Theatre History II Midterm Review PDF

Theatre History II THE 4111, Spring 2025, Full Term 3 Credit(s) Tuesdays & Thursdays: 11:00am- 12:20pm GRETCHEN SUÁREZ-PEÑA, MFA Attendance/Daily Check-in  Favorite Way to Learn Visually Auditory Reading Agenda  Attendance/Check in  Midterm Review  Prep for Next Class...

Theatre History II THE 4111, Spring 2025, Full Term 3 Credit(s) Tuesdays & Thursdays: 11:00am- 12:20pm GRETCHEN SUÁREZ-PEÑA, MFA Attendance/Daily Check-in  Favorite Way to Learn Visually Auditory Reading Agenda  Attendance/Check in  Midterm Review  Prep for Next Class Terms to know – Chapter 8  Volksgeist – literally “spirit of a nation.” A romantic belief that all nations possess highly distinct identities to counter enlightenment notions of potential universal historical interpretation.  Minstrel shows – a form of racist blackface performance popular in the United States from the 1840s until the rise of vaudeville in the 1880s. A form of variety show, minstrel acts consisted of white male performers imitating slave festivities in the South, musical numbers, and parody  Nationalism – A political ideology based in the belief that a nation a group loosely united by territory, language, and/or culture has an inherent right to live and flourish within its own geographical and political state. Nationalism began in Europe in the seventeenth century and has taken several historical forms.  Liberal nationalism involves a commitment to the Enlightenment ideals of individual liberty and constitutionalism.  Cultural nationalism centers on a belief in the uniqueness and greatness of one's language-based culture.  Racial nationalism mixes notions of racial superiority with cultural nationalism to produce the belief that a nation's superiority is based on racial purity Chapter 8 Review  Nationalism is a new idea - before 1700 this would have been absurd.  People of a common language or culture from a similar region having the right to geographical and political power  Nationalism is a created political idea – an “imagined community.”  It had to be reaffirmed to surpass other bounds like family or social class  In Germany cultural secular nationalism grew and there was a strong notion of using the arts to create a national identity.  “…if we had a national stage, we would also become a nation” – Friedrich Schiller Chapter 8 Review  The French Revolution shattered the expectations that life would play out like neoclassical drama or sentimental comedy  Those traumatized by the French Revolution sought solace in melodrama  It stirred up memorable emotions  Validated their experience  Reassured them but did not fully heal their wounds, assuage their fears, or soothe their moral panic Chapter 8 Review  Before 1848, Tsar Alexander I had clamped down on performances and printed dramas and held a monopoly on theatrical productions.  Russian censorship severely restricted theatrical expression – those cynical of the government tried to evade imperial restriction.  Mainly the Russian imperial court and aristocrats enjoyed performances. Few of the bourgeoisie did.  Russian theatre was less influenced by nationalism as loyalty remained to the:  Russian Orthodox Church  The local noblemen  Aristocracy  Tsar Chapter 8 Review  Richard Wagner was a German romantic and imagined a unified, utopian Germany.  His operas were shaped by the traditions of the German language, mythology and ethnic origins.  King Ludwig supported his work and even built a national theatre to realize his operas.  Wagner was often pushed to be more of a racial nationalist than just a cultural nationalist.  He weaved together music, drama, singing, scenery, lighting, and all of the other theatrical arts into what he called a Gesamtkunstwerk a totally integrated and unified production. This is long-lasting influence on theatrical productions Chapter 8 Review  In Latin America  Liberal nationalism spread and brought forth new nation states in North and South America  Cultural nationalism played a small role  Racial nationalism grew – albeit different from Germany Theatre during this time:  Traditional songs and dances were unchanged among Native and African descendants  European descendants looked to Europe as their model for theatre  Spanish and French troupes came and toured Latin American cities  Mexico City built new permanent theatres in the 1840s-50s  Mexican troupes started touring Chapter 8  Costumbrismo theatre people popular in Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Nicaragua  Plays featuring picturesque places, exotic people, and rare costumes  In Brazil, Romanticism became popular  Roussea-inspired belief in the primitive simplicity and natural virtue of brazil's many indigenous tribes.  