Spanish Theater Before 1936: Conservative vs. Innovative
Spanish Theater Before 1936
Spanish drama before 1936 was running on two aspects: innovative theater and experimental theater.
The Conservative Theatre
The conservative theatre prevailed in the late nineteenth century. In this line are: benaventina bourgeois comedy or the neo-romantic verse drama and theater comedy of manners. It is represented in private, with its public and mostly bourgeois entrepreneurs, and their characteristics were the consolidation of conservative principles, showing traces of romantic and modernist influences. Conservative theater is divided into three groups:
- Comedies of manners: Which is a portrait of the bourgeoisie of the time. Critics point out the figure of Jacinto Benavente. His works include “The Ill-Loved Woman” and “Vested Interests,” a room full of intrigue and plot, with two mischievous characters and aimed to make people laugh. It is a farce wherein utilizing the environment and the characters of the old Comedia dell’Arte Italian.
- Comedy Theatre: Sketches and paintings made by local customs, whose chief representatives are the brothers Álvarez Quintero, with works like “Patio” or “The Genius Alegre,” Andalusia scene being topical and without more problems than sentimental.
- Carlos Arniches: Has earned interest from the critics. His work has two sides. On a lower level of quality, but no success, we place at Pedro Muñoz Seca, creator of a genre called “Astrakhan.” These pieces are without logic, that they aim to start laughing. We can not leave without naming a famous title Revenge of Don Mendo, a parody of romantic drama.
- Poetic Theater: A theater and modern layout which looks and historical. The authors most important are the brothers Manuel and Antonio Machado with “La Lola is going to the ports,” Eduardo Marquina with “Daughters of El Cid” and Francisco Villaespesa.
Experimental or Innovative Theater
Characterized by the non-representation in the topic of social problems and as existential and avant-garde, innovative and experimental theater is divided into four groups:
- Intellectual Theatre: Which housed schematic dramas characterized by surrealism and dealt with historical themes to highlight authors in this stream are Miguel de Unamuno, author works as important as the “other” personality conflicts raises.
- Generation of 27: Another core group of this innovative theater is the generation of 27, it belongs to Garcia Lorca, but it deserves its analysis and other independent theater. This group of authors make a theater that generally is characterized by its avant-garde forms, with the intention to bring the theater to the people. This group contains such important writers as Rafael Alberti, author of “Uninhabited Man” and “Night of War in the Prado Museum” Miguel Hernandez, one of the youngest in the group, with works like “Auto Sacramental”.
- Valle-Inclán: A third aspect is constituted by the work of Valle-Inclan, which begins in Modernism and whose theater can be defined as a theater release, characterized by a deformation of the tragedy of the characters degradation is manifested in the common traits or objectification animalization : men become dogs, pigs, puppet. It is essential the use of contrasts.
- Federico García Lorca: Finally we have the theater of Federico García Lorca, a man who updated the tragedy, taking themes of classical Greek writers of our theater classic from Lope de Rueda Calderon, through Shakespeare, puppetry and leading a vanguard phase, resulting from its encounter with the surreal beauty that appeared in the test stage or “comedies impossible” that stand out because they are harder to understand works of the author. At this time Lorca are highly influenced by the surrealism of Bunuel and Dali. Highlight “the public” a kind of auto sacramental without God or “So spend five days”, which appears again the issue of frustration. Their stage of completion, at which time she toured Spain with his company La Barraca. In almost all these works, the woman occupies a central place. Appears Lorca’s tragic trilogy famous “Blood Wedding” about a bride who runs away with her lover on her wedding day, “Yerma,” the drama of a woman condemned to infertility and “The House of Bernarda Alba.” Perhaps his best known work, written shortly before his death and that is the culmination of all his theater.