Avant Garde Theatre Per 3
PLAY STRUCTURE:Plot, Character,
language / THEATRICAL ELEMENTS:
Sets, Lights, Sound, Costumes, Masks / JOB DESCRIPTION
Actor, Director / AUDIENCE / PRINCIPLES / PLAY-
WRIGHTS
Symbolism / Play structure varies for each play. Some may have a linear structure and some may have a well made structure. Each character has a deeper meaning behind them. They are not just actors. For language, actions are used more, and very short sentences. Sometimes just one word. / "the set should be a pure ornamental fiction which completes the illusion through analogies of colors and lines with the play.Significantly, the sets were meant not to echo the visible shapes or forms of the characters, but, in a kind of synesthesia, to analogize the essence of the play itself.
In Rosmerholm, the set is “without any firm contours. The actors wander restlessly over the stage, resembling shadows drifting continuously on the wall. They like to move with their arms spread out, … like the apostles in old paintings who look as if they've been surprised during worship" (quoted in Deak, p. 189). / In theory, the actor was to be a depersonalized symbol pointing to a meaning beyond what was visible on the stage.
Bang's description of actors resembling apostles and shadows on a wall gives us a sense of how the staging of the play used vagueness and suggestiveness to reach higher spiritual meanings. / The audiences role is to decipher the message that the play carries. Though symbolistic plays are often complicated and carry more than one message, the audience is charged with the responsibility of understanding and comprehending at least one of the messages that the play carries. / Symbolism began with a group of French poets in the late 19th Century and soon spread to the visual arts and theatre, finding its peak between about 1885 and 1910. French poet Jean Moreas published the Symbolist Manifesto in 1886 that greatly influenced the entire movement in the visual and performing arts. In the theatre, symbolism was considered to be a reaction against the plays that embodied naturalism and realism at the turn of the 20th Century. The dialogue and style of acting in symbolist plays was highly stylised and anti realistic/non-naturalistic.importance of using suggestion to reach metaphysical concepts of "the enigma of life"
The symbolists aimed to eliminate all traces of naturalistic or imitative acting, and all romance and melodrama. / Alexander Blok, Pierre Quillard, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats , Belgian Maurice Maeterlinck, Frenchmen Auguste Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, Paul Claudel
PLAY STRUCTURE:
Plot, Character,
language / THEATRICAL ELEMENTS:
Sets, Lights, Sound, Costumes, Masks / JOB DESCRIPTION
Actor, Director / AUDIENCE / PRINCIPLES / PLAY-
WRIGHTS
Expressionism / Individual characters don't matter. The overall theme is what the focus is on. Characters are common people. Random shifts from verse to prose. Simple plot, focusing on major issues. Characters are represented as types and grouped into categories. Setting is the strongest influence. Actors speak so that the sentence is not remembered, but the point is. Speaking is explosive with lots of contrast. / free theatrical means.One of the most useful devices was expressionistic painting called “decor blague” (Ironic setting) Ex: the film “The Cabinet of DR. Caligari”. atmospheric lighting, leaning walls, colored lights. harsh and startling lighting and color, deformed doors/windows. Unexpected elements. Masks. Costume and props may be greatly exaggerated. Geometric images. / Actors:Actions are puppet or robot like. Had to express emotion and focus on getting theme across. Bring lots of energy to the stage. It isn't about acting ability. About how they contribute to the scene. Directors:No reinterpretation. Goal is to make audience see the deeper meaning instead of what's on the surface. / here should be a large impact on the audience. They should feel as if they're experiencing what the characters are experiencing. should influence their ethical, social, and political behavior. / Very emotionally charged. captures our inner struggle spiritually to develop into a new person. Nightmarish. Dreamlike. Heros are common people. About inner psychology instead of physical appearance. Protests unrealities of romanticism. Also against realism. Focuses on social classes. Conscious and subconscious thoughts and experiences. Sudden shifts. Emotional. Deeper meaning than what you might first see. / Josef and Karel CapekThe Insect Comedy, Karel CapekR.U.R. Elmer Rice The Adding Machine.August StrindbergThe Road to Damascus, George KieserFrom Morn to Midnight, Ernst TollerTransfiguration, Eugene O'NeillHairy Ape
Futurism / The idea of futurism was based around modern lifestyles, the beauty of future life, and embracing popular technology and advanced technology.Futurismwas a rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, youth and industry.A typical futurism storyline was not immediately identified with a distinctive style. It was not until the year of 1911 that a distinctive Futurist style emerged, and then it was based upon Cubist influence. Futurism characters were odd, and almost moved in a robotic way. They involved characters that did not specifically fit the scene and also were not very significant to the storyline. They also were very psychologically motivated throughout the scene. The characters spoke in dramatic tones and languages to excite the audience and the writers’ goal was to distract the audience from their everyday life and take them through a sea of endless possibilities. / dimming of house lights during performance
arrival of the fourth wall
paintings hung around the stage
Brass instruments
Integrate with dance performances
“Labyrinth of sensations / As a director one must take many risks to grab the audiences attention. for example, Robert Wilson a renowned avantegarde director has grabbed the audiences attention in each of his plays that some are even scared to watch them. As an actor, one must relate to the audience but at the same time also break the fourth wall constantly. / futurism tends to shock the audience a lot. from breaking the fourth wall to relating to each person in the audience, futurism has a tendency to grab the audiences attention. / Futurists loved speed, noise, machines, pollution, and cities
-embrAced the new world
-twentieth century art movement (1907-late 1920’s)
-It doesn’t have a distinct style like other avantgarde theatre forms
-Technology was a huge influence / Vladimir Mayakovsky
-Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (first futuristic playwright)
-Enrico Prampolini
-Umberto Boccioni
-Giacomo Balla
PLAY STRUCTURE:
Plot, Character,
language / THEATRICAL ELEMENTS:
Sets, Lights, Sound, Costumes, Masks / JOB DESCRIPTION
Actor, Director / AUDIENCE / PRINCIPLES / PLAY-
WRIGHTS
Surrealism / Unrelated scenes may be back to back, dreamlike and sometimes illogical.
