Theatre
Strindberg Antirealist Plays
"A Dream Play" and "The Ghost Sonata"
Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino
"Frameworkers' Theatre," Valdez joined with cesar Chavez in organizing frameworkers in California. He wrote Actos: short agitprop pieces dramatizing the lives of workers. El Teatre Campesino became the prototype for other groups.
Wedekind
"Spring Awakening"
Ibsen Antirealist Plays
"The Master Builder" and "When We Dead Awaken"
Angry Young Men
(England 1950's) Group of anti-establisment playwrights known collectively to deal with the dissolving British empire, class conflict, and political disillusionment. Traditional realist form, slightly modified: Look Back in Anger by John Osborne.
Unit Set
A single setting that can represent carious locales
Latin American Playwrights
Chicano playwrights: Luis Valdez, Milcha Sanchez-Scott, Arthur Giron. Cuban American Playwrights: Nilo Cruz, Manuel Martin, Mario Pena, Dolores Prida, Ivan Acosta, Omar Torrees, Muguel Pinero Puerto Rican playwrights: Yvette Ramirex, Candido Tirado, Edward Fallardo, Juan Shamsul Alam.
Constructivism
Post WW1 scene design movement in which sets frequently composed of ramps, platforms, and levels were nonrealistic and were intended to provide greater opportunities for physical action
Rogers and Hammerstein
Went on to create: Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music
Latin American Theatre
20th century: devised of realistic drama, experimental theatre, radical sociopolitical drama, and popular forms all existing side by side. Many comedies were written to deal with unique local customs of each of the Latin American nations.
Contemporary African Theatre
3 parts: English: Anglophone theatre developed in 1950's. Universities encouraged dramatists and organized traveling troupes. French: francophone; storytelling, French traditions, many from Paris productions- history, social concerns, politics- Roger Blin and Peter Brook. Portuguese: introduced religious drama to spread Catholicism; social consciousness speaking Africa.
Al-Kasaba Theatre
A Palestinian company gaining international recognition from its visits to the Royal Court Theatre in London. Originally founded in Jerusalem in 1970 but is now located in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
Performance Art
A current form of multimedia (joining theatre with other arts). Theatre, dance, and media.
Standards
A native form of musical theatre began to emerge with silly songs with hypnotic lyrics and melodies.
Concept Musical and Examples
A production is built around an idea rather than a story; both composed by Stephen Sondheim and directed by Harold Prince are Company and Follies or Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods.
Samuel Beckett
Absurdist playwright: Waiting for Godot. Most famous enigmatic, nontraditional playwright of this era.
Jene Genet, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter
Absurdist playwrights
Waiting for Godot
Act 2 appears to start over with no change since Act 1. Characters wait, accomplish nothing, and can't take control- other characters switch roles and have no control over fate. Name means: "Tragicomedy in 2 acts" of the human condition.
Julie Taymor
American director and designer, use of puppetry and costume designs mark her as a designer who uses eastern traditions, best known for her productions of The King Stag and The Lion King. She draws from all the theatre and places she has traveled to in order to compile her costumes. Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, South Africa, etc.
David Mamet
American playwright whose work was first presented in small, alternative, non-profit theaters but then became prominent in regional and off-Broadway Chicago scene. Naturalistic language and settings, struggling characters, attacking ideals of American life: Glengarry Glen Ross (play)- wrote and directed a number of films.
Sam Shepard
American playwright whose work was first presented in small, alternative, nonprofit theaters, but then became prominent in regional and off-Broadway. First developed his play-wriging skills off-Broadway by fusing surreal and absurdist styles and abandoning traditional plot structure and development.
Arther Miller
American realist playwright: Death of a Salesman. SELECTIVE REALISM.
Edward Albee
American realist writer: Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? Highly enigmatic, however some of his plays combine realistic and nonrealistic techniques. Also wrote Absurd plays.
Irving Berlin
Annie Get Your Gun: Annie Oakley
Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig
Antirealist designers; argued against photographic reproduction of scene design.; Craig invented unit set- can represent various locales.
Jean Paul Sarte
Articulated existentialism with Albert Camus, who were reacting (among other things) against WW2.
