Modern Drama - Major Playwrights August Strindberg Bertolt Brecht
August Strindberg 오거스트 스트린드베리 ( )
Swedish playwright naturalistic drama expressionistic drama 자연주의극, 표현주의극 Miss Julie (1888): a [one-act] naturalistic tragedy 자연주의 단막극 A Dream Play (1901): symbolist and mystic style
Naturalism... a movement, initiated by Emile Zola; the application of the new positivist, scientific spirit of the age to literature.... a movement, initiated by Emile Zola; the application of the new positivist, scientific spirit of the age to literature. Zola not only wanted a realistic representation of everyday life, he rejected the idea which had infused the classical, the romantic and even the realistic theatre of his period, that art should strive to show the beautiful, heroic, uplifting and inspiring. Zola not only wanted a realistic representation of everyday life, he rejected the idea which had infused the classical, the romantic and even the realistic theatre of his period, that art should strive to show the beautiful, heroic, uplifting and inspiring. 4
Naturalism Zola wanted the artist to uncover the truth about society in the same spirit of objective inquiry as that of a natural scientist’s approach to nature. Zola wanted the artist to uncover the truth about society in the same spirit of objective inquiry as that of a natural scientist’s approach to nature. It was in this spirit that Ibsen in Ghosts brought a hitherto taboo subject like venereal disease into the theatre and caused an enormous scandal. It was in this spirit that Ibsen in Ghosts brought a hitherto taboo subject like venereal disease into the theatre and caused an enormous scandal. 5
Naturalism The basic impulse behind the naturalistic movement was a determination to capture the whole of human experience, however sordid and ugly, to leave nothing unsaid. It did this by an accumulation of significant detail. In romantic drama, the heroes talked in lofty poetic terms about love or glory... 6
Naturalism By concentrating on the concrete detail rather than on abstract sentiments, naturalism tended to transform itself into a style in which objects increasingly became symbols, embodiment of ideas. So naturalism merged into symbolism. 7
Naturalism Strindberg, who had started out as naturalist, took a slightly different path. In his determination to represent experience exactly as it really was, he soon discovered that depicting the external world tells only half the story; you also had to include the way that world was experienced by an individual - the internal world. 8
Expressionist drama Hence Strindberg wrote a number of plays – The Ghost Sonata, To Damascus and the Dream Play itself which, in the spirit of naturalism, tried to depict a dream. In expressionist drama the characters frequently do not even have names (in Ghost Sonata: the Old man, the Student, the Mummy, the Colonel, etc.). 9
Video, part 1 10
Video, part 2 11
Miss Julie - trailer 12
Bertolt Brecht Epic Theatre
Bertolt Brecht Born on 10 February 1898 in Augsburg, Germany and one of the country's most influential poets, playwrights and screenwriters. His most famous work was the musical "The Threepenny Opera” (with Kurt Weill). Died 14 August
Bertolt Brecht’s ‘epic theatre’ ( 브레히트의 서사극 ) [Bertolt Brecht] rejected naturalism as well as the classical and romantic theatre... although he took many ideas from them. His favourite term... was ‘epic theatre’. 15
Bertolt Brecht’s ‘epic theatre’ ( 브레히트의 서사극 ) Brecht wanted an ‘undramatic’- an epic-theatre, in which the audience watch the play in a detached, critical frame of mind. This is the famous Verfremdungseffekt... translated as alienation effect. It really means strange-making effect. 16
Brecht and epic theatre 17
Threepenny opera Mac the Knife 18