Spanish Theater in the 20th Century: Trends and Key Figures
Spanish Theater in the First Half of the 20th Century
In the first half of the 20th century, Spanish drama followed two main directions:
- Conservative Theater: At the service of the bourgeoisie and with minimal critical capacity (Benavente, Valle-Inclán, and Arniches).
- Innovative Theater: Echoed existential and social problems (Unamuno, Azorín, Gómez de la Serna, Valle-Inclán, and Federico García Lorca).
Conservative Theater
The Bourgeois Theater – Jacinto Benavente: Represented formal and ideological progress. From Outside the Nest, merely criticizing petty vices. The less critical, the greater the public. In The Unloved, Benavente unleashes the passions that his work had always contained conventionally. His conception of theater followed Lope de Vega, dividing the work into three acts (introduction, development, and conclusion).
Comedic Theater – Carlos Arniches: Gradually gained importance in the theater scene. He began as the author of Madrid sketches based on tradition and could be considered an element of ideological manipulation in accordance with bourgeois values. The most important element of his work is distorted language with the intention of making people laugh.
Innovative Theater
Miguel de Unamuno: Cultivated a theater that had very little diffusion at the time. Instead of dialogue, the characters presented oral arguments completely out of action. The plot is not well designed or developed. His problems of religious conscience are evident in works such as The Sphinx, The Veil, and Loneliness.
Azorín: Was refreshing in the way of conservative ideology. He went well beyond the purely dialogic, moving to require maximum freedom of interpretation from the actors to achieve a dominance of the subconscious. Conflict is absent in his works.
Ramón Gómez de la Serna: Tried to break the paths along which theater in Spain passed. He wrote works about which little was known. Social criticism predominated. Notable works include Utopia and Theater of Loneliness.
Poets of the Generation of 27 (Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, José Bergamín, etc.) proposed an emergency theater, whose function was to highlight the defects and contradictions of bourgeois society.
Spanish Theater in the Postwar Period
1940s: The same trends from before the war continued: Benavente’s high comedy theater and a theater of hidden character. In the theater of humor, writers like Miguel Mihura and Jardiel Poncela triumphed with works like Three Top Hats. In committed theater, Antonio Buero Vallejo stood out. With him began the realistic theater, which prevailed in the next decade.
1950s: Realistic theater is highlighted with works like Squadron Toward Death by Alfonso Sastre, Lauro Olmo’s Shirt, or Puente de San Gil by Martín Recuerda. They also promoted the theater of the absurd, which demonstrates the absurdity of our existence, with authors such as Fernando Arrabal and Romero Esteo.
1960s: In addition to the previous authors, the underground scene of independent theater emerged, outside the commercial theater. Companies were set up where the director and actors planned a simple script and put on a play, usually of symbolic character. Notable names include Els Joglars, Els Comediants, and La Cubana, almost all of them in Madrid and Barcelona.