4/23/13- African-American Theatre

What constitutes it?
-writer? story? characters? actors? audience? producing theatre?

Samuel Hay's Two General Directions
1. The Black Experience

• characters off the streets, out of joints and drives
• themes directed towards African-Americans
• language of ordinary folks dressed up with poetry, music & dance

2. The Black Arts (like Tyler Perry)

• characters as model humans & historical figures
• themes notices and understood by white people

African Grove Theatre, 1821

-James Hewlitt

William Wells Brown

-first play published by an African-American, this comic 1858 melodrama depicted 2 types of African-Americans: cliche and respectable, put together

Ira Aldridge, "The African Roscius" (Roscius = Thespian)

(Minstrel shows- both races)

The Black Vaudeville song and dance team

-Bert Williams and George Walker ("In Dahomey")

Eubie Blake, 1883-1983

-ragtime and musicals

"Shuffle Along"

Charles Sydney Gilpin & Paul Robeson as "Emperor Jones"

-I want a Black actor to play this Black role (even though Broadway was also segregated)

Harlem Renaissance (1920s thru early 1930s)

-a celebration of creativity

-Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

-Negritude- we're doing our things, our way

Porgy & Bess, 1935

-written for black by whites (Gershwin)

Voodoo Macbeth, 1935

-The USA Work Program created jobs for people (Group: The Negro Unit)

-directed by Orson Welles

-took the Scottish Play and set it in Haiti for supernatural awareness

Voodoo Macbeth

"Swing Mikado" and "Hot Mikado"- versions of Rodgers & Hammerstein shows

Carmen Jones

-first Rodgers & Hammerstein show written for an all-black cast

Negro Repertory Company

-Androcles

-Lysistrata

DC: Howard Theatre

1943- Robeson was first time a black actor played Othello, opposite Uta Hagen as Desdemona

American Negro Theatre (1940-1944)

-biggest alum: Harry Bellafonte

Black Arts Movement (mid60s- mid70s)

"the artistic sister of the Black Power Movement"

Afro-Centricity- shift from Negro/black to African-American heritage

New Lafayette Theatre (1968-early 70s)

-to give whites a view

LeRoi James/Amiri Baraka (1935- )

-Dutchman, 1964

-modeled like Ionesco's "The Lesson"

Lorraine Hansbery

-first African-American to have show on Broadway

-"A Raisin in the Sun"

Ensemble Theatre in Houston, Texas!!

Ntozake Shange

-"For Colored Girls..."

-writes "choreopoems"- poetry to be staged with wonderful movement

Adrienne Kennedy

-"Sleep Deprivation Chamber"

-best known: "Funnyhouse of a Negro"

Suzan-Lori Parks

-Venus

-365 Days/365 Plays

-In the Blood

-Topdog/Underdog (Pulitzer Prize-winning play of 2002)

August Wilson (1945-2005)

-wrote a play for each decade, to give insight into African-American history with each family

"Fences"

George Wolfe 

-The Colored Museum

-dark comedy dealing with biting issues
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African-Americans have made huge strides in their own theatre culture in America; they have come a long way from the Minstrel shows of long ago. I particularly enjoy the Voodoo Macbeth production, which was directed by Orson Welles for Broadway. Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, is a perfect example of how far African-Americans have come. One of the biggest African-American playwrights in the last century was August Wilson. His play, Fences, stands as one of the most widely-known African-American plays. I love that Wilson captures history with every play that he has written.

