Surrealism Modernism
1. INTRODUCTION In general, Spanish drama live quite alien to the European refreshing streams, among other reasons because of the presence of an unchanging bourgeois public and eager to escape, which only showed his interest in music theater, of poor quality, and opposed to the experimental trends and minority who were then in the European context. Thus, in the first third of the century, Spanish drama is divided into two areas: * Commercial Theater, which was continuation of the late nineteenth century (post-Romantic drama, manners, high comedy in the line of Echegaray …), aimed at a bourgeois public, which provides little critical and few new techniques. This is the theater that triumphs in the theaters of the time. This group includes: * Comedy bourgeois, whose main representative is Jacinto Benavente. * Theatre in verse, neo-Romantic and Modernist contributions in a traditional line .* Theater comic, customs, also in line with traditional and popular character. * Innovative Theatre, which aims to provide a new type of work, due to their critical load, because of their technical innovations, or both. This trend was mostly a commercial failure. This group includes: * Theater of the authors of 98. A special case is the Teatro Valle-Inclán authors .* 27. Highlight Lorca.
2. Bourgeois comedy: Jacinto Benavente. He received the Nobel Prize in 1922 (second playwright who receives, after Echegaray). Benavente theater through two clear stages: * Attempt to technical renovation and social criticism in his first book, The nest of others (1984) . This book examines and criticizes the status of married women in bourgeois society, using simple language and sober .* “Comedy Lounge.” With little reception of the work, merely rough and opted for a less critical. From this time he composed works that were in line with public taste of his time, but never gave up the introduction of a light social criticism. The themes and characters of bourgeois comedy correspond to those of middle and upper classes of society then and with the conflicts typical of those social groups unhappy love, infidelity and hypocrisy, gossip, kids skull. In works such as The Saturday night (1903), Autumn Rose (1905), Benavente got a theater to the extent of the bourgeoisie of the era, who became the author plus escape representado.De such that two of his works , however, have become the most interesting theatrical production: The vested interests (1907), and the unloved (1913). The first part in a tone of farce (by means of characters who come from the ‘commedia dell’arte’ Italian) the issue of money power, contrasting the world of interest and the world of love, but not the way to claim it romantic, but from a cynical and pragmatic skepticism. The other two are the model of ‘rural drama’, a type of theater, set in a rural world dominated by fatality and atavistic ancestral develops a violent world of uncontrolled passions for urban education.
3. THEATRE IN VERSE: arises directly from the modernist. It is a scene of pure escape, no immediate relation to reality, which retrieves historical and legendary, and in the case of Marquina and Villaespesa, conservative and traditionalist ideology. Stand Eduardo Marquina (The daughters of the Cid and in Flanders has been the sun, his works evoke an alleged Spain eternal rivals that of his time, where “everything is petty, trivial, disgusting”) and the Machado brothers (Antonio and Manuel Machado written in collaboration La Lola is going to ports).
4. Comic theater: comedy of manners and farce. Made to entertain the public. Gender is a heir of the Golden Age appetizers Its main features are: * Atmosphere * popular love stories with happy endings and language * Humor sencillo.Entre the authors of this trend include: * The brothers Alvarez Quintero, reflecting life Andalucía kind of topical and sentimental in such works as The genius .* Malvaloca happy and Carlos Arniches, with sketches of Madrid and pure environment. Also cultivated a new genre, the “grotesque tragedy”, which combines the laughable with poignant, critical of the injustices. Stresses in this regard Miss Trevelez, Los caciques …* Pedro Muñoz Seca, which creates another genre, the “Astrakhan”, whose aim was to get a laugh through works crazy. Highlights of Don Mendo’s revenge, a parody of romantic dramas and verse drama of the time.
5. ATTEMPTS RENOVATORS: many authors seeking to make a different theater in these years, but in most cases, these new formulas were unsuccessful.
1. THEATRE OF THE AUTHORS OF 98 In addition to commercial claims, these authors (Unamuno, Azorín, Valle-Inclan and Jacinto Grau) try to make a theater to serve as a conduit for the expression of its religious conflicts, existential and social. Build a theater complex intellectual and philosophical tendencies links to the most refreshing and dramatic panorama of the western era. Technically, trying to break with the realistic forms of representation.
