Chapter 11: The Modern Age

The modern age of theatre actually began in the late nineteenth century and extended into the late twentieth century. This chapter will discuss ten of the most prominent figures (eight are playwrights) in the mainstream theatre of Europe and the United States.

These ten individuals have been selected because of their significant contributions to theatre. They are the playwrights and directors who redefined and re-styled theatrical productions into what we now know to be theatre. They pushed out the boundaries and explored the possibilities, but they did so within mainstream theatre. While their work was often experimental, their experiments were carried out in the professional theaters, before sophisticated audiences, and under the scrutiny of oftentimes vicious critics.

August Strindberg

Born in 1849, August Strindberg grew up during the time when Realism was the dominant art movement. When he began writing plays in the 1880s, he wrote realistic drama.

The Father (1887) tells the story of an accomplished man whose wife undermines his position as the head of the household. She uses slander and innuendo to break his self-confidence and sense of being. Miss Julie (1988) follows three characters through a single night of festival on the large estate owned by Miss Julie’s father. Miss Julie makes romantic overtures to a hired servant of the estate, and he humiliates her in the process.

During the 1890s, Strindberg became incapacitated with mental and emotional problems. As a result of this period and influenced by other dramatists who were beginning to experiment with dramatic forms other than Realism, August Strindberg began to write in a new genre – dream plays.

Strindberg was particularly interested in the influence and power of the unconscious mind. He was fascinated by the reality of dreams which is not reality. He was intrigued by the apparent disconnectedness of dreams which were nonetheless unified by the single consciousness from which they developed.

In his dream plays, there is no consistency of time or place, and no concern with logical connections between scenes and/or events. To the unconscious, reality and fantasy are the same; therefore, Strindberg’s dream plays mingle elements of both.

The Dream Play – [Indra’s Daughter, Indra’s Voice] Daughter leaves her heavenly home and falls to earth to investigate the situation for her father. [Daughter, Glazier] They consider the castle. [Daughter, Glazier, Officer] She begs the officer and sends off the Glazier. [Daughter, Officer] She wants to set him free. He doesn’t want to go. She explains that the purpose of suffering in life is to prompt us to want freedom in the light. [Daughter, Officer, Mother, Father] Mother is dying. She advises Officer not to strive with God by believing life is unjust. [Daughter, Officer, Mother, Father, Lina] Mother is kind to Lina, the servant-girl, and her kindness offends Father. [Daughter, Officer, Stage-door Keeper, Bill-Poster] They discuss the things in their lives on which they’ve based their happiness. [Daughter, Officer, Stage-door Keeper, Bill-Poster, Singer, Girl’s Voice] They discuss the daily drudge and the hope that keeps us moving forward. [Daughter, Officer] Lights come up and down to signal the passing of days. [Daughter, Officer, Bill-Poster] The Officer is furious with the closed door, and the Bill-Poster wants to tell his troubles to the Daughter. [Daughter, Officer, Bill-Poster, Ballet Dancer] The Officer’s lover will come. He tells the dancer that he was a prisoner in the rising castle. [Daughter, Officer, Bill-Poster, Ballet Dancer, Singer] Victoria, the Officer’s lover, never leaves. [Daughter, Officer, Bill-Poster, Ballet Dancer, Singer, Prompter] Victoria is still inside. [Daughter, Officer, Bill-Poster, Ballet Dancer, Singer, Prompter, Glazier] They prepare to open the door with the clover leaf. [Daughter, Officer, Bill-Poster, Ballet Dancer, Singer, Prompter, Glazier, Policeman] The Policeman refuses to let the door be opened. The Officer will take the issue to court. . . . [and so on, and so on].

Strindberg died in 1912. At the time of his death, he was perhaps the most important dramatist in the world. His writings and theories had enabled theatre artists to represent the psychic and spiritual realms onstage.

Luigi Pirandello

Born in 1867 on the Island of Sicily, Luigi Pirandello would become the most important Italian playwright of the twentieth century. As a young boy, he was noted for possessing a literary bent, and his father allowed and encouraged him to pursue schooling. Eventually, he graduated from Bonn University after completing an exhaustive study of the Sicilian dialect.