4/18/13- Svoboda & Grotowski

Josef Svoboda
most important person in 21st Century theatre technology & design
considered himself a "scenographer"
Laterna Magika
Black Theatre Prague- Black Light Performance
Prague Quadrennial- Theatre Design Olympics

Svoboda's design work
ScenEGOgraphy: The Stage Designer as Author

Svoboda

Lee Breur (with group Maboo Minds)
what makes theatre work or not work?
Red Horse Animation
animations are semi or autobiographical
experimented with Bunraku-style puppets
The Gospel at Colonus- embellishing the Chorus part of Oedipus

Jerry Grotowski
1933-1999
Book of Articles: "Towards a Poor Theatre"
"we can't compete with film, so why do we try?"
get theatre back to most organic thing it can be: just the audience, actors, creativity & imagination
Most Famous: "The Constant Prince"
"Poor Theatre"- artists get rid of tools; use your own body/voice to create visual moments and experiences
"Akropolis"- Quality of Movement

4/16/13- The Open Theatre

The Open Theatre 1963-1973

Founder: Joseph Chaikin (1935-2003)
auteur- "director is god"
collaborator- shepherd guiding the process
Chaikin believed in a Wheel, not a Pyramid hierarchy
Famous for "The Serpent", 1967
Very politically-conscious
"The Terminal" (another outline scenario)

Chaikin

Jean-Claude van Itallie
"America Hurrah!"
-The Interview (great show; Part 1)
-TV
-Motel

La Mama (Gray Shapeless Monster)--- Experimental Theatre

Joe Chaikin & Sam Shepard, 1984
-Shepard was the "it" playwright in 80s/90s
-Chaikin had a stroke, so Shepard stepped in
"Tongues", 1972
Shepard- Magic Realism

• like Labyrinth or Pan's Labyrinth
• includes overly violent movies like Machete or Django Unchained

Shepard's "Buried Child"

-Fool For Love

Shepard

Bread and Puppet- indoor & outdoor theatre

-humongous puppets

-feed audiences (break bread together)

Richard Schechner

-radical stagings of classical material

-Dionysus in '69

-Yokastas Redux, 2005

-explorer of environmental theatre

1968- Britain disbanded censorship

-first time since 1574 (that makes it 394 years!)

The WOOSTER GROUP

-"Chronology"

-Deconstructive Theatre

-Route 1 & 9- a deconstructed Our Town

Founding Member: Willem Dafoe

-LSD....Just the High Points (deconstructed The Crucible)

Dafoe

4/11/13- The 60's & 70's in Theatre

Pulitzer Prize Winners: Modern Masters of Drama
(O'Neill, Williams & Miller)

Alan Kaprow's "18 Happenings in Six Parts" (1959)
-experimental theatre!
-we can do theatre anywhere
Words, 1961
(sometimes called "happenings")
(Even haunted houses are meta-theatrical activities)

The Living Theatre
founded by: Julian Beck & Judith Malina
"The Strike Support Oratorium", NYC 1974
agit-prop (agitational propaganda = protests)
Tableaux- very dramatic still picture (even curtain calls count)
Chaikin and Gary Goodrow in The Connection, 1960
Frankenstein, 1975

Malina & Beck

The Living Theatre's Seven Imperatives

1. In the Street: outside of the cultural and economic limitations of institutionalized theatre.
2. Free: Performance for the proletariat, the Lumpenproletariat, the poor, the poorest of the poor, without admission charge.
3. Open Participation: Break thru, Unification: Collective Creation.
4. Spontaneous Creation: Improvisation: Freedom.
5. Physical life: Body: Sexual Liberation.
6. Change: Increase of Conscious Awareness: Permanent Revolution: Unfixed (Flexible, Free) Ideology.
7. Acting as Action.

4/4/13- Epic Theatre & Bertolt Brecht

EPIC THEATRE
(opposite of Vaughner)
(intentional theatricalism)
(Most important person in 20th Century Theatre: Bertolt Brecht)

Erwin Piscator (German Theatre)
-Schiller's "The Robbers" (1957 design)
-design for "Hoppla, Such is Life!" in 1927 (poles & platforms, projection surfaces)
-Piscator's Regiebuch
-obsessed with projections (schema for projections: "K2")

BERTOLT BRECHT
Brecht and Kurt Weill
Paul Dessau
verfremdungsprinzip
verfremdungs effect- critical distancing rather than "alienation" of audience
epic theatre- rather than "dramatic" (Aristotelian)
didactic theatre- to teach, propagandize, incite to action
proletariat theatre- for the common person/the worker
Marxist- economic reasons for humanities' maladies
Antiscenery- visually provocative way of undoing traditional theatre set

