Spanish Theater After 1939: Trends and Key Playwrights
Spanish Theater After 1939
The postwar theater served two functions: to entertain audiences seeking entertainment and to transmit ideology.
After the war, the Falange and the Church established a tight grip on new works and repertoires. This phenomenon, therefore, developed self-censorship among playwrights.
Theater in Exile
- Alberti, before and after the Civil War, wrote political theater. In The Eyesore, he raises the issue of intolerance of power.
- Max Aub: San Juan was published in 1942. The book presents the story of a contingent of Jewish immigrants fleeing the Nazis in a boat, the “San Juan,” and failing to be received in any port. Its main themes were the disasters of war, loneliness, and the ethics of exile.
- Alejandro Casona: Debuted in Buenos Aires with The Lady of the Dawn, Boat Without a Fisherman, and Trees Die Standing. He was accused of writing for the theater to escape, away from socio-historical circumstances.
The 1940s: Evasion and Humor
Bourgeois comedy is characterized by perfectly constructed works and their insignificance, with doses of humor, tenderness, and kindness. The works are often divided into three acts, have thorough assessments, and their dialogues show stylistic qualities. The theme of love stands out to exalt the family, marriage, and home. It usually demonstrates ideological neutrality, with a moralizing ending. The authors and major works include Jacinto Benavente, “The Devil of the Theater and Snow in May”; José Mª Pemán, “The Will of the Butterfly”; and Joaquín Calvo Sotelo, “Story of a House.”
Humor theater, innovative, by Enrique Jardiel Poncela and Miguel Mihura, stands out. Mihura’s most representative work is Three Top Hats, released in 1952, twenty years after it was written. It’s a comedy that satirizes the routine and mediocrity of the bourgeoisie in the provinces and the equally miserable life of vaudeville. Two worlds and two conceptions of life face each other: the prosaic and bourgeois life of Dionisio and the poetic life and freedom of Paula.
The 1950s: Realistic Theater
The realistic theater attempted to revive the Spanish scene and oppose the dictatorship. The works raised issues such as social injustice, exploitation, the life of the middle and lower classes, the human condition of the downtrodden, and the marginalized.
Outstanding playwrights include:
- Alfonso Sastre
- Lauro Olmo
- Martín Recuerda, with a sharp documentary, critical sign
- Antonio Buero Vallejo. In his work, we can distinguish three stages:
Existential Stage
In Story of a Staircase (1949), the protagonists are four young people, neighbors on the top floor of an old house: Urbano, a factory worker; Fernando, a stationery store clerk; Carmina; and Elvira. The work reflects a gray world where frustrations are repeated, not only by the weight of the social environment but also by personal weakness. In 1950, he wrote In the Burning Darkness, which raises the struggle for truth and freedom.
Social Drama
A Dreamer for a People and The Concert of San Ovidio (1962) denounced the exploitation of a group of blind people in Paris in the years before the French Revolution.
Innovation Stage
Perhaps the most striking technical innovation is what has been called the “immersion effect,” a vision of the scene by the viewer through the characters. Works: The Sleep of Reason, Arrival of the Gods, The Foundation (1974).
The 1960s and 1970s: Formal Renewal
Within the commercial theater, comedies by Mihura, Jaime de Armiñán, and Ana Diosdado are succeeding. Among the new, Antonio Gala stands out. In 1963, he premiered his first play, The Green Fields of Eden. During the seventies, he enjoyed the favor of the public with works such as Rings for a Lady, The Harps Hung on the Trees, and Why Do You Run, Ulysses? He later released works like The Little Hotel and Seneca and the Benefit of the Doubt.
Experimentation
As with narrative and poetry, new authors consider social realism finished and seek new proposals that are characterized by their aesthetic opposition to the “realistic,” but in many cases, the works are not exempt from social criticism.
Perhaps the most peculiar is the theater by Fernando Arrabal. Imagination, surreal elements, child language, and a break with logic are the characteristics of Arrabal’s first set of works, for example, Tricycle (1953). Exiled in France since 1955, his works would fall within the so-called “panic stage” and intended to be a total drama that celebrates creative freedom and seeks to challenge and shock the viewer. His works include The Labyrinth (1956), Hey, Patria, My Affliction (1975), etc.
In the theater scene in the last years of Franco, one cannot miss the mention of the phenomenon of independent theater. Under this label are included groups like The Goliardos, Horsefly, Free Theater in Madrid, Joglars, Els Comediants, and La Fura dels Baus in Barcelona, Coven in Bilbao, etc. The “independence” of the theater meant a rejection of conservative entertainment through the development of a peculiar beauty and a self-financing attempt.
Since 1975
The dictatorship ended, and censorship was removed, seeming to open a promising stage for the theater. But, by contrast, it has been in recent years when the crisis of the Spanish theater has become more evident.
An important phenomenon of the Spanish theater after 1975 has been the creation of theatrical institutions that rely on official agencies, both state, autonomous regions, or municipalities. Thus, in 1978, the National Drama Center was created, and later the National Center for New Performing Trends and the National Classical Theater Company.
Nieva is probably the most important experimental dramatist of the second half of the century. While writing plays since the fifties, he was not represented on a regular basis until after Franco’s death. Linked to the literary group ‘postista’ of the late forties and early fifties, his theater is going to walk the path of the surreal, the dreamlike, the fantastic, and the imaginative. He shares with Artaud’s idea of a liberating and cathartic drama, which aims to show the essence of man. The basic theme in Nieva’s works is the repression of society, which degrades the human being to prevent the development of their deepest needs. Before it stands the transgression, often due to the need for sexual release. In addition to eroticism in the works by this author from La Mancha, there are numerous references to a dark Spain and also to religion, which Nieva criticizes. Among his works are: Hair of a Storm, Damn Crowned and Daughters.
Other authors from this period include Sanchis Sinisterra (1940): Ay, Carmela! (1986); José Luis Alonso de Santos: Get Off the Moor (1985); Fernando Fernán Gómez: Bicycles Are for Summer.