He entered into an arranged marriage with the daughter of his father’s business partner. The couple had three children. When financial disaster struck, Pirandello’s wife suffered a mental breakdown. Because he could not afford to have her institutionalized, she continued to live with him and their children for many years.

As a writer, Pirandello began his career as a novelist. It wasn’t until the early twentieth century when he turned his attentions to writing dramas. Once he has changed formats, however, he was a prolific writer. At one point in his career, he completed nine plays within a single year.

In his novels and in his plays, Luigi Pirandello explored the themes of sanity, illusion, and the solitary life of human beings. His own home life obviously contributed to his explorations.

His most successful dramas were Henry IV and Six Characters in Search of an Author. The first deals with a protagonist who prefers to live his life as an insane man among the insane rather than to live his life as a sane man among the sane.

Six Characters in Search of an Author ─ A rehearsal is taking place in an empty theatre. The manager is working with the actors on a script that they know will be a failure. Their rehearsal is interrupted by six characters who are seeking an opportunity to perform their story. After they convince the manager to give them a chance, the actors are assigned to their respective characters, and they shadow them as the characters begin their story. It becomes painfully obvious, however, that the actors lack the necessary skill. The characters continue to perform their own story, which ultimately leads to the death of two of the characters. The question raised by the play centers on the reality of the characters in light of the deaths.

Luigi Pirandello claimed to be an advocate of the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. His plays, however, presented a world in which truth and reality were subjectively determined. Absolute truth could never be achieved because each individual person perceived truth from their own perspective. Luigi Pirandello died in 1936.

Georg II, the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen

The Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen comprised a significant part of what is now southern Germany. In the latter third of the nineteenth century, the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen was Georg II.

Georg II was an avid admirer of theatre, and he utilized his position and resources to create the Meiningen Court Theatre. He is noted here as the first of the modern directors as a result of the remarkable theatre productions he produced.

His position in the nobility had provided him with a more than adequate study of history. And his knowledge of history translated to the stage in his intricate attention to detail and historical accuracy. His goal, for productions of Shakespeare and other classical playwrights, was to reproduce the plays as close to their original productions as possible.

He worked with each of his actors to develop a detailed and thorough portrayal, even of the characters which were no more than functionaries (guards, servants, etc.). And his attention to detail was not limited simply to the actors and their performance. He also worked closely with his sets and costuming technicians to produce powerful images for the audiences. He gave attention to his lighting and sound effects as well. The power of his productions, ultimately, came through the integrated work of all aspects of the performance.

Georg II was originally married to the Prussian Princess Charlotte who bore him four children. She died in childbirth. In 1873, with succession assured through his three sons, he married Ellen Franz, an actress. She toured with the Meiningen Theatre Ensemble beginning in 1874. It was a tour which significantly impacted theatre production throughout Europe.

Georg II died on 25 June 1914 at the age of 88. On the day of his funeral (28 June 1914), World War I began.

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was born in Ireland in 1856. He was raised in what today would be called a dysfunctional family. His mother ran off to London with her voice teacher, taking Shaw’s sister with them. His father eventually lost his career, and he and Shaw moved to London to live with the mother, sister, and voice teacher. (Shaw’s sister did eventually become a musical hall singer.)

In London, G. B. Shaw became an avid reader, spending most of his time in libraries. He also began to write. He completed five novels before he was able to obtain publication. And he became involved in the London political scene as a strong advocate for socialism. With several friends, he established the Fabian Society, which would eventually evolve into the Labor Party of today.

George Bernard Shaw wrote in the Realistic vein. However, unlike the somber and almost tragic atmosphere of most Realistic drama, Shaw’s plays contain a sense of upbeat comedy and satire. Perhaps his most famous work is Pygmalion from which the musical My Fair Lady was developed.

Major Barbara – The main character, Barbara, is a major in the Salvation Army. Her father is a leading manufacturer of military munitions. Shaw builds the contrast between the two: she is a Christian worker striving to save men’s souls; he is a capitalist who is honored in the community for providing jobs that allow men to feed and house their families. Shaw expresses the idea that Barbara participates in a process which perpetuates the inequalities of the economic and political system while her father, building a business encouraging war, actually helps men better themselves through work and financial gain.