Brecht

DRAMATIC FORM
active
involves spectator in stage action
consumes his capacity to act
allows him to have feelings
spectator drawn into something
spectator experiences w/characters
one scene exists for another
suspense in awaiting outcome

EPIC FORM
narrative
spectator as observer
awakens his capacity to act
demands decisions from him
spectator confronted with something
spectator confronts/studies what he sees
each scene for itself
suspense at the process

"Critical Distance" created by....

• theatricalism- always aware you're in the theatre
• expose lights/technical workings; don't use curtain
• actors "become" characters; stage crew visible
• self-referencing/direct address to audience
• "In this scene I play a soldier who is caught ....."
• includes songs and entertainment that break the action
• like commercials in movies on TV or during TV shows
• historification
• displace time or place to be unfamiliar to the audience
• use different races/ethnicities
• Man Equals Man: British soldiers in India c1900
• Good Person of Setzuan in China
• Galileo
• like a parable

"Mother Courage"

Robert Wilson's 2000 production with the Berliner Ensemble

Robert Wilson- most proficient American director in Europe (similar to Expressionism)

Robert Wilson

Brechtian Design- set/design is more of a collage or montage or pastiche
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Bertolt Brecht really changed the view of theatre. His insight into critically distancing the audience during performances for an entirely new theatrical experience was innovative and groundbreaking. His play The Threepenny Opera is still one of the most widely-produced plays of all time, all over the world. Elsewhere, one Robert Wilson is one of the most proficient American directors working in European theatre. He loves using Brechtian design devices in his productions. I saw one video of his version of Cabaret, in which he purposefully distances the audience from the performers, and it works seamlessly with the show Cabaret.

4/2/13- Existentialism & Absurdism

Existentialism
Sartre & Camus
def: the individual condemned to freedom
looks like normal play, but with profound philosophical point

Jean Paul Sartre
-No Exit
-The Flies (off-Broadway); Greek myth of Orestes

No Exit

Albert Camus
-Myth Sisyphus: push boulder up hill for eternity

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Absurdism
Genet, Ionesco, & Beckett
-the meaningfulness of meaninglessness
-"I did everything I was supposed to / I played the game..... so what?"
-written starting after World War II

Jean Genet (great play: The Dayroom)
-to be moral, you must be immoral
-believed you must be amoral
-The Balcony- people wear costumes and you give them authority
-The Blacks
-The Maids- 2 women decide to murder the mistress of the house

Eugene Ionesco (fun plays)
-The Bald Soprano
-Amedee
-Rhinoceros- wouldn't life be easier if you just conform?
-The Chairs

Ionesco's "The Chairs"

Absurdists: There is no such thing as 'truth'
-all meaning ascribed/created
-if you had grown up free from other humans, what would you believe?
Ionesco- LOGIC itself is a construct

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Existentialism and Absurdism are two very important movements in the history of theatre. This semester I directed a scene from Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit and hope to direct this great piece for Summer Repertory Theatre. Plays written like Albert Camus’ Myth Sisyphus are a fascinating departure from expected Realism- adding on a component of philosophy. Absurdism completely breaks down meaning and logic in plays, sometimes completely segueing into utter gibberish to make its own point. I just read Jean Genet’s The Dayroom, and think it would make a really great play to direct some day.

Unit 2- Final Thoughts

This unit dealt with a whole lot of “Ism’s” that sprang up in the history of theatre. The style of theatre began with Realism and subsequently swung through a plethora of explorative new ideas and options for people to express themselves and their time periods through. 

