the performance taking center stage.
- Preference for Light, Comic, and Innovative Pieces: These productions often convey messages of individual and collective liberation.
- Breaking Down the Fourth Wall: The traditional separation between stage and audience is blurred, encouraging interaction and sometimes involving spectators in the action.
- Multimedia Integration: Visual and sound elements are incorporated to engage audiences accustomed to cinema, television, and large-scale spectacles.
- Versatile Actors: Performers are required to master various artistic skills, including music, dance, and more.
Existential Theatre
Luigi Pirandello
Pirandello’s challenging life, marked by economic hardship and his wife’s mental illness, influenced the pessimism and dark humor present in his works. He questioned the consistency of reality and absolute truths, portraying humanity as condemned to alienation and loneliness. These themes position him as a precursor to existentialism and the Theatre of the Absurd. His most famous works include Six Characters in Search of an Author and Right You Are (If You Think So). The latter challenges the very notion of objective truth, suggesting that each individual constructs their own reality but has no right to impose it on others.
Eugène Ionesco
Ionesco, who spent much of his life in Paris, wrote primarily in French. His plays explore profound existential questions, often using irony and pessimism to create a sense of despair. The Bald Soprano is a nonsensical farce about isolation, featuring two couples and a firefighter engaged in meaningless conversation. The characters are unable to communicate because they are incapable of thought, having lost their individuality and becoming interchangeable. The Chairs serves as a metaphor for loneliness and despair, depicting an elderly couple isolated on a deserted island attempting to deliver a message of salvation to humanity before committing suicide. The stage, however, fills with empty chairs, symbolizing the futility of their efforts. In Rhinoceros, Ionesco explores the theme of dehumanization as a city’s inhabitants, driven by selfishness, transform into rhinoceroses. Only one individual resists, though tempted to succumb to the herd mentality.