Spanish Theater in the Early 20th Century: 1900-1936
Introduction
In late 19th-century Spain, the naturalist aesthetic, based on the reflection of environments and human problems, emerged. These new ideas found a very receptive audience and a stagnant theatrical structure. The Spanish theater of the first third of the century is divided into commercial theater, which reached the public and bourgeois triumphs, and innovative theater, bringing new techniques and ideological approaches, but it was a minority. Also of interest is the verse drama by Eduardo Marquina.
Jacinto Benavente
Jacinto Benavente, after the public’s failure with the issue of the oppressive situation of married women in bourgeois society, turned to a less harsh drama of bourgeois taste. The Vested Interests enjoyed success during the first decades of the 20th century.
Comic Theater
The Álvarez Quintero brothers were authors of a theater of manners that portrayed the topical Andalucía. Work: Mademoiselle de Trévelez. Pedro Muñoz Seca is credited with the invention of Astrakhan, a parody of the comedy of the Golden Age.
Attempts at Theatrical Renewal
Early attempts at theatrical renewal were taken by Unamuno, Azorín, and Jacinto Grau. Theater at the beginning of the 20th century only achieved its peak with Valle-Inclán and Federico García Lorca.
Unamuno
Unamuno cultivated the theater to present the human conflicts that haunted him. Works: Phaedra.
Azorín
Azorín‘s The Other dealt with the technical processing and structure of the stage show and insisted on the importance of the scene.
Valle-Inclán
The theater of Valle-Inclán is the most complete and radically original in 20th-century Spanish theater. In his dramatic trajectory, Valle sought formal and continuous thematic renewal. In the first stage, he applied the aesthetics of modernism to his plays. With The Marquis of Bradomín, he initiated the technique of multiple sites of action. The Barbarian is a trilogy of plays that dramatize the tragedy of Montenegro. Valle presents the end of a race, on the prevailing evil and destruction. The characters are driven by dark reasons. In farces, La Marquesa Rosalinda stands out, written in verse, it is the result of a mixture of elements from the puppet theater in a production environment of the 18th century. His modernist drama culminates with the grotesque Luces de Bohemia, an attempt at epic theater.
Federico García Lorca
Lorca’s dramatic universe is structured on one basic scenario, resulting from the clash of two sets of forces. Each of these basic principles of Lorca’s theater are always two fundamental poles of his theater. And each of them corresponds to a first success that comes with symbols. His first success came with Mariana Pineda. With The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife, he achieved a quality piece about a beautiful young woman married to an old shoemaker. These early experimental forms and records, under the influence of Surrealism, led Lorca to write Comedy Untitled. After these steps for the impossible theater, Lorca gave a decisive turn towards his own path. In almost all works of this stage, the woman occupies a central place.
Blood Wedding
Blood Wedding is based on real events: a bride who escapes with her lover on her wedding day. It’s a passion that goes beyond social and moral barriers that lead to death.
Yerma
Yerma is a drama of women sentenced to infertility. On the one hand, the unsatisfied desire for maternity, on the other, faithfulness to her husband.
The House of Bernarda Alba
The House of Bernarda Alba is the culmination of Lorca’s theater. The central theme is the clash between the principle of authority and freedom. Bernarda is the embodiment of exaggerated repressive forces. It is the authority, the irrational power. Her daughters embody attitudes ranging from submission to rebellion. The action takes place in an enclosed space because the world of work has many symbols: mourning, the sea or the countryside is freedom, the olive tree is the scope of the encounters between lovers, water and thirst are life and longing.