From a design standpoint, the departure from Realism really gave birth to a whole new spectrum of opportunities to explore in the realm of theatre. No longer would thespians be forced to depict life realistically (sometimes to a fault)- they could use motifs or symbolism to add new and deeper layers of meaning. In a way, Realism began to constrict the imaginations of designers, and still to this day is capable of doing this. Realism is well and good in some instances; in others, we should always strive to find whatever design concept would bring new life into the theatre (be it expressionism, surrealism, dadaism, etc.). 

I, personally, find the concept of Expressionism to be of particular interest. I think its uses are near limitless- in fact I think I could easily say that Expressionism seems to me like it could almost be used in nearly any play to some extent. Within reason, there doesn’t seem to be any genre hat Expressionism could assist and strengthen. By comparison, Dadaism seems to be limited to me- with very few points that it can make (regardless of the limitless ways it can achieve them). Meanwhile Expressionism cannot help but unburden the design team. Realism dictates that every brick and blade of grass must abide to how life truly is. Set, in particular, can therefore prove taxing and time-consuming. This is especially true when compared to the conceptual freedom found in Expressionism; a set of a family’s house does not necessarily need walls or a roof. The audience can buy into such creative choices, and in fact relishes them. The human brain recognizes the unusualness of the situation and inherently appreciates this derivation from normalcy. I have not personally designed many sets but I feel like this route gives so many more options to staging a production. 

I enjoyed the involvement of so many famous painters in each movement. It was a great reminder that these various movements did not simply involve the theatre world as it affected society- it affected painters and musicians, poets and dancers. Even the great Pablo Picasso collaborated with thespians and dabbled in designing shows. 

Without the exploration of new possibilities, theatre would simply grow stagnant and stale. We would be performing shows virtually the same as when they were mounted in William Shakespeare’s days. Even today, shows are constantly exposing people to new and more experimental forms of theatre. With every passing decade, theatre evolves even more. It may feel like not much is changing, but change is always being sought after. We cannot feel the Earth moving as it rotates and revolves around the Sun, and yet we know that it is constantly moving- always shifting. Theatre can not stand still either or else it will wither and die. Without continual experimentation or exposure to new ideas, any category or subject would become fossilized. I’m proud to live in a time when we can look to any of these movements for inspiration, as well as many contemporary techniques for execution. Combining any number of these practices will always lead to a new and unrealized form of theatre. I suppose all of these creative movements help theatre to always remain pertinent to wherever society is at the time. In some cultures it may not always be accepted, but as we have seen in history it is also embraced and celebrated! Such is the impact of man’s imagination- the theatre, and what he can make with it, are limited only to what he can dream up.

3/28/13- Antonin Artaud

ANTONIN ARTAUD

• started with surrealists and was too crazy/outrageous for them!
• associated with the Theatre of Cruelty (EX. A Clockwork Orange- aversion therapy)

4 Levels of Appeal

1. Emotional (most common)
2. Intellectual
3. Visceral (connection to the animal urges)
4. Metaphysical (Spiritual/Transcendent)

Visceral- like Baywatch or Psycho (physically attractive or repulsive)

Theatre of Cruelty's purpose: catharsis (just like Aristotle)

Artaud: if you can experience this vicariously then it acts as aversion therapy for audience members

• doesn't work for vengeance- anything that would only perpetuate violence doesn't count

Dracula Antonin Artaud

Artaud

• French actor in silent films; leading man
• severe mental illness- eventually institutionalized
• "The Theatre and Its Double"- collection of his essays
• (Harold Pinter's "One for the Road")
• "The Theatre has been created to drain abscesses collectively"--- VERY famous phrase
• Wrote: "I Cenci" and "The Spurt of Blood"

3/26/13- Expressionism & Surrealism

(illusionary technique- "Pepper's Ghost")
EXPRESSIONISM
-artistic style, artist depicts the subjective emotions and responses that objects & events arise in him
        -through: distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy

• Edvard Munch: The Scream, 1893 (Norwegian expressionistic painting)

       (also: Puberty, 1895; and Death in the Sickroom)

• Oskar Kokoschka
• Munch's The Sick Child, 1907
• George Rovalt's The Slaughter, 1907
• Otto Dix, The Journalist Sylvia Von Harden, 1926
• George Grosz's "The Convict", 1920
• Grosz- influenced by Dada
• The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill
• O'Neill- Father of American Realism
• America's premier playwright
• Expressionistic works are exciting
• Comics are applied Expressionism
• Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine
• Philosophical Component of Expression; it's the Antithesis of Futurism
• Nostferatu (Germany, 1922)
• Tim Burton- most famous contemporary Comic Expressionist

The Nightmare Before Christmas. You can thank Tim Burton.