Ascendancy of Choreographer and Examples
As a director, providing the vision for a musical. Michael Bennett: A Chorus Line. Jerome Robbins: West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof. Gower Champion: Hello Dolly, 42nd Street. Bob Fosse: Sweet Charity, Pippin, Tommy. Tune: NIne, Grand Hotel, WIll Rogers Follies. Susan Storman: the Producers.
Director George C. Wolfe
Author director of Bring in da' Noise, Bring in da' Funk, and Angels in America. He was artistic director of the Public Theatre.
African American Playwrights
BOB COLE and WILLIAM JOHNSON (A Trip to Coontown), NOBLE SISSLE (shuffle Along) and EUBIE BLAKE. LANGSTON HUGHES wrote Run Little Chillun and Mulatto.
Off-Broadway Theatre
Began in the 1950's. An alternative to commercial Broadway. Smaller, less expensive, and outside of Times Square. In 60's/70's it became expensive and institutionalized. Small groups made off-off-Broadway.
August Wilson
Black playwright: Ma Rainey's Black Botton
Lorraine Hansberry
Black playwright: Raisin in the Sun: possibly most important production of the postwar era
Theatre of the Oppressed
Boal's theoretical work written in exile became manifesto for revolutionary and socially conscious theatre. He continued to teach and workshop up until death in 2009.
Augusto Boal
Brazilian playwright, director, and theorist. He fused popular and modernist styles of Western Theatre, including realism, expressionism, absurdism, and performance art. He created works about historical figures, theatrical and revolutionary. Forced into exile because of Marxist point of view.
Oklahoma
Brought together Rodgers and Hammerstein together for the first time-heralded a significant era of the American book musical. Seamlessly fitting together story, music, lyrics, ad dances so that tone, mood, and intention became a unified whole.
Richard Schechner
Coined ENVIRONMENTAL THEATRE in 1960's. American director and teacher. To him, the space and text is subject to change, reworking and improv of an existing drama are permissible.
Wole Soyinka
Concern for political and social equality is at the heart of this Nigerian playwright. INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN PLAYWRIGHT. Got the Noble Prize for: Death and the King's Horsemen.
Amiri Baraka
Dutchman: verbal and sexual showdown between an assimilated black male and white temptress, set in NY subway, others deal with political, sociological, and psychological dilemmas confronting blacks.
Peter Brook
English director, a well-known contemporary eclectic. He borrowed Artaud's theatre of cruelty and Meyerhold's biomechanics and circus arts. He became director of the International Cater for Theatre Research in Paris.
Theatricalism
Expo sing the elements of theatre to make the audience members aware that they are watching theatre
Federal Theatre Project
Formed separate black units which mounted plays by black and white authors and employed 1000's of African American writers, performers, and technicians. Since 1950's: LOUIS PATTERSON (Take a Giant Step), OWEN DODSON.
Albert Camus
Frenchmen who articulated existentialism with Jean-Paul Sarte.
Porgy and Bess
Gershwin's set in the African American community of Charlestown, South Carolina. Even more realistic, score is so powerful that some say it is an opera (sometimes performed in an opera house).
Selective Realism
Heightens certain details of action, scenery, and dialogue while omitting others. A realistic world, but the elements have been carefully chosen to underline thematic concerns.
Tennessee Williams
Important American realistic playwright: A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Night of the Iguana, and The Glass Menagerie. SELECTIVE REALISM.
Asian American Playwrights Examples
In 1970's, Philip Kan Gotanda: Son for a Nisea Fisherman; 1980's, David Henry Hwang: FOB, The Dance and the Railroad, M Butterfly.
British Musicals
Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, Miss Saigon.
Latino and Chicano Theatre
Latino-a Theatre divided into Chicano theatre, Cuban American theatre, and Puerto Rican or Nuyorican theatre: all addressing experiences of Hispanics in the US sometimes in Spanish, usually in English. Chicano Theatre: came to prominance in 1960's dduring Civil Rights.
Fiddler on the Roof
Marked the end of this era of book musicals. It's about a Jewish family whose father attempts to uphold tradition in a Russian village where the Jewish community faces persecution, directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins.
Biomechanics
Meyerhold's theory that a performer's body should be machinelike and that emotion should be represented externally.
Symbolism
Movement of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century that sought to express inner truth rather than represent life realistically.