Scenes occur in unexpected locations.
Dialogue contains poetic imagery.
Characters are unconnected and may not respond to each other directly.
Language is used ritualistically and to explore the mind and world. Musical sound dominates. / Paintings are often used in sets. Surrealist artists like Pablo Picasso created sets. Visual surrealist art was antirealistic, dream like, and colorful. Art was, to them, an expression of the subconscious mind.
Costumes and sets were unrealistic, with the
costumesflowy and dreamlike. / Actors can work to disturb the audience. Theatre of Cruelty puts the actor under painful psychic transformation, all to be purified. Actors must play archetypes and be able to blend characteristics in a sexual manner. Androgynous and hermaphrodite characters are often used. Actors should be able to use sounds beyond normal language and have a complete commitment to the process. Dance, especially ballet, is often used to convey messages and actors should be able to move.
Directors must be able to interpret the scenes and translate it in a way that is interpretable to the audience. / The audience must be able to accept and interpret what is in front of them and in Theatre of Cruelty, they must be able to suffer a psychic transformation to come out pure at the end. / Insanity is true. Creation is only capable after the mind is free from logical or moral sense. Logic and the ego must be balanced. Opposite elements can be combined into a new vision and great theatre can manipulate appearances and allow the subjective mind to explore itself and the surrounding world. The unreal is real and good theatre can disturb viewers completel / Gertrude Stein-Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights(1938)
Andre Breton- founder of surrealism, wroteSurrealist Manifesto.
Robert Desnos- wroteLa Place De L'Etoile (1928)he was a key Surrealist for the theatre form of the movement.
Theatre of the Absurd / Plot: The consideration of a traditional plot structure is really rare. The “plot” usually consists of the absurd repetition of cliche and routine, which is the constant repeating of phrases usually relevant to the play. Also, there is nearly always an outside force that remains a mystery throughout the play. As for the plot line itself. It is basically a circle as it ends usually the same way it begins.
Characters: They seem to be lost in an incomprehensible universe and disregard rational devices because they are inadequate. Many characters seem to robotically be stuck in a routine speaking only in cliche. Characters are frequently stereotypical, almost like stock characters in Commedia dell'arte. In the plot, a character may be in crisis because the world around them is incomprehensible. Most absurdist plays feature a pair of interdependent characters, usually 2 boys or 1 boy and 1 girl, whose relationship may change throughout the play.
Language: Even though it has a reputation for nonsense language, most of the dialogue is naturalistic. The moment when characters resort to nonsense and cliches makes Theatre of the Absurd distinctive. It tends to gain a rhythmic, almost musical quality, which may bring out a comedic effect. The dialogue may go through routine full of clichés without actually communicating anything or making a connection between the characters. / Sets: Minimal props and set pieces, some of the sets are symbolic to the piece
Lighting: Mostly Dark, dull
Sound: Solely relying on the actors voices
Costumes: It depends on the play or piece of Theatre of the Absurd / The director’s job in Theatre of the Absurd is to resist the temptation to pile on a visual meaning to the play because it is not immediately available in the text. Some directors try to force a meaning on the play because the audience would not get the concept until after a while.
The actor’s in Theatre of the Absurd play characters that are not aware of the plot of the story. Because of this, the audience does not fully understand what is going on and sometimes they never find out. / The point of Theatre of the Absurd is meant to show the audience what happens when human existence has no meaning and therefore all purpose and communication breaks down, thus alerting the audience to do the opposite. / The point in theatre of the Absurd is to teach the audience about life. In the end none of it makes sense. / Samuel Beckett
Eugene Ionesco
Harold Pinter