Shaw won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He spent his life being honored for his dramatic output and criticized for his political leanings. He died at the age of 94 from complications arising from a fall from a ladder.

Constantin Stanislavsky

The theatre, cinema, and television that we see today are not the same style of performance that existed over a century ago when Constantin Stanislavsky was learning to act and direct. Rather, the style of performance we see today is the result of his theories and practices, as an actor and as a director.

Constantin Stanislavsky was born into a wealthy, merchant family in Russia in 1863. In addition to the family business, members of Constantin’s family also formed their own theatre company, and Constantin grew up performing.

Initially, he utilized the availability of the family theatre company to grow as a theatrical artist, as an actor and as a director. Then, in 1898, he co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.

Before Stanislavsky, actors would pretty much stand around on the stage, not having much interaction between them, and orate to the audience. The lead actors took the center stage position and spoke in an ornate and pretentious manner. The supporting roles would stand in relative positions to the lead actors, but their lines were delivered to the audience as well, not necessarily to the other actors on stage. Stanislavsky changed all that.

Constantin Stanislavsky was a naturalist; he began his artistic work by developing his skill in observation. He studied human beings and human actions in a wide variety of situations and emotions. He sought to replicate those real actions and real emotions onto the stage in performance. His ideal revolutionized the art of theatre.

His approach to acting and directing provided the right approach to the new style of drama being written by such playwrights as Anton Chekhov. But his approach also brought new life to classical works by such playwrights as William Shakespeare.

His approach to acting, often called the Method, was articulated to his actors and eventually articulated in print. He wrote three books and an autobiography. An Actor Prepares was first translated into English in 1936. Building a Character was first translated into English in 1950. Creating a Role was first translated into English in 1961. And his autobiography, My Life in Art was actually the first work translated into English, in 1924. These works articulated the approach of Constantin Stanislavsky for the actor (and subsequently for the director).

It is the actor’s responsibility to move about onstage exactly as the character would move about its environment if it were real. The actor must speak the lines of the playwright onstage exactly as the character would speak those words if the character were a real person speaking from its own mind and personality. Therefore, the actor must feel the emotions and think the thoughts onstage, unfolding moment by moment, just as the character feel and think if the character and the situation were a real person in a real situation. Modern actors talk about immersing themselves in their roles.

But this immersion, according to Stanislavsky, takes place only after the actor has developed the physical, vocal, and mental ability and flexibility to meet the demands of any role.

Actors must have bodies which can perform any action demanded by the script.
The actors must train their voices to accommodate the demands of the language of the playwright.
The actors must be skilled observers of the world around them, to be able to draw realistic inspiration from real life for their performances.
The actors must be well-read and liberally educated, able to adapt easily to the philosophical and political necessities of the role and the script.

The Moscow Art Theatre eventually expanded to include an actor’s studio for the training of young actors in Stanislavsky’s method/approach. In addition, the Moscow Art Theatre routinely toured Europe and the world, their finely tuned performances demonstrating the power of his ideology.

Stanislavsky’s actors spent many hours in dance, gymnastics, and sword practice. They spent long hours in voice and singing lessons. They spent their free time (if you want to call it that) in the market places and public centers, watching and observing their fellow human beings. And then they spent weeks and months in rehearsals, exploring and perfecting their performances, synchronizing their work with the work of the other actors onstage, and developing performances which amazed their audiences.

Constantin Stanislavsky died in 1938, after witnessing the influence of his ideas on theatre production worldwide.

Anton Chekov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is considered to be the finest Russian playwright of the modern age. He was born in 1860 and eventually pursued a degree in medicine at the University of Moscow. While at the university, he began writing short fictions and comic sketches. After completing his degree in medicine, he worked as a freelance journalist and writer.

He made a name for himself as a playwright by mastering the one-act format. The Bear (1888) and The Wedding (1889) are two of his better one-act plays. His transition to full-length dramas was not as successful until Constantin Stanislavsky directed The Seagull (1897) at the Moscow Art Theatre.

The Moscow Art Theatre, and Constantin Stanislavsky, continued to partner with Anton Chekhov for Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904).