George M. Cohan
Musical writer had songs with an American flavor and more realistic dialogue and better plot development than earlier. He moved a step closer to today's book musicals- tell a story.
Zoot Suit
Playwright Luis Valsez, about radical violence in LA in 1943, opened in LA and moved to Broadway.
Regional Theatre Playwrights and Directors
Playwrights John Guare, Lanford Wilson, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein. Directors Mark Lamos, Arvin Brown, Jon Jory, and Des McAnuff
Operetta
Romantic musical piece featuring melodic solos, duets, and choruses interspersed with spoken dialogue: The Pirates of Penzance.
African American Female Playwrights
SUZAN-LORI PARKS, PEARL CLEAGE, CHERYL WEST: three contemporary playwrights who deal with issues of racism and feminism produced in regional and alternative theaters. KIA CORTHRON: commissioned by leading regional and off-Broadway companies. ALICE CHILDLESS first AA woman work to receive a commercial production (Trouble in Mind)
Jerzy Grotowski
Schechner influenced this Polish director. He worked with Polish Laboratory Theatre (used transformations). He believed the essence of theatre is interaction between performers and audiences. In his version of Doctor Faustus, 2 dining tables made audience members a part of the scene. He modified scripts and emphasized body and voice rather than emotions. He called it POOR THEATRE. Poor in scenery and special effects- it relied on the performers for its impact.
Vaudeville/Burlesque
Singing and dancing became a main element in melodrama (19th century)
Native American Theatre
Spiritual and social traditions with theatrical elements, rituals and celebrations fused with comic significance. No audience, everyone is a participant, all outlawed until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1972 that made some ceremonies legal again. 2 gorubs led the way Native American Theatre Ensemble and Spiderwoman.
Alfred Jarry's Ubu the King
Takeoff in comic book style on Shakespeare; plot details how bulging and gluttonous Ebu conspires to take over as ruler of Poland and it later dethroned by the assassinated king's only surviving son.
Musicals of the 40's and 50's
The King and I, The Sound of Music, Annie Get Your Gun, The Taming of the Shrew, Kiss Me Kate, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady: based on Shaw's Pygmalion and West Side Story.
Joshua Sobol's GHETTO
The most internationally recognized Israeli dramatist- this play was produced throughout the world. It's about the experiences of the Jews in the Vilna Ghetto in occupied Germany during WW2.
Theatre of the Absurd
Theatrical approach emerged that combined existentialist philosophy with revolutionary, avant-garde dramatic form. Much of what happens in life is ridiculous or absurd and cannot be explained logically- and the belief that this ridiculousness or absurdity should be reflected in dramatic action.
Show Boat
Thoroughly American, dealing with serious material including love story of a black woman and a white man. It was innovative in that the songs were integrated into the plot, and the chorus line was eliminated.
African Theatre
Traditionally connected to ceremonies and rituals, used music, song, dance, and colorful, exotic, symbolic costumes. 20th century: used traditions and forms of Western to create anti-colonial struggles. Contemporary divided into 3.
Features/Qualities of Absurdist Plays
Use illogical drama to present our existence as futile or nonsensical. Plots have no traditional structure. Plot moves in circle, characters are not realistic, settings are strange, and language is telegraphic and sparse.
Athol Fugard
WHITE south african playwright. Concern with political and social equality is at the heart of his works- also a poet, essayist, and novelist. Began his career with the Royal Court Theatre in London in the late 1950's. Politically charged works led to his arrest in Nigeria in 1967, and 2 years imprisonment. INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN PLAYWRIGHT.
Jukebox and Songbook Musicals
Well known songs of composers or singers are the basis for the show. Mama Mia, ABBA, and Jersey Boys: based on music made popular by Frankie Valli.
Oscar Hammerstein
Wrote lyrics and libretto with Kern who composed the music, combined some of the best aspects of operetta and musical comedy to create Show Boat.
Existentialism
existance has little meaning, that God does not exist, that humanity is alone in an irrational universe, and that the only significant thing an individual can do is accept responsibility for his/her own actions.
Vsevelod Meyerhold
leading RUssian antirealist between 1905 and 1934 and frequently experimented with theatricalism: created biomechanics.
