Spanish Theater: Post-War Trends and Key Playwrights
Background
Like all genres, the theater has been undergoing profound changes since the beginning of the century, affecting both literary and performance aspects.
The first trend is a reaction to realism. The second is expressionist theater, which distorts reality and emphasizes theatricality.
The third trend is surreal drama, which breaks with the aforementioned trends and incorporates the illogical nature of dreams and delusions.
This leads us to an important and striking movement: the theater of the absurd, which includes Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, and Genet.
Trends
In the history of contemporary theater, there are two periods:
The first period corresponds to the years of the Franco dictatorship between 1939 and 1975, in a cultural context governed by censorship and lack of freedom of expression.
- In the 1940s and the first half of the 1950s, traditional theater coexisted with the new wave of existential drama.
- In the mid-1950s, social realist theater emerged.
- In the 1960s, experimental and avant-garde language was favored.
The second period covers the last 25 years of the century, a time of democracy without the constraints of censorship, where playwrights expressed themselves freely. It is characterized by the coexistence of various persuasions, from experimental to realistic.
Post-War Theater
Features
For the theater, the Civil War meant a disruption of the previous theatrical tradition in the immediate post-war period. However, the break was only partial or relative. Traditional genres of conservative and popular melodrama, humor, and comedy of manners survived on the Spanish stage.
The renovation of the theater of the time leaned towards existential and realistic drama.
The High-Style Comedy of Benavente
This style is characterized by luxurious spaces where characters belonging to the bourgeoisie or middle class experience personal conflicts related to adultery, celibacy, and nostalgia for the past.
José María Pemán: For the Lady Captain
Luca de Tena: Who Am I?
Comic Theater
Jardiel Poncela set out to renew comedy by breaking with traditional forms, which he considered too attached to hackneyed jokes and castizo resources. He opposed realism and the bourgeois. As Are the Blondes, It Is Better with Potatoes
Miguel Mihura resumed his theatrical creation from 1953 to 1968. He was a playwright with great humor and wrote Three Top Hats in 1932, but it was not released until 20 years later and was not understood even then. Although this work is his best, Mihura was not included. He said he decided to “prostitute” himself and create commercial theater for public consumption and the bourgeois mentality.
All his subsequent work, though good, does not reach the category of Three Top Hats.
This work represents a complete and risky departure due to the absolute novelty of its themes, forms, and unconventional language. It uses humor, imagination, and fantasy, parodying and caricaturing what passes for normal, the customs and formalities of life.
Existential Theater
This genre faithfully reflects the experiences, moods, and concerns of the Spanish people.
Antonio Buero Vallejo: A humanist conception of man and a social and political commitment to the most disadvantaged determine the themes, aesthetics, and purpose of all his dramatic work. His evolution is characterized by high coherence and unity. He mixes realistic and symbolic language. His play, Story of a Staircase.
Theater of Protest and Complaint
First Generation
This generation is characterized by a commitment to the immediate reality of Spanish society, whose situation it seeks to bear witness to.
Alfonso Sastre: Red Earth
Buero Vallejo: Las Meninas
Second Generation
This generation advocates for a politically engaged, testimonial theater that reflects folk customs.
Lauro Olmo: The Shirt
José Martín Recuerda: The Pious Arrecogías in St. Mary of Egypt
José María Rodríguez Méndez: Weddings Were Famous for Rag and Fandango
Bourgeois Theater
The genre that thrived was escapist comedy, a guarantee of commercial success.
Jaime Salom: The White Triangle
Juan José Alonso Millán: Alone or with Milk?
Alfonso Paso: The Wedding of the Girl
The Search for New Forms
These playwrights aimed to overcome the aesthetic limitations of realism, incorporating current foreign trends. From an aesthetic point of view, they all agreed on considering the dramatic text as only the basis of theatrical creation, using poetic language affiliated with the allegorical avant-garde.
Francisco Nieva: Shadow and Chimera of Larra
Fernando Arrabal: Men’s Tricycle