• "Machinal" by Sophie Treadwell
• "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"
• "Metropolis"- 1927
• "Dark City"- 1998
• (Secret Door via Tumblr)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SURREALISM

(dreamstate)

(video: Doll Face)

• Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1450-1516)- "Garden of Earthly Delights"
• 20th Century literary and artistic movement
• attempts to express workings of the subconscious by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter
• Flourished between World War I and World War II
• 1924- poet/critic Andre Breton published "The Surrealist Manifesto"
• reuniting realms of conscious and unconscious experience
• Salvador Dali- "The Persistence of Memory" (1931)
• Crucifixion, 1954 (Hypercubic Body)
• Alberto Giacomelli- The Surrealist Table, 1933
• Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali- worked together

Surrealist Stagework

"The Wedding on the Eiffel Tower" by Jean Cocteau (Paris, 1921)

Pablo Picasso did design work (EX. "Parade" by Cocteau)

(Video: "What Dreams May Come")

EX. Monty Python's Flying Circus

EX. Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

3/21/13- History of the American Musical Theatre

Musical Theatre: form of theatre combining music, songs, spoken dialogue and dance

Book Musical: Music, Lyrics, and Book

Broadway today: mostly musicals
~~~~~~
The Beggar's Opera- 1728

• A ballad opera (new words written for musical tunes) by John Gay for London theatre. The satire (made fun) of Italian opera with characters who are common criminals
• Source of Brecht's "The Threepenny Opera"- 1928

The Black Crook- 1866

• 5 1/2 hour melodrama, loosely based on Goethe's Faust
• spectacular scenery with music and dance

Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas

• Pirates of Penzance

The Merry Widow- 1907

• Non-English comic operettas such as Austrian Franz Lehar's "The Merry Widow" also were imported to the United States

Shuffle Along- 1921

• African-Americans developed their own form of musical theatre, such as this show by Eubie Blake
• Most American Theatre was, and would remain for some time, segregated

Show Boat- 1927

• First serious epic narrative in Broadway history. Has what many believe to have greatest score ever. First time for Black and White characters held stage together as equals

Porgy & Bess- 1935

• First great American opera- George Gershwin
• Series of vignettes in Black Charleston
• ghetto called Catfish Row where a cripple named Porgy falls in love with a woman named Bess

Oklahoma- 1943

• First musical to integrate songs and dances to extend the narrative and the debut of the collaboration between Rodgers & Hammerstein

Kiss Me, Kate- 1948

• Cole Porter's play-within-a-play
• based on "Taming of the Shrew"

Guys & Dolls- 1950

• based on Damon Runyan's short story
• celebrated and made fun of New Yorkers

West Side Story- 1957

• Leonard Bernstein & Stephen Sondheim
• Romeo and Juliet

The Fantasticks- 1960

• longest-running production in the world (50 years)
• Based on Edmond Rostad's "The Romancers"
• sophisticated premise- reality of life
• can be bare-bones with just a platform, chest, and crazy costumes

Cabaret- 1966

• Mixed cabaret numbers with narrative
• Brought conflicted world of Nazi Germany to the Broadway stage

Hair- 1968

• First musical to transfer from Off-Broadway and to feature a rock score and fully nudity
• No real plot; revue of song and dance
• showed counterculture during the Vietnam era

Company- 1970

• first collaboration between Sondheim and Harold Prince
• sophisticated/theatrical series of vignettes

A Chorus Line- 1975

• represented triumph of director-choreographer

