Isms
Can be liberal, cultural, or racial.
Nationalism
He was a famous Russian director known for his system and work with Chekhov; he was a famous German director known for his work with Strindberg and mediating the avant-garde and audiences.
Konstantin Stanislavsky; Max Reinhardt.
This play discussed in class is a classic example of Expressionism. *(bonus points for explaining how)*
Machinal by Sophie Treadwell.
Plays that featured picturesque places, exotic peoples, and curious customs. Popular in Latin America as well as Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua-- encouraged the elite to patronize their less fortunate countrymen. It generally paraded social rather than racist stereotypes.
Costumbrismo [kos-toom-BREES-mo].
This advancement in technology is associated with Realism.
Photography.
Aims to immerse spectators in the spirit of past and exotic cultures through an accurate rendering of their details.
Antiquarianism.
His theory of evolution was co-opted; His theory of psychoanalysis aligned with avant-garde movements and the shift away from photorealism.
This play discussed in class is an example of Melodrama.
The Escape or a Leap to Freedom by William Wells Brown.
Literally, “tearful comedy.” The French version of sentimental comedy.
Comédie larmoyante.
This political event in France radically undercut the believability of two of the major genres that had sustained French culture: sentimental comedy and neoclassical tragedy. Many Parisians felt that the enlightened principles behind many sentimental and neoclassical plays were at odds with the chaos and horror.
The Reign of Terror / The French Revolution.
Rejected neoclassical structure, valued passion and emotion, featured heroic and outcast characters, supernatural elements, early realism, accurate design, spectacle, paved the way for melodrama. (think Victor Hugo, Storm and Stress)
Romanticism.
Valued anti-realistic staging, representative elements, stylized acting, demanded that the theatre must not ignore the spiritual and subjective qualities of reality most evident to them in the poetic and aural.
Symbolists.
Absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy.
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.
This type of work requires a plot resulting from events happening prior to the play’s beginning, demanding much exposition. The plot must follow a strict cause-and-effect pattern, including a series of escalating complications with a final reversal (and/or revelation) that returns the world to a state of order. Typically use devices such as letters or other props that are at first misunderstood, but are later revealed as proof of a character’s true identity or as a way to unravel plot complications.
The well-made play.
(fill in the blanks)
"_____ _____ culture – an organ of _________ society – created a division between a ______ sphere and a _______ sphere."
Periodical Print, Bourgeois, Public, Private.
A Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. *(bonus points to define the two styles of doing so discussed in TH)*
Orientalism.
Two famous actors: he encouraged paintings and prints to elevate his star power; he also began a shift to more realistic acting. She famously played iconic and male roles, insisted on accurate costumes and props.
David Gerrick and Sarah Bernhardt.
An comic operetta by Gilbert & Sullivan and a tragic opera by Puccini. *(bonus points for details on their reception)*
The Mikado and Madama Butterfly
The Chinese term for what is known elsewhere as “Beijing Opera.” Created in 1790, it is a form of musical theatre that relates historical, romantic, and melodramatic stories through a mix of song, stylized speech, spectacular dance, pantomimed action, acrobatics, and orchestral music consisting of stringed and percussive instruments.
Jingju.
Attempted stage productions that encouraged spectators to escape the workaday world and revel in heightened aesthetic sensations. Believing in “art for art’s sake,” they chose contents and styles from the theatrical past to inspire new emotional responses. *(bonus points for knowing what this went by in Russia)*
Aestheticism. (Retrospectivism)
A philosophy introduced by Auguste Comte (1798–1857) that insists that only those things that are experienced by the senses and can be measured are real; intuition and subjective feelings are not external behaviors and cannot be measured, and thus they cannot provide truth.
Positivism.
Although women were not permitted to perform professionally in Japan yet, this former geisha covered for her Onnagata husband Kawakami and continued to play the female lead in subsequent tours of Europe to great critical acclaim.
Sadayakko.
A satirical precursor to Theatre of the Absurd, rebelled against Realism.
Ubu the King by Alfred Jarry.
Wagner's attempt to weave together music, drama, singing, scenery, lighting, and all of the other theatrical arts into what he called "a totally integrated and unified production".
Gesamtkunstwerk [ghe-ZAHMT-koonst-vehrk].
Borrowing from the French military, this term refers to the forward line of soldiers in battle. Various groups of artists since the 1880s have likewise thought of themselves as marching in the front ranks of artistic progress, fighting the propriety of the bourgeoisie, and inventing new aesthetic strategies in the service of utopian change.
Avant-garde.