METATHEATRE

Genre within Modern Theatre

There was a revitalization of what within Metatheatre?

Tragedy -- modern life created the perfect condition for tragedy -- not as popular in Europe as in the US

Metatheatre as a genre

* Play about a play
* work is referring to itself

Metatheatre as a literary/theatrical device

* breaking the fourth wall (soliloquy or prologue)
* commentary on theatre itself
* create distance with the audience (make them aware what they are watching is not reality)

Metatragedy

Subgenre of Metatheatre

* playwrights were drawn to the genre but didn’t think it could tie into modern world
* wrote plays ABOUT tragedies rather than writing tragedies in of themselves

Meta

self-referential

Metatheatre focuses

* explored the relationships between illusion and reality
* addresses the conventions of a play within a theatrical production (reflecting the reality of creating theatre)

What play falls into Metatheatre?

Six Characters in Search of an Author (Luigi Pirandello)

Metatheatre was influential in which 2 theatre genres?

modern theatre and contemporary theatre

‘theatre-in-the-theatre’ trilogy

* six characters in search of an author
* each in his own way
* tonight we improvise
* was not written until his 50’s (around 1920’s)

Luigi Pirandello

* sole caregiver to 3 children due to his wife struggling with mental health issues and being admitted
* withdrew from social life and became a short story writer/teacher
* when he became a playwright he would recycle characters and storylines from his giant collection of short stories
* though famous for modern drama, his fav playwright was not a modern dramatist (Carlo Goldoni)
* became the Italian rep for modern drama

Luigi Pirandello writing themes

* strained family life reflected in writing
* family structures that included arranged marriages
* stories filled with misogyny -- female characters portrayed as mothers, virgins, or sexually promiscuous

Luigi Pirandello views

* initially viewed theatre as a secondary art form
* categorized it as illustrators and translators → saw it as merely a vehicle to bring literature to the public

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The ‘raisonneur’

* from Pirandello’s play ‘it is so’
* means reasoner
* philosophizing character
* comments on the action of the play
* skeptical comments about the truth of appearances
* tied to Pirandello’s theory of humour

Theory of humour

* philosophical relativism
* denial of objectivity as a vehicle for comedy
* collision of ideals or reality, contradiction
* quick reversals in conversations
* The character of the Father in Six Characters takes on this role

Pirandello and nationalism

* Like Italian futurists, he was a fascist
* support and glorification of violence in seen in his works
* saw his torturing plays as ambassadors for fascist Italy
* his plays toured Europe and the states and he felt they were promoting Italy (essentially using them as propaganda)

SIX CHARACTERS

* the play inside the play is a melodrama
* his theory of humour: all the characters had their own experience with situations (subjective), we are unsure of the objective truth
* Truth vs. Illusion