42nd Street- 1980

• first successful stage adaptation of movie musical

Cats- 1982

• Longest-running Broadway show of all time
• first of British megahits to conquer Broadway
• Based on writings of T.S. Eliot

Les Miserables- 1987

• longest run in West End history

The Lion King- 1997

• Julie Taymor being Julie Taymor
• Creatively innovative; groundbreaking costumes

3/19/13- Dadaism & Futurism

DADAISM
(originated in Zurich, Switzerland, 1916)
Nihilistic movement in the arts

Dadaism poster

• Nihilism- deliberately embraces nothing
• French for- "hobbyhorse" 
• symbolizes emphasis on the illogical and the absurd
• Archetypal forms: nonsense poem and the ready-made
• Creative techniques of accident and chance were sustained in Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Conceptual, Art and Pop Art (Andy Warhol)

Warhol's art / more Dadaism

Duchamp's "Bicycle......" - tearing down notion of "what is art"?

Tristan Tzara

(Later: Peter Handkey- "Offending the Audience")

          collage         pastiche

          montage       assemblage

art by chance, rather than design (i.e., shaking words out of a bag & making something new)

        -choreography, poem

FUTURISM      (Italy, 1909)

-loved speed, noise, machines, pollution, and cities

2 rival Isms: how do we react?

• Futurists- this is going to save humanity
• Expressionists- all technology is killing humanity

Founder: Marinetti

Marinetti

Concrete Poetry- write poem but also make a usual piece out of it (poem in a shape)

Everything would be in one compound

      -Antonio Sant'Elia, 1914: La Citta Nuova

Kinetic Sculpture: static but appears to be moving OR actually does move (i.e. a mobile)

Kinetic Sculpture (mobile)

"Luce" (play), etc., as commentary on change (plays are too long)

Ended after World War I

3/7/13- Naturalism & Non-realism

(Vimeo: "Meyerhold, Theatre, and the Russian Avant-Garde")

Lots of varying styles aesthetics in late 1800s

Naturalism (continued)

• Harley Granville Barker
• Midsummer design in Savoy, 1914
• not realistic; draping fabric
• Everyman- famous morality play from Medieval times
• Poel as God in Everyman
• Beerbohm Tree's Midsummer
• Realistic; famous for live rabbits
• Alfred Jarry- Ubu Roi
• very controversial play
• originally created to be crazy puppet version of Macbeth
• Theatre l'Oeuvre (Theatre of the Work)
• Benjamin Franklin Wedekind
• scenes of realism then sudden expressionistic scenes
• Pic: University of Waterloo's "Spring Awakening"
• Wedekind's "Lulu"

University of Waterloo's Spring Awakening

• Max Reinhardt
• spectacles
• outdoor extravaganza
• Everyman, Midsummer, The Miracle
• would transform Broadway theatres
• Master of Regiebuch
• or, the Promptbook
• wrote down everything he did
• Meyerhold- a great Russian director
• split in Russian theatre between Stanislovski and Meyerhold
• arrested and "purged" in 1920s
• "The Dawns", 1920
• style of acting: Biomechanics
• physical shape and movement; kinetic approach
• constructivism - like arts and crafts projects (looked like machines)
• "The Magnificent Cuckoo"
• like an Erector set

Meyerhold

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Non-Realistic Designers

(beginnings of modern theatre design)

scenography- everything of design work is under 1 person

• Adolphe Appia
• "Parcifal"
• think of space as environment; lighting creates its own language- a kinetic environment and special rhythm
• "Tristan and Isolde", 1896
• "rhythmic spaces"
• Gordon Craig
• Book: "The Art of the Theatre"
• Macbeth, "Scene", Hamlet
• Abstract design
• Ubermarionettes
• also, could use a monochromatic surface for projecting images or shadows