* Unamuno makes dramas of ideas, with a dense dialogue hardly suitable for the stage. He creates what has been called “theater naked”, in which the characters are minimized, and the scenery, to focus on the revealed word of human interiority. Phaedra stand, The Other.
* Azorin line of anti-realism and symbolic. It highlights the scenery, dialogue, basic subjects are happiness, death and time. Emphasizes the trilogy The invisible.
* Jacinto Grau: Stresses his work Lord of Pygmalion.
6. THEATRE OF 27: The group of 27 authors proposed three objectives in carrying out their work: * incorporate avant-garde elements to break with the realistic representation .* Bringing theater to the appliance population that was not a unique genre of the bourgeoisie. * Incorporating poetry to theater, not only with the use of verse in some of his works, but above all the poetic weight of its contents .* The most prominent authors in the field stage of this group were Max Aub, Rafael Alberti and above all, Federico García Lorca .* Pedro Salinas: although his theater for the exile, highlights the dictator, the head of Medusa .* Rafael Alberti: Man uninhabited, surreal tone, Fermín Galán, the entertainment line committed; Night of War in the Prado Museum, political theater, The gallant, very poeticized .* Max Aub: the central theme is man’s inability to understand. The trasterrados, die by closing the eyes.
7. Valle-Inclan: For some, the most important author of the national drama. His work represents a revolution in the history of Spanish theater and the seed of the new paths opened by the theater today: to refer to him talk about “commitment to reality,” “theater of complaint”, “alienation technique” “theater of the absurd.” Modernism evolved from an elegant and nostalgic to a literature review, based on a distortion of realidad.Su fierce play usually grouped into three levels: a) The myth. The action takes place in a mythical Galicia, timeless: Comedy barbarian Divine palabras.b) The sham. Works located in an area more ‘ridiculous’, typical of the eighteenth century gardens, roses, swans: The Marquesa Rosalinda, Farce and Queen castiza.c license) The absurdity: Luces de Bohemia, (1920) and the trilogy Tuesday carnaval (horns Friolera don, 1921, Las galas of the late, 1926 The Captain’s Daughter, 1927).
Absurdity: a person extravagant, absurd. For Valley is an aesthetic that wants to “be an overcoming of pain and laughter.” Its definition is in the stage XII Bohemian Lights (book page. 279). In 1928, in an interview, Valle said that there were three ways of seeing the world artistic or aesthetic: kneeling, standing, and standing in the air. When the author viewed from below, the reality is enhanced, the characters as heroes, and in classical tragedy, “if you look at the same level, the characters are like our brothers, and in Shakespeare,” if viewed from above, will be dolls or puppets – and in Quevedo_. From this latter view arises esperpento.EL Esperpento is an attempt to present the Spanish reality, but giving no real natural vision, but presenting the facts in an exaggerated way, and burlesque. We present a distorted reality, so that the viewer is surprised and aware of it. The objective is similar to it that later pursue B. Brecht with his technique of “distancing.” Scenario is presented in unusual and surprising world, so that the viewer relates to your own everyday reality and realize that this is also unusual.
THEATRE absurdity (there are works that are not grotesque theater: the poem’s Pipe and novels Kif Tirano Banderas and the Iberian ring) is a critical theater in a false reality and values that make no sense. (Critical attitude of the men of 98, which incorporates Valley after a season full of princesses precious literature, salons, aristocracy, but this time the criticism had already resigned noventayochistas). Some features of absurdity: o deformation, distortion of reality is esperpentiza even death, which deforms parodically. Discover all that is negative in the human condition, always with a critical intent, but does not propose solutions. or degradation of the characters with traits animalisation, objectification or muñequización. Thus, the characters who dominate the failures, the bohemians, drunks and prostitutes, beggars who swarm in environments … miserable as brothels, taverns and gambling dens, unsafe streets of Madrid by night. or Use of contrasts, especially between the painful and bitter humor grotesco.o type, scathing. Valley laughs at everything she sees and uses satire. or language rich with a variety of records, or to characterize his characters, or the service of parody or criticism. Valley shows his mastery of language, his mastery of the use of colloquialisms, idioms, acanallada speaking, slang, cockney or learned … or diálogo.o Domain Inclusion of lights, shadows and mirrors (remember the Alley Cat, in Madrid) , where reality, distorted, mixed with fantasy or dream, always tragicocómico.
