Spanish Theater Evolution: Valle-Inclán and Lorca
In the late nineteenth century, several attempts were made (Galdós Dicenta, Unamuno) to bring theater to an end, eliminating the rhetoric and melodrama that triumphed in the halls. The goal was to reproduce real, contentious issues with less rhetorical language. However, these attempts were unsuccessful. It was Jacinto Benavente (1866-1954) who was in charge of shaping the new theater and submitting to the demands of an audience. This led him to create a successful formula with a slight dose of social criticism, which echoed without rest (*Lady Love*). Another successful online theater is the comedy of manners. This theater emphasizes the picturesque environment of a given geography, with archetypal characters, colloquial language, folklore, some humor, and a conservative ideology. Examples include Carlos Arniches (*Don Quintín el Amargao*) and the brothers Álvarez Quintero (*The Playground*). The poetic drama corresponds to a type of verse drama marked by historical issues that evoke nostalgia and a yearning for traditional and conservative values. Eduardo Marquina and José María Pemán cultivated this theater.
Refreshing Theatrical Approaches
Playwriting with a desire for change and renewal caused public rejection and marginalization of the scenarios. Unamuno (*Phaedra*), Azorín (*Angelita*), Jacinto Grau (*The Lord of Pygmalion*), and Gómez de la Serna (*Utopia*) stand out. The authors of the Generation of ’27 adopted a combative attitude, trying to create a new audience by bringing theater to the people. These works were rejected, and most were not released.
Valle-Inclán
Valle-Inclán’s originality, his radical approaches, and the variety of his subjects meant that his work was relegated to “theater of reading,” outside the mainstream scenes of his time. Valle-Inclán’s first theater falls within the mainstream of modernism. Simultaneously, he wrote a series of farces where the grotesque and cartoonish characters are like puppets and marionettes. All this theatrical production results in a literary genre, the *Esperpento*, systematically distorting characters and values in a denunciation of contemporary Spanish society (*Bohemian Lights*, 1920). The formal features defining the *Esperpento* are:
- The contrast between the tragic and the comic.
- Richness of language, with the presence of varied registers.
- Impressive poetic asides, with literary value in themselves.
- Changes in space and time.
Valle-Inclán defies constraints and creates theatrical release.
Lorca
Lorca’s theater is on par with his poetry and is one of the summits of Spanish and universal theater. The frustration of Lorca’s characters covers two fronts:
- Metaphysical (time, death).
- Social (prejudices, rules that prevent personal fulfillment).
The dominant theme in his plays is always the same: the clash between the individual (love, desire, freedom) and society (tradition, rules, order) – a clash between norm and nature. The roots of his plays are diverse: the classics, popular forms (puppetry), Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, etc. The evolution of Lorca’s theater can be divided as follows:
- Scores of the 1920s: *The Butterfly’s Evil Spell* (modernist and symbolist).
- Avant-garde Experiences: From a double-life crisis and aesthetic, Lorca rethinks the foundations of his creation, looking for a new language fully released and surrealism. *The Public*, a story of homosexual love.
- Time of Fulfillment: Lorca repeatedly stated his desire for wider communication and a social orientation. In this way, he simultaneously found the fullness of his dramatic art and massive success: *Blood Wedding* (1920), *Yerma* (1934), and *The House of Bernarda Alba* (1936).
The common features of these three presentations are:
- The sexual nature of the problems addressed.
- The woman involved.
- Setting in the Andalusian countryside.
- Tragic ending.