Anton Chekhov considered his full-length plays to be comic dramas, though productions of his plays (beginning with Stanislavsky) have continued to stress the tragic elements of the stories. Chekhov’s hope and purpose was to show the dreary lives of human beings in the hopes that such insight would prompt people to strive for something better.

Uncle Vanya – Vanya and his niece manage a large estate on behalf of Vanya’s sister’s second husband, a professor. Vanya and his niece struggle to maintain the professor’s somewhat extravagant lifestyle while they sacrifice their own lives and happiness to do so. A pivotal moment occurs in the middle of the play when the professor announces his intention to sell the estate. His callous action would ultimately put Vanya and his niece out on the street. Vanya chases the professor with a pistol, firing wildly, but cannot seem to hit his mark. The play ends with everything returning to normal, but there is a renewed sense of commitment to the dreariness of their normal lives.

Anton Chekhov died in 1904, of tuberculosis, at the age of 44.

Eugene O'Neill

One of the most famous American actors of the nineteenth century was James O’Neill. His son, Eugene, was born in a hotel room in the Broadway theater district of New York City in 1888. Eugene O’Neill grew up on the road as his father toured with various productions. He attended Princeton University, but was soon expelled. He married, had a son, and quickly divorced. He spent time at sea and as a gold prospector in Honduras.

He was the stereotypical lost young man searching for meaning and identity. By 1912, he contracted tuberculosis. He was required to change his ways and recover. It was during his recovery that he decided to pursue a career as a playwright. His first play landed him on Broadway.

His early works fall into the realist vein. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Beyond the Horizon in 1920, for Anna Christie in 1922, and again for Strange Interlude in 1928.

Then he was inspired by the writings of Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, and Strindberg, and he entered an expressionistic phase of writing.

The Hairy Ape – Yank is a stoker aboard a steam luxury liner, spending his long days in the hold of the ship with his mates, shoveling coal into the boilers. He is at peace with the world and content with his lot in life. He has found his place. Then the daughter of the ship’s owner, a young, arrogant girl in a perfect white dress, is frightened by Yank as she tours the ship. Her reaction to Yank robs him of his sense of self. Back at port, he leaves the ship to find the girl, to somehow regain what she has stolen from him. In the big city, surrounded by strange people and unknown customs, he continues his spiral into self-doubt. Eventually, wandering through the city zoo, he comes across the ape exhibit. He enters the exhibit and is killed by the large ape. But with his dying breath, Yank finds his place once again.

Eugene O’Neill returned to realism for the remainder of his career. He was forced to stop writing in 1944 when he developed a neuro-degenerative disease. He died in 1953.

In 1956, Broadway theaters began a revival of O’Neill’s work. This revival brought to the stage Long Day’s Journey into Night which had been previously un-produced. The production won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for O’Neill in 1957.

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was born in 1898. He began his theatre career as a director in Munich. He later worked with Max Reinhardt, a gifted theatrical director, in Berlin. As a playwright, he experimented with Dadaism and Expressionism. His first success as a playwright came in 1928 with The Three-Penny Opera.

Brecht was a Marxist in Germany when Adolf Hitler was coming into power. Brecht went into exile in 1933. His most significant dramatic writing occurred during his exile. His dramas broke new ground in that he attempted to force the audience to become active participants in the theatrical event; he wanted to provoke his audience to force social reforms.

His most important theory of performance is called, in English, alienation. He made sure the audience could see the theatrical machinery in action; stage lights were visible, and the set changes took place in full view of the audience. He inserted songs and dances into his actions to deliberately break the dramatic suspension of disbelief. He utilized scene title cards. He hoped to provoke critical thinking and evaluation in his audience so he could engage them in the political issues of his dramas.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle – The play opens with a revolt in the empire. The governor of the city is killed, and his wife flees into exile, leaving her baby behind with the baggage. A servant girl finds the baby and adopts it, knowing full well the dangers of harboring the infant who remains his father’s heir. The servant girl takes the child into the mountains where she sets up a new life as a single parent. Meanwhile, as the city is encompassed with the chaos of revolt, a drunken scribe is appointed judge. He is completely corrupt, but somehow manages to dispense justice through his corrupt means. Then the revolt is put down and the governor’s wife returns. She needs the abandoned child to solidify her claim on the lands and wealth that were her husband’s. The servant girl is found in the mountains, and she and the child are returned to the city. The corrupt judge devises a plan to determine the true mother of the child. He is swayed by the servant girl’s love for the child, and he settles the matter in her favor right before escaping into anonymity himself.