LIGHT OF BOHEMIA: Argument: The play tells the last night of the life of Max Estrella, miserable and blind poet, pilgrim, accompanied by Don Latino, the depths of the night where you see all the misery. Max Estrella, having been deprived of the opportunity to live badly with his family after being jailed, slapped, lost their dignity to accept an arbitrary pension dies leaning to a doorway and is betrayed by his guide (steals the wallet). But the work becomes a tragic and grotesque parable of the impossibility of living in Spain distorted, unjust, oppressive, absurd, there is no place for purity, the honesty or the noble art. Structure: is divided into 15 scenes in various environments, and slightly disjointed, but for some unifying elements such as the presence of death from the stage one (invitation to suicide) that anticipates the end of the work or the issue of ticket Lottery, you can get from misery to Max, and will award once it has died.But the succession stage response to a careful structure: 1. Prelude: Scene I (Max in his house, longing to die) 2. Central body of the work: Max pilgrimage Madrid by night. Scene II-XII (I-VI: Max in the dungeon with the worker Catalan VII-XI: release from prison until death of the worker Catalan) 3. End of the pilgrimage: Scene XII. Max returns home and dies. It describes the theory of esperpento.4. Epilogue: Scene XIII-XV. It carries out suicide announced on the scene I. * Characters. Starring the work Max Estrella (symbolic name) and Don Latino, a bohemian puppet, unfair and villain in the final scenes. Apart from parading the bourgeoisie (the bookseller Zarathustra, Pica Lagartos …), the police, the pedants, popular characters … All serve to expose the author’s critical vision. There are allusions to historical figures in his own name: Unamuno, Alfonso XIII, Pastora Imperio, Antonio Maura, Joselito. The book criticizes the “imperial past history of Philip II, contemporary, police repression, traditional religion and empty, literary institutions, schools. The work is a political and social satire of contemporary Spain, a place full of injustice, poverty, stupidity, arbitrariness and violence, a place with no way out except death.
8. FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA Lorca’s dramatic work can be grouped into three sections: – first play. In 1920 premiered the curse of the butterfly, the work of modernist influence of love between a cockroach and a beautiful butterfly, which opened as the fundamental issue of Lorca’s drama: romantic dissatisfaction. The premiere was a failure for which Lorca is soon indemnified Mariana Pineda, historical drama based on the heroine executed by Fernando VII in Granada for having embroidered a liberal flag. These two works are joined tragic farce about unhappy love of The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife The Love of Don Perlimplín and Belisa in the garden. In this first period also composed several short pieces of puppet, which gave the name “The tííteres of club” in which they develop other nuclear issues its drama: the conflict of authority / libertad.-avant-garde Theatre: the impossible or misterios.Lorca comedies gave this name to the plays created under the influence surreal. Surrealist art is worth it to explore the hidden instincts of man. So in the public (incomplete) defends Lorca love as an instinct independent of the will, which manifests itself in many forms, including the homosexual and criticizes a society that condemns anyone who is different .- Stage fullness. Lorca wrote in the thirties it plays that reach commercial success: Blood Wedding, Yerma, Doña Rosita the Spinster and the Language of Flowers and The House of Bernarda Alba. All have in common the role of women, whose situation of social exclusion is a common theme in all four. Blood Wedding and Yerma air two classic tragedies, in which Lorca mixture of prose and verse, chorus used as in Greek tragedy to discuss the action, symbolic and allegorical handle … In Blood Wedding (a bride runs off with her old boyfriend on her wedding day “) are popular subjects of Lorca (love, violence, death, social norms that suppress the instincts). Yerma Lorca address other topics too: infertility, women’s oppression, the desire for completion which contrasts with the traditional moral … Doña Rosita the Spinster is an urban drama, also in prose and verse, but here the verse serves to satirize and parody-which is the single ladies of provinces condemned to wait in vain for the love in a mediocre bourgeois environment that stifles their desire happiness, the drama of “the Spanish flashiness of the Spanish bigotry” as indeed the Lorca.The House of Bernarda Alba is often identified as the top of Lorca Theater. It is a prose work. Topics: freedom from authority, erotic desire and the natural instincts facing social and moral standards, sterility and fertility, the frustration of life, under the condition of women, but above all a reflection on power. Bernarda is a woman who imposed by force an entire repressive code of conduct about daughters who, with the exception of the minor, agree to these rules that your mother has been inherited from tradition and that they are willing to perpetuate.