• Robert Edmund Jones, 1887-1954
• "The Dramatic Imagination"
• Macbeth
• Father of American Design
• revolution against realism in scenic design

Ghost Shows: Fantasmagoria & Fantascopes

-create ghosts with projectors

-spectre box (1871); picture: spectres on the stage, 1871

a Ghost Show

3/5/13- Naturalism

Technology: Late 1800's
"Tromp l'oiel": triumph of the eye (Painting Effects)

Modern example of Tromp l'oiel

The Whip- melodrama with incredible scenery
-Cirque mentality for this time period


Naturalism

• "slice of life"- depicting life onstage
• "fourth wall" realism
• photorealism

Theatre Antoine

• Toulouse-Lautre, illustrator
• visual artists/famous painters involved in theatre
• part of Independent Theatre Movement
• Antoine's staging of Zola's La Terre (1900)

The Theatre Antoine, today

Subscription Theatre

• financial loophole- buy subscription to theatre
• Gerhardt Hauptmann
• wrote The Weavers- focused on poverty
• provide capital in advance; like start-up money

• August Strindberg- realistic and nonrealistic plays (Ghost Sonata)

Ghost Sonata

• "Pelican"- expressionistic makeup design
• Arthur Schnitzler- La Ronde
• 10 scenes- Men and Women shuffling characters (5men, 5women)
• like: David Hare's The Blue Room
• David Belasco's The Return of Peter Grimm (1907)

(insert: Bohemian Rhapsody instrumental performance)

Independent Theatre Movement

• If main theatres won't put on plays you want to put on, create an independent theatre company
• La Theatre Libre
• artistic programs- it is in itself a work or art
• Toulouse Lautrec
• Theatre du Grand Guignol: Blood, Guts & Nudity

Poster for Theatre du Grand Guignol

• Vieux Columbier

Early Departures of Realism

Symbolism: Stephane Mallarme

Maurice Maeterlinck

• Les Aveugles- raked painter's palette

Oscar Wilde: Art-for-Art's-Sake ("Aestheticism")

• because it's fun/witty and it relies on wit and humor
• wordplay / wordsmithery
• aristocratic background
• open homosexuality
• original Earnest: 1895
• not uncommon to leave theatre at midnight or later
• (video: Earnest on Broadway trailer)

J.M. Barrie and Peter Pan

• escapist entertainment
• Finkelstein's design for Peter Pan (it's amazing**)

Finkelstein's design for Peter Pan (it's still amazing)

George Bernard Shaw

• History of Criticism: Father of the Modern Critic
• distaste for Shakespeare
• Shaw's "Man and Superman"
• Most popular: Arms and the Man

Gilbert and Sullivan: Operettas

• shorter, livelier, comic operas
• Patience- makes fun of the Aestheticism movement
• Mikado
• Pirates of Penzance
• Patter Song, like a chase in a melodrama (Modern Major General video)

2/21/13- Realism

Moving Panoramas
-Panorama: Greek for "to see all"
-2 hours; led to cinema
-required 2 technicians to operate/crank

Moving  Panoramas

Famous Realistic Actors & Roles:
Sarah Bernhardt, Mary Anderson, Lawrence Bassett, Edwin Booth, Charlotte Cushman, Elenora Dust, Edwin Forrest, Helena Modjeska, James O'Neill, Methua Scheller, Harley Granuille Barker, Maurice Barrymore, Henry Irving

The Beginning of Naturalism
-Emile Zola: wrote novels & plays; box set- real-life situations
-David Belasco: food from restaurant across the theatre
-Constantin Stanislovski:

• The Father of Modern Acting
• Method Actor
• Objective-based realism
• Why are you doing what you are doing?

Stanislavski

NYC Slideshow

"The Great White Way"- 1885, 1903

NYC Theatre: Lyceum

Railroad, Mass Transit, Interstate

Union Square Theatre: Vaudeville Center

"Combination" Company: making money is all that matters

Subway opened in 1904

"The Magic IF"...... What would I do??

Goethe Institute's website..... Designer's pictures~~~ Great inspiration!!