Idealized the Amazonian tribes and embraced cultural nationalism  Turned their back on racist basis of power Chapter 8 Review  In the United States - The legacy of Puritanism which preached that America might separate itself from the decadence of Europe and lead the world to salvation  This reinforced self righteousness and the claim of moral exceptionalism  Anti-entertainment/anti-theatre  Minstrel Shows  Most successful form of popular entertainment in the northern cities of the US in the decades before and after the civil war.  Shows blacks as an unequal participant in the liberal and democratic US at the time.  Became a significant source of racial imagining and white nationalism in Northern US states Chapter 8 Review  Minstrel shows complicated stories…  Thomas Dartmouth Rice - Popularized the Jim Crow character  Rice’s “Jim Crow” pieces sometimes contained songs that called for the abolition of slavery.  Other troops pandered to groups of poor white urban workers who needed to assure their racial superiority - Irish immigrants escaping from the potato famine and newcomers to city life fresh from the farm.  Black characters were often portrayed as foolish, grotesque, and sentimental victims  By the end of the 1850s, minstrel entrepreneurs had increased their audiences to include middle-class males, females, and elite spectators. Troupes began touring beyond northern cities into medium sized towns in parts of the South Terms to Know – Chapter 9  Orientalism – Edward Said’s term referring to Western countries representing the east (a vast territory from the Middle East to Japan which was largely subjected to European imperialism in the 19th century) as people who were weak, cunning, culturally backward, feminine, dangerous, and exotic.  Social Darwinism – the discredited assumption that cultures, like species, have evolved and can be viewed hierarchically from the “primitive” cultures on the bottom to the “great civilizations” at the top.  Vaudeville – a form of variety theatre that gradually replaced the minstrel show in the United States during the 1880s. Terms to Know – Chapter 9  Realism – in theatre, a stage orientation that originated partly in response to the emerging technology of photography. It is also referred to as stage realism. Its hallmark was the presentation of observed material realities including accurate costumes and box sets. It was later adapted by Naturalists and is still the dominant style in the West.  Shimpa – literally “new style” the term refers to the late 19th and early 20th century fashion of adapting western dramatic forms such as the “well-made play” to Japanese taste.  Positivism – the philosophy that scientific knowledge derives solely from measurable sensory experience, allowing for the detection of invariant general laws of both nature and society. Chapter 9 Review  Japan’s opening was quick and influenced all aspects of life.  In 1895 the play “Korean King” suggested that all Asians would welcome Japanese imperial conquests as progress  Japan’s opening led to Orientalism.  Orientalism has two basic forms:  Portray the “other” as weak, childlike, uneducated, naïve, submissive and sexually available – To be overtaken  Portray the “other” as uncivilized, barbaric, powerful, sexually terrifying, scheming, and intellectually incomprehensible – To be feared. Chapter 9 Review  The London Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace was the first of many world fairs and expositions presenting the nonwestern world as a marketplace for western tourists and capitalists.  Besides scientific, artistic, and natural exhibitions it also featured performances.  The World’s Fair in 1901 of Buffalo NY - Native and African Americans were exhibited along with other “primitive” peoples of the world.  Native Americans performed war dances in traditional attire.  African Americans were hired to portray “happy” antebellum slaves in popular exhibit called “The Old Plantation.”  Britain organized 33 major expositions in India, Australia, and Great Britain often using India for entertainment using their traditional performers and craftspeople. Chapter 9 Review  Darwin's theory of evolution led to Social Darwinism as an argument that white westerners had proven themselves to be the “fittest” and it was now their moral obligation to instruct “primitive” people and save them from extinction.  This found it’s way to performance –  The St. Louis World Fair of 1904 featured several tribes of Philippine villagers “scientifically” classified as representing different stages of civilization.  