Transcript Mythological and Archetypal Appraoches

The Modernist
Temperament: 1885-1940
In the late 1880s, another strand of performance – in
rebellion against realism – was emerging.
The brief that art should seek to represent human
behavior and the physical world ( as normatively
perceived) had dominated theory and practice since the
Renaissance. It was a fundamental premise of realism
and naturalism.
Beginning in the 1880s, one group of artists
increasingly rejected this premise and substituted its own
subjective visions (usually involving some degree of
abstraction and distortion)
Between perception and representation is often
considered the true beginning of the modernist
temperament.
Symbolism (1/2)
 The first artistic movement to reject representationalism was
symbolism, launched in 1885.
 arguing instead that truth is beyond objective examination.
 Maurice Maeterlinck, wrote that the most important element of
great drama is the “idea which the poet forms of the unknown in
which float about the beings and things which he evokes, the
mystery which dominates them.”
 Unlike the realism, the symbolists chose their subjects form the
past, the realm of fancy, or the mysterious present and avoided
any attempt to deal with social problems or environmental forces.
They aimed to suggest a universal truth independent of time and
place that cannot be logically defined or rationally expressed.
Thus their drama tended to be vague and mysterious.
 The symbolists believed that the most important aspect of a
production is mood or atmosphere.
Symbolism (2/2)
Prior to the twentieth century, artistic movements occurred
linearly (that is, one succeeded another chronologically); in the
twentieth century, several existed simultaneously. For example,
between 1910 and 1920, movements called expressionism,
futurism, dadaism, cubism, and a number of others (including
realism) coexisted.
 Thus the transition had been made from a common set of values
to multiple sets of values – from the absolute to the relative – the
most basic characteristic of the modernist temperament.
 In the early 20th century, however, the visual arts no longer
always depicted all details of the same picture as seen from on
eye-point.
 Ex. Picassos’ painting
Similar developments in music displaced melody, so that a
composition could be valued not for its melodic and harmonic
patterns but rather for its handling of time and atonal relationships
Appia, Craig, and Reinhardt (1/2)
 During the early 20th century, two theorists – Appia and Craig –
were especially successful in reshaping ideas about the “art of the
theatre.”
 Adolphe Apppia (1862-1928) was born In Switzerland
 He sought to replace flat, painted scenery with three-dimensional
structures as the only proper environment for three-dimensional
actors.
 He advocated the use of steps, platforms, and ramps to create
transitions form horizontal to vertical planes
 Appia was also a major theoratician of stage lighting. To reveal
the shape and dimensionality of the setting and actor, Appia
advocated the use of light from various directions and angles.
 not until 1911 were lamps available with a concentrated filament
of sufficiently high wattage to permit the development of spotlights.
 Gordon Craig (1872-1966) began his career as an actor in the
English theatre
Appia, Craig, and Reinhardt (2/2)
 He saw it as a wholly autonomous art whose basic elements – action,
language, line, color, and rhythm – are fused by a master artist.
 Like Appia, Craig advocated simplicity in scenery, costumes, and
lighting. Both sought to replace the representational approach to visual
elements
 Appia and Craig also promoted the concept of the director as the
supreme, unifying theatre artist.
 The influence of Appia and Craig was reinforced by the German
director, Max Reinhardt (1872-1943), who was then amending earlier
conceptions of the director.
 For the first time, theatre history became important to directing,
because Reinhardt frequently built productions around elements
significant to the theatrical context in which a play had originally appeared.
 alter the time or place of a play’s action
 He believed that the production should serve the script (rather than the
script the production, as has become common in more recent times).
 most of his productions were still largely representational. Nevertheless,
Reinhardt established eclecticism as the dominant directorial approach
New Artistic Movements
 The decade between 1910 and 1920 was one of unrest and
upheaval, epitomized by World War I.
 Three of the most important of these movements were futurism,
dada, and expressionism
 Futurism was launched in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
(1876-1944), an Italian who glorified the speed and energy of the
machine age, which he saw as the key to an enlightened future.
 The futurists sought to replace old art forms with a number of
new ones, among them collage, kinetic sculpture, and bruitisme
(‘noise music” based on the sounds of everyday life).
 Dada was grounded in rejection of the values that had provoked
Word War I.
 in neutral Switzerland, where in 1916 Dada was born. Dada’s
principal spokesman was Tristan Tzara (1896-1963)
 Expressionism emerged around 1910 in Germany. It sought to
counter materialism and industrialism
“The Hairy Ape”
 “The Hairy Ape” derives its unity from its central theme: humanity’s
frustrated search for identity in a hostile environment.
 “They do not recognize that their quarters resemble “the steel
framework of a cage” or that they themselves resemble Neanderthal man”
 Yank dies without achieving the sense of belonging that he has so
desperately sought.
 Yank is symbolic of modern humanity in an industrialized society
 Only a few of the characters in “The Hairy Ape” have names. Most are
representative types or members of groups.
 O’Neill seems to suggest that all human beings in the modern,
industrialized world have been distorted – the workers having been
reduced o the level of animals, the rich having become useless puppets.
 O’Neill suggest that, beginning with Scene 4, everyone whom Yank
encounters should wear a mask
 “The Hairy Ape” is representative of both the outlook and the
techniques of expressionism. The episodic structure and distorted visual
elements are typical
The Postwar Era
 By the 1920s, modernism dominated “high” art both in
Europe and America
 advent around 1929 of sound films and a major economic
depression
 In the United States, the majority of those who continued to
attend live theatre still preferred some version of realism.
New theatrical movements were welcomed first by “art” or
“little” theatres
 Thornton Wilder (1897-1975), especially for Our Town
(1938), with its distrillation of everyday human experience in
small-town America