Theatre critics suggest that Brecht’s writing was beneficially influenced by his exile. That is, because he was not writing for a specific group of actors and for a specific stage, he was free to let his imagination roam. He called his works epic because of the broadness of his stories and because he intermingled narrative and dramatic styles in his plays.

His works did not receive much attention while he was living in exile. However, he returned to Germany in 1947. Productions of his plays began to have influence throughout Europe, and his influence eventually spread throughout the world.

At a time before film and videotape were available, Brecht and his wife maintained production notebooks with extreme care and detail. They photographed the action at every move, and they included the photographs in their production notebooks.

Bertolt Brecht died in 1956. He is considered the most important dramatic theorist of the twentieth century.

Tennessee Williams

Tom Williams was born to a shoe salesman and a minister’s daughter. He grew up in a household in constant upheaval as his father and mother fought most of the time. He entered college at the University of Missouri where he saw his first theatrical production, Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen. He decided then to pursue a career in playwrighting. Unfortunately, his father forced him to leave college and take a job at the International Shoe Company for several years.

Eventually, Williams returned to college, eventually finishing his degree at the University of Iowa. He returned to New Orleans, his home, and changed his first name to Tennessee.

His first major dramatic success, and some scholars believe his most important work, came in 1944. Glass Menagerie is considered to be his most autobiographical work.

A Streetcar Named Desire – Blanche Dubois arrives for a visit at her sister’s apartment in New Orleans. Blanche and her sister, Stella, grew up together on a plantation in the South, and Blanche has labored hard to maintain the illusion of the Southern Belle. Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski, is a hard-working, hard-living man’s man who is suspicious of Blanche’s arrival and motives from the beginning. His constant pressing for information about the lost plantation overwhelms and destroys Blanche’s carefully constructed delusions.

Tennessee Williams won his first Pulitzer Prize for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948. He won his second Pulitzer Prize for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955.

In many ways, Tennessee Williams’ plays are drawn from the events, personalities, and traumas of his own life. Yet, he manipulated his actions and fashioned his dramas into fine dramatic art. He died in 1983.

Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller was born in New York in 1915. His father was a successful manufacturer of women’s apparel until he lost everything in the Depression. Growing up, Arthur Miller had the opportunity to experience the highs and lows of life in America, experiences which have greatly informed his playwrighting.

Miller attended the University of Michigan, graduating with a degree in English in 1938. He was exempt from the military draft as the result of a football injury, but he worked and wrote plays for the Federal Theater Project.

Arthur Miller’s first major success came in 1947 with All My Sons. With Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (1955), these four plays form the foundation of his success.

Death of a Salesman – Willy Loman is the protagonist of the story. He lives at home with his wife, Linda. During the time of the play, his two sons Biff and Happy are also staying at home. There is tension between Willy and the eldest of his two grown sons. (The play introduced the concept of seamless flashbacks – the action moves easily from present to past and back to present.) Willy is the constant ingredient in the action as scenes of the present blend into scenes from the past. Willy Loman has spent his life and his energy pursuing a career as a traveling salesman; he is now getting too old to continue though his family has no source of sustenance without his paycheck. He struggles to figure out what went wrong and what to do next. His death at the end of the play provides an insurance payment to Linda which allows her to pay off the mortgage on their home.

Arthur Miller has been called a social dramatist in much the same way Henrik Ibsen was a social dramatist. His plays make strong moral statements about how we should live our lives in relation to one another.

In an interview in 2002, Arthur Miller noted that it is becoming increasingly difficult to write for the theatre because the availability of mature actors was decreasing. Salaries for television and film actors so far outpace salaries for stage actors that only the young actors can really afford to work onstage. This limits the type of plays and characters that can be written at this time.

Arthur Miller died in 2005.