P.T. Barnum circus showcase non-Western people as savages  Social Darwinism led to the philosophy of positivism and the development of naturalism Chapter 9 Review  New popular entertainment for working and lower middle-class audiences: Variety Theatre  No overriding theme, story, or major star  Incorporated singers, acrobats, performing animals, and other diversions  Since the Renaissance, this had been a long-standing tradition in between acts of regular shows, but in the mid 19th century showman strung together these acts without providing a regular play as main attraction  Burlesque shows became popular - female performers would parody a popular play or work of literature. Eventually that dropped out and was replaced by comic sketches, dancing, and scant costuming.  Music Halls stemming from concert saloons that peddled beer became a popular form of variety theatre in Britain  In the United States it was known as vaudeville. Chapter 9 Review  Beijing Opera  The court and other aristocrats disdained the popular genre of clapper opras and only supported the elegant kunku  Eventually elements of clapper operas and kunku were combined into a new popular genre known as jinju or “drama of the capital” translated in English as the “Beijing opera”.  70 years after its inception, a performance troupe was finally invited to the emperor's court. Subsequently jingju once a lower- class genre began to enjoy imperial patronage.  Mei Lafang, another dan actor popularized the from around the world in performance tours. Chapter 9  Westerners collected both real and fake Chinese and Asian items  Chinoiserie - items that looked or supposedly had Chinese originals.  Popular entertainers like magicians rushed to add orientalist imagery to their acts.  Japonisme is a french term used by art historians to discuss the influence of Japanese art on western art beginning in the 1850s after Japan began to trade (however reluctantly) with the West.  Unlike Orientalism, Japonisme does not attempt to represent control the “other” it’s strategy by which artists incorporate or borrow elements of Japanese origin into their art often creating entirely new styles. Chapter 9  Case Study of the Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan was a satire about England politics that has often used yellow face in its productions  Case Study of Madam Butterfly that entails a passionate ritual sacrifice that has been nuanced as both an adherence to western expectations and Japanese patriotic fervor.  Photography was as much a tool of imperialism as print media, steamships, high explosives, and machine guns.  Henry Fox Talbot invented it in Britain in 1839.  Photographs showed the real world “out there”  Shifted people's perspective of the world from an emphasis on the immaterial (irrational) to the material (rational).  Moved mainstream playwriting, acting, and design toward aesthetic realism. Chapter 9 Review  Naturalism was the apex of realism after 1850.  Basically, the same – differences are:  Realism - a general style that continues to this day  Naturalism - a movement that influenced theatre between 1880 and 1914.  Naturalism’s leader was Emile Zola  Wrote Naturalism in the Theatre (1881)  Argued that plays productions must demonstrate effects of visible causes  Use scientific and rational methods to show characters  Characters as a product of their environment Chapter 9 Review  Theatre artists saw naturalism as the most powerful genre for impressing their views on their audiences. Like:  Liberalism - the right of individuals to pursue their interests unrestrained by aristocratic privileges or state regulations. Plays:  Socialism – argued that social needs and equity rather than private interests should drive economics  Realism and the Producer-Director  First Big Producer – The Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, Georg II  Absolute control over all aspects of design  Elevated the ensemble to new heights of realism with individual lines and choreography  Set the standard for realistic productions in Europe  Rehearsals were months long Chapter 9 Review  Then came Stanislavsky - who saw the Duke’s performances that influenced his own methods of acting and directing.  Authentic honest realism over stylized strutting  Organic productions  Brought realism to Russia and founded the Moscow Art Theatre or MAT (1898) Chapter 9 Review  In Japan  Some feared that replacing the onnagata would destroy aesthetic pleasure and encourage female sexual promiscuity  Osanai’s Free Theatre (named after the one in France) embraced the shingeki new style and sought to emulate Western dramas  Japan's first professionally trained female actor, Matsui Sumako, played Nora in ibsen's dollhouse her most famous role  In China  The military defeat by Japan and the success of European imperialism pushed Chinese drama to become more western  Huaju – Chinese spoken drama in western style became popular Chapter 9  The well-made play - Realism has selective focus on:  Unobtrusive exposition  Appearance of real time  Linear sequences of cause-and-effect actions that lead to a third act crisis  Careful construction of credible character psychology  Anton Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen are two playwrights we read had a critique on photography and that it could show us little about the human experience.  