What's important about 20th century theatre
hatch
Ok, you guys seem to be the most educated theatre folks I can find.
What do you think is the most important aspect of 20th century
theatre?
I think that it definitely is the question of boundries.
With the dadaists, the futurists and all of the experimental groups
that popped up during the 20th, the question of boundries would have
to be the most important issue of the 1900's.
My friend, however thinks that technology is the most important
issue. She says, even though there were a few groups acting like
idiots, it would have meant nothing without the new technology.
Any thoughts on the subject?
Post here or reply to ha...@mail.utexas.edu
Tom Loughlin
>From: ha...@mail.utexas.edu (hatch)
>Subject: What's important about 20th century theatre
>Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 00:42:23
>
> Ok, you guys seem to be the most educated theatre folks I can find.
> What do you think is the most important aspect of 20th century
> theatre?
I'd have to say the development of "realism" with the Moscow Art Theatre.
Almost everything else in the world of theatrical entertainment, from the ways
in which technology (including film and television) enhances it, to the way
play production continues to generally adhere to its basic tenets, to the
forms which react against it but cannot grab and hold the minds and hearts
of the mass audience in the popular culture, can trace its roots to the
breakthrough made by Stanislavski/Chekov/Danchenko.
NathanThomas
find.
>
> What do you think is the most important aspect of 20th century
> theatre?
>
> I think that it definitely is the question of boundries.
>
Howdy,
I don't know that I'd use the word 'boundaries' so much. A commonality to
all of the fine arts in the 20th century has been a distillation of the
elements of each art-form and the subsequent exploitation of that element.
An example here would be the realization that silence is an element of
music. John Cage exploited that element in 4'33. Cause/effect -- or
narrative story-telling had been a basic element of Western theatre for
some time. Dadas and Futurists played with notions of causation in their
work.
To sum up, I'd say that an important aspect of 20th century theatre would
be the conscious exploitation of the art form.
Nathan
nat...@adv.cal.msu.edu
Ross D. Willits
loug...@jane.cs.fredonia.edu writes:
>I'd have to say the development of "realism" with the Moscow Art
Theatre.
>Almost everything else in the world of theatrical entertainment, from
the ways
>in which technology (including film and television) enhances it, to the
way
>play production continues to generally adhere to its basic tenets, to
the
>forms which react against it but cannot grab and hold the minds and
hearts
>of the mass audience in the popular culture, can trace its roots to the
>breakthrough made by Stanislavski/Chekov/Danchenko.
I cannot agree with this. Realism was essentially a 19th Century
development. The troika of artists you mention were rooted in the world
of the 19th Century. Many historians suggest that for all practical
purposes, the 20th Cent. started in 1914 and ended in 1989. Taking that
into account, I would have to agree with the first poster, that finding
and breaking boundaries is the most important aspect of 20th Cent. art,
not just theatre, but visual arts, music, dance, etc.
Realism was well established as a style of production since the 1850's.
Playwrights and theorists caught up by the end of the century, but by the
early 20th, theatre artists were searching for ways to break out of the
realist mode, just as painters were finding new ways of painting
perspective, and composers were discovering new tonalities.
Granted, realism on stage has continued to be the dominant mode of
presentation in the dramatic arts, but who says that what is most
prevalent is most important??
The question of technology is an interesting one, but I believe it is
secondary to the issue of boundaries. Media is a delivery mechanism, not
content (with some exceptions, of course, and not forgetting McLuhan).
Theatre artists have used technology to explore and expand the boundaries
of what is possible in the theatre, so for that reason alone, it is
secondary to the issue of boundaries.
There's my 2 cents.
Ross
Bob Jude Ferrante
Think people who grok theater history might know that Realism (Naturalism)
came to Europe in
the 19th century in something like this order [1]:
1. As a movement in literature (Emile Zola)[2]
2. On to high theater through the influence of Ibsen
3. To France (the Theatre Libre of Andre Antoine)
4. Chekhov got it from Zola, Ibsen, and Antoine.
5. The Moscow Art Theatre got it from Chekhov (and here we're finally in
the 20th century).
But perhaps we digress. Believe the question was 'what is significant about
20th century
theater?' (a paraphrase).
Here comes the curve ball. Perhaps what's significant about 20th century is
what's significant
about all 20th-century art forms. Perhaps what makes it significant is: it
reflects a change in
thinking[3]. In COSMIC TRIGGER (a good book with a slightly hokey title)
Robert Anton
Wilson calls it the ability to accept multiple models.
What Wilson means he illustrates first with Physics: At the turn of the
century, scientists were
looking for a single, superior model on which to base the emerging New
Physics.
Central was the question 'what is matter?' Luckily, there was only a Tao of
possibilities: matter
was made of either particles or waves. Some findings suggested particles.
Others, waves.
Scientists argued back and forth. There was a lot of near-religious dogma
spouted. Almost jokingly, a few
scientists broke off and started talking about 'wavicles.'
A few years passed, When Niels Bohr (leader of a group of European
scientists) proposed the
Copenhagen model, he suggested that perhaps matter was composed of both
particles and waves
(don't believe he actually SAID 'wavicles').
Instead of letting the data be limited by a single point-of-view, the
scientists were allowing a
DUAL MODEL. This dual model, though seemingly paradoxical, kept them from
excluding
data that contradicted either point of view.
Similar changes transformed:
* Literature. James Joyce, T.S. Eliot and William Faulkner wrote episodic
works that slipped in
and out of multiple points of view and narrative styles. In parallel:
* Music--Jazz evolved, an episodic genre that combined African rhythms with
Western
instrumentation and whose forms are based on musical virtuosity and
improvisation
* Painting and sculpture imported African art forms and began to wander
into abstraction. Look
at the multiple points of view in the NUDE DESCENDING A STAIR (the same
body pixellated
across different moments in the act of walking downstairs) and the face
morphing in Picasso's
THE THREE YOUNG GIRLS OF AVIGNON (multiple sources of not only light, but
form).
And Cinema emerged, which permitted tight control of point-of-view.
In theater, this began happening before the turn of the century with Alfred
Jarry (the UBU plays,
theater as childish prank; forms lovingly shattered) then with Meyerhold in
Russia and Weimar
Germany in the twenties where the Cabaret culture invaded the palace of
high art and produced
Klabund, Brecht, Wedekind, Feuchtwanger.
In some senses this is a standard argument. All Twentieth-century art forms
have undergone a
change in allowable paradigms. Theater is no exception. What makes it
significant is what
makes everything about this century (as it slams shut) significant--its
openness, it's allowance of
free-flowing narrative and quick context-shifts needed for an age where
communication
becomes more and more instantaneous (witness how you receive this dinky
little essay).
Sorry if this is unfollowable pseudo-intelligent rambling. Maybe I should
stop being a
playwright and take up dramaturgy? BAD dramaturgy, Most 'turgs do a better
job of it.
Happy holidays--bob jude ferrante
----------------------------------
[1]You're free to dispute the exact order.
[2]Acceptable to state that high theater was perceived as a branch of
literature in the 19th
century? Of course, there are exceptions to everything...
[3]Or at least a change back to an older mind that doesn't refuse to see
things that don't fit a rigid
logic model?
--
FROM:
bob jude ferrante (ju...@pipeline.com)
Playwright, Director, Technical writer, GUI designer, Musician, Songwriter,
Cartoonist, Husband