History of Catalan Theater: From Medieval to Modern
1. Theatrical Text
1.1 Characteristics of Theatrical Text
Theatrical texts have two levels: the characters’ announcements and the formal approach. These are identified in brackets and with different letters in the text.
– Announced Text: Presented in the form of dialogue. Varieties of text dialogue include:
- Colloquium (specific topic): Between various partners to present conflicting discourses.
- Discussion: Or discourse (speaking for himself) with the same character.
- Soliloquy: In which a person speaks but does so in a single group of characters.
- Section: A short monologue or dialogue which is subtracted from the conventional perception of other characters.
- Lapel Installation: A discourse addressed directly to the audience.
– Beyond the Formal Approach: May be diegetic if referring to the plot, scenic if informing about technical aspects, or dramatic to clarify the attitude that the character should show in that text.
In plays, there is no narrator. The theatrical text also differs from film, where the director decides what the audience sees, alternating with closeup shots.
1.2 Structure of Theatrical Text
Scenes make up units over the acts. The scenes are subdivided into blocks. The number of scenes can vary. The passage from one scene to another is the progression of the plot, usually marked by the entrance or exit of characters or anything that modifies the initial situation (introduction, climax, denouement). The pace of the plot increases until reaching a climax toward the end of the act, maintaining viewer interest in the continuation of dramatic action.
1.3 Elements of Theatrical Text
The dramatic text is intended to be represented. The elements of fiction are specified in the same manner as in narrative or mathematics.
– Action, Time, and Space
In the construction of the theatrical text, we distinguish the tradition that named three units: action, time, and place. Dramatic action can be clear (actually represented), latent (enunciated by a character adjacent to the previous, suggested indirectly), or absent (not performed but implied). Time has the same dramatic gradation in time representation: time really represented, suggested, or indicated by any action which runs the content that is targeted by the characters and what it implies.
– Characters
- Explicit or Implicit: Stated directly or indirectly by the person themselves.
- Verbal or Extraverbal: Words or gestures.
- Present or Absent: If the character shows themself, or if you know them through what other people say.
Regarding the amount and variety of attributes that consist of the characters, they can be:
- Simple or Complex
- Fixed: Have limited possibilities of variation, but not necessarily completely invariant.
- Variable: Present some very marked variations.
- Multiple: The least frequent; characters who have come to different characterizations.
1.4 Principal Dramatic Genres
– Tragedy
Tragedy lies between divine action or noble characters who have to confront an adverse fate that destroys them.
– Comedy
Comedy features characters from reality facing everyday conflicts, in a lighter language and with a critical and satirical intention. Unlike tragedy, comedy has a happy ending. There is high comedy and low comedy.
– Other Genres
- Tragicomedy: Promoted a new form that combined elements of tragedy and comedy.
- Drama: Modernized the tragic conflict in the confrontation between the individual and society. With an unfortunate end, it includes aspects of comedy and is heir to the tragicomedy.
- Opera: Music gave it a tragic or dramatic content.
- Operetta: Characteristic of comedy.
2. Medieval Theater
Spectacular Manifestations
Entertainment by professionals of the time (minstrels) included mime, dance, or music, dramatized songs, and juggling. Great for entertaining, they were viewed with suspicion by the church, reluctantly tolerated, and recommended to be performed by children. Humorous texts were markedly associated with the carnivalesque vision of the world, which also used masks, dances, and costumed characters.
Civilian Rituals were prepared by secular power. The celebrations surrounding power manifested in spectacular and highly ritualized forms.
Character Building was favored by the church. Latin liturgical drama involved priests singing with gestures and minimal set design. It evolved into a more theatrical form and was performed in Catalan. Designed to impress and inspire, the text was only a base from which a representation was created.
Religious Drama was grouped around thematic cycles based on stories from the Old Testament, the biography of Christ, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, and the lives of saints and martyrs.
3. Renaissance and Baroque Theater
3.1 The Renaissance
Renaissance theater arts drew from Medieval forms. Throughout the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, and in some cases still existing (like the Mystery of Elx or Passions), religious theater remained influential. Spanish authors like Joan Timoneda wrote sacramental plays. Secular theater included farces such as Farce den Cornea and courtly theater like the bilingual Catalan dialogues of Joan Heredia (The Vesita). Theater in Latin was practiced by humanists in universities, based on classic comedy and tragedy.
3.2 The Baroque
During the Baroque period, Spanish forms of theater fully penetrated Catalan-speaking territories. Francesc Vicent Garcia wrote profane theater, and Francesc Fontanella‘s pastoral themes were based on Castilian dramatic formulas. Catalan theater was excluded from commercial venues and took refuge in homes or semi-public spaces. Popular forms included:
- Praises (introductions)
- Appetizers (performed between the first and second acts)
- Disappointments (comic opera)
4. Neoclassical Theater
Neoclassical theater rigorously followed the three dramatic units, recovering the formulas of Greco-Roman tragedy and comedy. It emphasized decorum, rejected violence, and maintained the high style.
4.1 Joan Ramis i Ramis
The Minorcan Juan Ramis i Ramis (18th century) wrote Lucretia.
6. Theater of Rebirth
6.1 Frederic Soler
Frederic Soler created a theater of consumption, designed to appeal to new citizen audiences with satirical creations, the gatades, which he signed as Pitarra (Catalan customs drama). He incorporated elements such as sentimental melodrama (based on spectacle and action, with a preponderance of sentimentality) and romantic drama (often using the resources of melodrama). Frederic Soler adapted aspects of drama and romantic comedy with a realistic background.
6.2 Àngel Guimerà
In his first phase, Àngel Guimerà incorporated romantic tragedy in verse; in the second stage, he wrote tragedies in prose, including Sea and Sky, Maria Rosa, Terra Low, and Daughter of the Sea. The social outcast faces a world that tends to destroy them.
7. Modernist Theater
– Theater of Ibsen (Plays of Ideas): Focused on the new individual as a bearer of ideas. His most emblematic work is An Enemy of the People. Regenerationist Author: Joan Puig i Ferreter.
– Theater of Maeterlinck (Symbolist Theater): Drama based on suggestion and the exaltation of poetic mystery. Modernist Author: Santiago Rusiñol.
7.1 Joan Puig i Ferreter
Wrote Enchanted Waters.
7.2 Santiago Rusiñol
Wrote L’alegria que passa and El senyor Esteve, which stimulated a focus on manners.