Along with Chekhov and Ibsen, Strindberg was also influential to 19th and 20th century theatre Terms to Know - Chapter 10  Avant-garde – borrowing a French military term referring to the forward line of soldiers in battle, various groups of artists since the 1880s have likewise thought of themselves as marching in the front ranks of artistic progress, fighting the property of the bourgeoisie, and inventing new aesthetic strategies in the service of utopian change.  Copyright – a legal protection extended to authors giving them control over the publication and performance of their work period the first comprehensive copyright law was enacted by France in 1790.  Auteur – or auteur director. A figure who takes author-like control of all the elements of stage or film production. Chapter 10 Review  Photography led to embracing positivism which validated the visible and material as real  This led to realism and naturalism  The response that opposed naturalism, realism and positivism – avant-garde  Put down the objective materialism as an understanding of reality  Against positivism  Upheld the subjective reality of the spiritual and immaterial human experience – Symbolism, Aestheticism, Expressionism Chapter 10 Review  Audiences have always enjoyed looking at people and “spectacular” bodies  Strong men, Exotic Dancers and Burlesques, “Freakish” and contortionist, Attractive and sexually viable  These bodies entertained at variety stages, circuses, festivals, world fairs, and music halls.  Photography aided this.  Musical theatre began to emerge first as operettas in the mid 19th century in Vienna, Paris, and London to amuse mostly bourgeois spectators  Theatrical revues flourished in western stages mostly for the bourgeois audience  Included:  Chorus girls, Musical, comic and sketch traditions  Theatrical Revues like Ziegfield follies together with journalism grew consumerism in the United States Chapter 10 Review  Audiophonic media like telephone and phonograph had more that practical purposes but also grew interest subjective and spiritual things.  Photography changed theatrical design to adopt realistic conventions. This narrowed the theatrical possibilities.  In 1890’s a minority of artists demanded that theater NOT ignore the spiritual and subjective qualities of reality most evident in poems and aural symbols.  Avant-garde were on the “front lines fighting” for progress in the art  Rebelled against established cultural institutions (many ways anti-capitalist and embrace romanticism)  Published manifestos to spread their ideology and publicize their work.  Electricity  The new technology became a tool of avant-garde artist.  Electrical illumination now had the ability to leave the audiences in the dark during a performance. Chapter 10 Review  Prominent avant-garde movements  Symbolism  Gustav Kahn wrote the first Symbolist Manifesto and others followed  Pierre Quillard wrote one  Emphasized the importance of the human voice as way to touch the soul of the audience. (words)  Warned audiences to not be distracted by the material décor of the stage.  Elevate aesthetic goals, imagist poetry, and philosophy  Aestheticism cared for the unification of stage productions  Where audiences could escape their workday and enjoy the aesthetic heightened sensory experience  Rebelled against the spiritual yearnings of the Symbolists  Believed in art for art’s sake  In Russia, Aestheticism went under a different name – Retrospectivism Chapter 10 Review  The term expressionism was first used by Francois Delsarte  He attempted to systematize the actors physical and vocal expression of ideas and emotions related to what he conceived to be the physical, mental, and spiritual parts of the performer's body.  German Expressionism  Has roots in first generation avant-garde movement – anti-realism  And in second-generation concerns centered on utopian hopes and social transformation  Expressionism became a general notion denoted by non-realism with special attention to the emotions of the artist.  