Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
CONTEMPORARY DRAMA, Darkness: representing the unknown has generated fear.…
CONTEMPORARY DRAMA
BRITISH CONTEMPORARY DRAMA
Most playwrights are individuals and becuase of that, they deal with individual human beings, rarely with the masses. However, they share an integral awareness, a supreme abilty to understand the meaning of the present and to grasp its implications and eventual transformation into the future.
An infant crying in the night:
modern drama shows the anxiety and despair that spring from the recognition that man is surrounded by areas of impenetrable darkness, some recurrent symbols being blindness, loss or deprivation of a higher vision or insight, blackouts.
The cries in the night express the alienation and existential anguish of contemporary man, the sense of insecurity which surrounds life, both physical and spiritual the precariousness of most things human, the instability and immutability governing the world and the aimlessness of existence.
What post-Bomb humanity seems to fear is life not death
Most of the plays are emotional representations of the plight of man in contemporary society.
Contemporary man, alienated from the spiritual forces which previously nourished him, is condemned to live as a prisoner in a world obsessed with gain, technologically-minded and emotionally unbalanced.
loneliness or alienation
seem to be some subtle undertones underlying this main keynote which makes the latest plays and playwrights easily distinguishable from their predecessors
Insecurity
pervades contemporary society and seems even .to have reached the core of man's own self. It is is reflected by means of mistaken identities, lack of recognition, quest for a deeper awareness of life, search for self-knowledge
, and pretence under different guises (games)
The atmosphere of insecurity and menace is further darkened by a feeling of the instability of things, which is paradoxically closely associated with an immutable state of affairs.
Everything is forever changing. However, things remain basically .always the same
References to the loss of movement
indicate the acknowledgement of the fact that man has lost his capacity for perceiving his true destiny and has therefore nowhere to go
The only hope that keeps man going is an obscure belief that he may be mistaken,
Passivity
is the main feature of individual characters. They are called 'shell people'
An infant crying in the light
The search for purpose is associated with the world of light.
A recurrent theme:
the search for God, Truth or a witness which is above all a desperate cry for light in the form of love, understanding and communication.
And with no language but a cry:
The devaluation of language. as a means of communication
The communicative aspect of language has deteriorated and· man has come to realise that words are not enough to reach the Other.
Language has permanent debasement and inefficacy as a meaningful form of expression
Other forms of communication, though perhaps imperfect. have been introduced like : gestures, acrobatics, callisthenics, vaudeville turns, gags, games, make-believe, masks, symbols, action, noises, music and song, pauses, blackouts, are resorted to
Characters make use of other means to achieve a partly effective communication such as sexual intercourse, violence or humour
Most spectators leave the theatres with a feeling of uneasiness, which they attribute to the fact that no suitable answers have been proposed or nothing has happened to bring to a logical end the conflict enacted on the stage.
AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY DRAMA
1940s 1950s
: Aristotelian theories of representation dominated the American stage.
Realism:
a dramatic style that sought to reproduce the surfaces of reality
Stage settings
: reflected a specific time and place
Characters:
aimed to mirror the speech, dress and behaviour of their middle-class audiences engaging in readily believable social and domestic situations
Truth:
fixed, stable and knowable.
By the
late 1950s and 1960s
a more
anti-realistic theatre
emerged.
Questioning the conventional ideologies of realism in order to reveal the gaps in such limited constructions of identity and Truth.
Anti-realism
is concerned with eschewing the reproduction of surface reality.
Stage settings: not faithfully specific of a certain time or place.
Characters: rather than representing a psychologically consistent identity, play with the boundaries between actor/character/real person, the blurred line between ‘acting’ and ‘being’.
Anti-realistic
theatre can offer a degree of freedom from the constrictions of ‘reality’ in order to access a truth that is not readily apparent.
Politically,
anti-realistic
theatre is usually
anti-Aristotelian:
Instead of presenting a singular, dogmatic idea of how the world should be, it presents multiple views of reality that are not necessarily consistent.
Aristotelian drama
is involved in presenting the status quo for the purpose of re-establishing the dominant social order, things ‘as they should be’ according to the lawmakers.
Theatre: achieved its function through
catharsis
('purging’ of negative emotions) i.e. purifying and strengthening the audience.
Spectators: arrive at catharsis through their reaction to the play, experiencing both terror/fear and pity in connection with the action and their identification with the protagonist.
Dynamic theatre
Experimental theatre of inclusion and diversity:
questions the nature of reality, presents multiple versions of truth(s), complicates the notion of an origin or ‘essence’, and destabilises the illusion of fixed identity by blurring the boundaries between role-playing and authenticity.
Audience: engage with difficult existential, epistemological and ontological questions to inspire thoughtful considerations of who we are and how we fit into our various communities.
The most marked break with the nineteenth century tradition of the well-made play and early twentieth-century realism
Focus: experience beyond rational understanding. More theme or conflict centred than plot or character centred.
By the
1960s, 1970s and 1980s
, postmodern drama in America had extended resentation to socio-political groups that had formerly been denied a voice, primarily on the basis of
social class, race, gender or sexual orientation
.
The historical, social and aesthetic development of experimental theatre grew out of a post WWII view and gained prominence at the end of the
1950s
and into the
1960s
in Europe, Britain and the United States.
Dominant
themes
explored: the unreliability of memory/history and the struggles of human connection and communication
Instability, uncertainty and contradiction
dominated these dramatic forms.
21st century
. Focus: exploration of national identity through questions of being, knowing and meaning. (
Brecht
)
Theatre: social function (not just entertainment).
Function: make spectators think. Appeal to reason rather than emotions in order to understand the social forces that shape our lives.
Language
: common, everyday speech
Characters: complex human beings with a consistent and stable personality and psychology.
Rebellion against the melodrama and the well-made play.
Darkness:
representing the unknown has generated fear.