Spanish Theater Evolution: Post-1936 to Realism
Spanish Theater After 1936
Theater after 1936, in the postwar period, exacerbated the constraints of the previous era: the need to please the bourgeois audience, censorship, etc. Theater can be classified as follows:
1. Immediate Postwar Period (1940s)
A) Triumphant Drama of the Decade
This commercial theater shows the following trends:
- High-Style Benaventiano Comedy: Characterized by well-made plays, a lack of depth in ideas and approaches, etc. Authors of this trend, such as Edgar Neville and Alfonso Paso, also produced historical and triumphalist theater, either with a serious or comical mood.
- Humorous or Comical Theater: The most important authors are Jardiel Poncela, known for wild and improbable situations close to the theater of the absurd. Some of his works include You Have Eyes of a Femme Fatale (1933) and The Inhabitants of the Deserted House (1941). Miguel Mihura, who started in the profession from childhood, founded the humor magazine La Codorniz (The Quail) in 1941. He also collaborated on films and theater as a scriptwriter. His theater parodies clichés and social conventions. His dramatic trajectory began with Three Hats (1936), represented in 1952. This work was not understood, and Mihura was forced to write more commercial theater. Other important works include Sublime Decision and Peaches in Syrup.
B) Committed Theater
In 1949, with the premiere of Historia de una Escalera (Story of a Stairway) by Antonio Buero Vallejo, there is an inflection in postwar theater.
Antonio Buero Vallejo studied fine arts but was devoted to theater. His theater binds the social and political with the existential, and he is an example of an intellectual committed to his time. He often uses immersion techniques to make the spectator identify with what is represented. In his production, the following periods can be distinguished:
- An existential approach in his works and a realist technique. Example: Historia de una Escalera (1949).
- Social concerns predominate. To avoid censorship, Buero chooses the form of historical drama. Some works are: Las Meninas and El Tragaluz (The Skylight). Characters of this time were affected by the Civil War. The theatrical technique also undergoes an evolution: change from a realistic space to a multiple space, use of immersion effects, etc.
- Buero insists on issues and procedures known in his previous theater. He brought a greater experimental purpose consistent with the general concern of Spanish literature of the time. The most important work is La Fundación (The Foundation).
Alfonso Sastre’s theater: Born in Madrid in 1926 into a conservative Catholic family. He began his career in 1953 with the release of Escuadra Hacia la Muerte (Squad to Death). He had a controversy with Vallejo about the ability to change society or the author’s failure to do so. He bothered to seek new dramatic formulas to convey his concerns. Since 1960, he wrote complex tragedies with which he intended the viewer to identify with the work. He uses irony, extraverbal elements, fragmentation into tables, and the intervention of a narrator. Works: The Mangled Ones, The Fantastic Tavern, etc.
2. Realist Generation (1950s)
This includes a number of authors who started in the 1950s. The topics covered include social injustices (proletarian life, hypocrisy, etc.). Their language is violent and defiant, without euphemisms. These works are by authors such as Lauro Olmo and Carlos Muñiz.