Early German expressionist plays called for anti-realist techniques  Grotesquely painted scenery  Exaggerated movement  Telegraphic dialogue - it copied the abbreviated mechanistic quality of telegraph messages Chapter 10 Review  Expressionism in the U.S. was more conservative than its German and Scandinavian counterparts.  U.S. playwrights combined the subjective and objective by  Allowing on-stage action to emphasize objective, external realities  Allowing moments to explore a character’s subjective psychology reality  This strategy proved effective for audiences to:  Validate their photographic sense of the visible world  Understand/empathize the character’s perspective Chapter 10 Review  Expressionism in the U.S. moved away from traditional realism but was not radically avant-garde it was more – Psychological Realism  Mainstream theatres, directors, and producers borrowed from avant-garde artists to shape their productions.  German director Max Reinhardt became a mediator between the avant-garde and mainstream.  Believed no single style suited all plays in theatrical occasions.  He directed Naturalist, symbolism, and Expressionist plays Terms to Know – Chapter 11  Globalization – the ongoing and accelerating process of widespread transnational engagement, driven largely by economic systems and aided by information technology, in which interaction among cultures has become commonplace.  Futurism – an avant-garde movement that was launched in Italy in 1909 with the publication of a manifesto by F.T. Marinetti damning the art of the past and advocating new forms exalting the dynamism of the machine age.  Socialist Realism – the official aesthetic policy of the Soviet Union from 1930 to 1953, instituted by Joseph Stalin, which favored idealistic and heroic images of and plays about workers and communist leaders to advance the aims of the state. The art was “realistic” only in so far as it was not abstract. Terms to Know – Chapter 11  Biomechanics – a mode of training actors originated by Russian director Meyerhold designed to produce performers who could combine the arts of characterization, singing, dancing, and acrobatics with precise physical and vocal expression.  Agit-prop – shortened form of “agitation-propaganda” this term specifies a type of didactic theater that originated in the Soviet Union. Performed by touring ensembles these were anti- naturalistic revues designed to instruct illiterate peasants and workers in the basic ideas of communism. Now it is often used as a pejorative word to identify overt ideological types of performance. Terms to Know – Chapter 11  Modernism – a general orientation to the stage that emphasized the written text of the playwright, questioned the representational basis of theater, and often posited the existence of an ideal realm that could transcend the anguish of material conditions, such as the perceived chaos of the modern city. In Europe and the US, modernism in the theater lasted from 1920 to about 1975.  Gestus – Bertolt Brecht’s term for the expressive means an actor can employ – such as a way of standing, or moving, or a pattern of behavior – that indicates to the audience the social position or condition of the character that the actor is playing. Chapter 11 Review  The 20th century was a period of upheaval, change, and invention.  Politically numerous wars  Economically several depressions and points of unsteadiness  Globalization tied national economies together  Electricity and communication media changed everyday lives which influenced Theatre  At the beginning of the 20th century there were two camps  Mainstream Realism – began incorporating political critique  Avant-garde – rejected bourgeois culture Chapter 11 Review  Two main forces of change in theatre  The Great War (World War I)  Led to the Russian Revolution in 1917  Preceded by socialist and avant-garde theatre movements  Followed by new models of political theatre  Movies  Destabilized notions of self and society – leading to Modernism  Directly challenged western mainstream theatre Chapter 11 Review  Before the Russian Revolution – socialist playwrights and audiences moved towards Naturalism  The issue with naturalism was its ability to show real brutalities but not how to fix them.  People couldn’t change their circumstances  If they tried, they would be defeated by authorities  Socialist playwrights that kept writing naturalist plays to show real atrocities held tension in their pessimistic plays and optimistic politics.  Naturalism was rejected based on this conflict. Chapter 11 Review  George Bernard Shaw - outspoken socialist playwrights  1882 became a communist and joined the Fabian society in London.  Believed in vitalism or “life force” and human agency  His plays changed political discourse in London.  