History of Theatre

With the symbolists: Ibsen, Minegan, Sola

• German
• Composed operas
• Liked collaboration
• Coined Gesamtkunstwerk (or master art work)

• Play by Alfred Jarry
• The world’s first absurdist drama
• Shows a very grotesque world without human decency

Swedish playwright

• Miss Julie
• Dream Plays
• The Ghost Sonata
• To Damascus

Spring Awakening

• Importance of Being Earnest
• Lady Windimere’s Fan

• In the Shadow of The Glen
• The Playboy of the Western World
• Riders to the Sea

• Calculated madness
• Grounded in skepticism
• Came from WWI
• Sought in their actions to replace logic and reason

• Free from (reject) everyday logic
• Tragedy and burlesque fantasy acrobatics
• Influenced by Freud
• Subconciouses is a truth
• Mingled with music, dance, color and light

• Projecting strong feelings to inanimate objects
• Opposed realism and naturalism
• Against surface details
• Argued that reality is alterable and should be changed until it is brought into harmony with humanity’s spiritual nature

• Past is a barrier to progress (rejects the past) Demanded that libraries and museums be destroyed
• Glorified energy and the speed of the machine age
• Transform humanity: progress, future

• Started by Antonin Artaud
• Sought to ask the audience to confront itself
• More important aspects were in the subconscious
• Had a lot of shrill sound effects; anything to make the audience feeluncomfortable on purpose
• Used adapted spaces
• They put acting areas in catwalks or in corners

• Alienation
• Captioning
• Associated with Bertolt Brecht
• Mixture of character dramatic technique Wished to create thoughtful contemplation; audience to react critically rather than passively
• This theater opposed Stanislavsky’s ideals Because…epic theater told the actors to look at their characters in third person; you separate yourself from the character(according to epic theater)
• What is on stage that relates to your life?Mirror to society
• You can see the mechanics

• Meyerhold and biomechanics
• “The Humanist Ideal” rejected
• A set of universal unchanging values that is the basis ofcivilization; there’s three of them• Art should be depicted representationally• Reduce truth to just the facts, rather then what youknow• Using your own opinion on the facts you have just received
• Said to have begun with the symbolists

• Large movement that began in France in the 1950s
• Human condition is absurd because there is a gap between what people hope and what actually happens. The only remedy for this gap lies within each individual to create their own set of standards
• Be the change you wish to see; basically making your dreams happen on stage
• Bring order our of chaos

• Denying the existence of God
• Cast out conformism
• “Man is what he does. Man becomes what he choose to be.”
• Characters make choices, forging their own paths through the play
• Things aren’t happening to the character, the character is making choices to set things in motion

• Three Penny Opera
• Mother Courage and Her Children
• Caucasian Chalk Circle

The Breasts of Tiresias

• Said to be the father of theater of cruelty
• Wrote “The Theater and Its Double”

• Blood Wedding
• House of Bernana Alba

Practical Handbook of Cats

• Mourning Becomes Electra
• The Hairy Ape
• The Great God Brown
• The Fountain

• Blithe Spirit
• Hay Fever
• Private Lives

• Juno and the Pavcock
• The Plough and the Stars

• Waiting for Lefty
• Awake and Sing
• Paradise Lost
• Golden Boy

• Our Town
• The Skin of Our Teeth
• The Merchant of Yonkers
• The Matchmaker

Robert Edmund Jones was the first Native to do set design§ He’s from the U.S.

Launched by Adler, Clurman, and Meisner

This led into the community theater

• Most influential lighting designero
• Wrote: “A Method for Lighting the Stage”

• Waiting for Godot
• Happy Days
• Endgame

• He went from spending time in prison, to becoming the President
• Wrote: “Garden Party”

• The Bald Soprano
• The Lesson
• The Chairs
• Rhinoceros

No Exit

Marat/Sade

Six Characters in Search of an Author

actors ego; he was the artistic director of Moscow Art Theatre and he was the chairman for Moscow Society of Arts and Letters

He was directors ego; biomechanics; he thought of the ugly and dark sideof life

playwrighters ego; wrote: Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and CherryOrchard

he’s the manager of the Moscow Art Theatre; alsoplaywrights ego

the nephew of Anton; he’s characters ego