The House of Bernarda Alba: It was written in the spring of 1936 but not released until 1945 in Buenos Aires, where he became the first edition too. Arguments and issues: After the death of her second husband, Bernarda Alba imposes his five daughters, like mourning, a long and rigorous imprisonment. In that extreme situation, conflicts and passions will enlarge to the exasperation. As a catalyst of this enclosure is the figure of Pepe el Romano, the boyfriend of Sorrows, the eldest daughter and therefore heir, but attracted by youth and beauty of the youngest, Adela, and loved, in turn, by Martirio. Bernarda represent authoritarianism and repression, and daughters embody different attitudes ranging from passive submission to rebellion, both attitudes being doomed to frustration and death The action takes place in an enclosed space – the house is the world’s mourning, of concealment, by silence. It is called hell, prison, convent, symbolizing the lack of freedom, coercion, and in death we breathe. Opposite the house, the outside world, where echoes of elemental passions come with strong eroticism while the outside world is the world of what people might say, of a ruthless social conventions that Bernarda extrem Characters: – Bernard: The name means “strong bear” and means the incarnation hyperbolic repressive forces: social conventions – a concern for what people will say, by appearances …-, obsession with virginity, decency, honor, against erotic impulses … The men allows them to all, not women. Feel the pride of caste, belonging to a higher class. It represents the power, authority, as indicated by the stick he always carries and its prescriptive language, chaired by the command “Quiet!” And it carries with her daughters and maids. His eagerness to maintain the established order leads to an irrational power, to deny the obvious and say “nothing happens here” * The daughters are locked and want from their youth, going outdoors, feel their erotic desires, love, which are subject to marriage. Angustias (39 years) is the largest and is the daughter of Bernarda’s first marriage, is heir to a fortune that attracts Pepe el Romano, her suitor. Is bound to marriage, but does not feel the passion, I do feel Martirio.Magdalena Adela and her sisters (30 years) is submissive but is aware of what they happen to live to women and therefore declares his desire to be born hombre.Amelia (27 years) is submissive, timid, resigned. Martyrdom (age 24) is a more complex character. He could have married if his mother had not been opposed by social class issues. This may explain his resentment. But before the men are contradictory, and that sentiment has found an irrepressible meanness .. Adela (20) embodies the rebellion. It is the young, beautiful, passionate and honest. Its name means “noble nature.” It is vital and rejects mourning (on one occasion dresses in green). In its challenge becomes the mistress of Pepe el Romano, and break the baton from his mother. But end tragically.
* Other characters: Maria Josefa, the grandmother, is a mixture of madness and truth, while poetry. It is the spokesman for the desires of others. Speakers at the most important of the work to enlarge lyrically the themes of the play as Lorca: the frustration of women, the desire for marriage and motherhood, the desire for freedom .. The Poncia is the old family servant, advises and gets into the drama of daughters, “tu” form Bernarda but she restrains. Assume as a maid but feel resentment. Bernarda is the contrast, speaks openly about sexual matters, has great knowledge of the world and is rich vernacular. The maid who is with her part of the rancor that is in love, is submissive and hipócrita.También are neighbors, mourning women who attend the duel, gossips. And finally, the only male character, Pepe el Romano, who is the man, the obscure object of desire, interested in money of anguish, but in love with Adela. -Structure: the action is progressive, swelling increases the dramatic tension.