Futurism – began in Italy from the manifesto of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti – likely hoping for a shocking affect of Ubu Roi.  The manifesto  Damned the art of the past: museums, concert halls and conventional theatre.  Slapped Symbolism called for artists to exalt the speed the machine age  Embraced film to transform theatre (earlier than other artists) Chapter 11 Review  Futurism traveled to Russia and was upheld by Vladimir Mayakovsky.  He aligned the movement with communism  Believed in machine-age utopia and work to create effective propaganda for the struggling regime.  It turned into constructivism which is the artistic synthesis of retrospective activism and futurism  In Switzerland, Futurism took the form of Dadaism Chapter 11 Review  Meyerhold was a Russian director, actor, and theatrical producer  Had gone from Naturalism to Symbolism to Retrospectivism. He had embraced the revolution and continued his theatrical experiments including a system of active training known as bio- mechanics into Constructivism the final avant-garde movement of his career  Meyehold’s influenced theatrical practices around the world , especially in England, Germany, and Eastern Europe.  Frederick Taylor, an American, was the originator of “scientific management” to make capitalism more profitable and efficient known as Taylorism.  Meyerhold adapted Taylorism for training actors  Actors were required to participate in a one-hour activity called biomechanics and were instructed to think in terms of three “invariable stages” to perform a task on stage  Intention  Realization  Reaction Chapter 11 Review  Bertolt Brecht worked in film and theatre, he was dramatist (playwright) and director.  In 1928 he embraced communism and rejected the bourgeois theatre  He then wrote presentational “learning plays” in the fight against capitalism  He fled Nazi Germany in 1933 , exiling to Scandinavia and the U.S.  Brecht’s expanded his vision “epic theatre” to tell historical and allegorical tales.  Spectators were encouraged to look at the present world of capitalism and fascism from the point of view of communist utopia. Chapter 11 Review  Brecht’s epic theatre forged innovations in production and performance.  He often used poetry and music  He wanted his protagonist to be seen as odd and unusual  He called this Verfremdungseffekt - arousing curiosity in audiences in characters for the purpose of revolutionary change  Often used metatheatricality to keep his spectators aware of the inherent doubleness of all actors/characters on stage  Encouraged his actors to make individual gestures that embodied the social attitudes and relationships of their characters - Gestus Chapter 11 Review  Avant-garde movements and socialist plays spread throughout the United States and Latin America, especially emerging in Mexico.  Within communist controlled areas of China Chinese artists developed a new form of theatre called Yanggeju  It was based on the fusion of folk songs, local theater and yangge, a traditional spring festival. It developed into a new national drama called geju.  It was designed as Chinese equivalent of Western Opera – became incredibly popular after the communist victory  Introduction of western drama had inspired two theatrical movements in India  1. Social Drama - criticize the inequalities of india's traditional socioeconomic system and argued for liberal reform  2. Anti-colonial Drama - directly resisted English culture and British authority Chapter 11 Review  Theatrical Modernism relied on two major techniques to separate the imaginations of their spectators from the mundane realities  1. Focus audience attention on voice and language and transport them to a unified aesthetic  Had more in common with Symbolist and Aestheticists  Use of metatheatricality to undercut representational theatre  2. Get audiences to separate the actor’s bodies from their character’s words  Minimize actor's bodies – which troubled conventional identification of actors with their characters Chapter 11 Review  William Butler Yeats tried to alter the actor’s embodiment of a character the basis of theatrical representation.  Influenced by Symbolist productions he experimented with some of the actors at the Abbey Theatre in London to see if he could minimize their physical appearance and have them not draw attention to themselves.  Yeats didn’t want actors to interfere with his words  He had more success with westernized version of Japanese nō theatre where the narration encourages the audience to imagine the scene instead of showcasing. Next Class  Midterm exam  Reminder  Office hours are now over Zoom or by appointment ONLY  Usually on campus Tuesdays - Fridays  [email protected]