Chapter 7: Modernism in 20th-Century Theatre (1900-1960)

Adolphe Appia

Scenic designer who replaced flat scenery with 3D structures like steps, platforms, and ramps.

Adolphe Appia's view on lighting

The most flexible theatrical element, used from various angles to achieve artistic unity.

Edward Gordon Craig

Visionary who viewed theatre as an autonomous art ruled by a supreme director.

Max Reinhardt

Director who established eclecticism by treating each production with a unique stylistic solution.

Futurism

Art movement that glorified the speed of the machine age and praised war.

Synthetic drama

Futurist play style compressing the essence of a full-length play into moments.

Dada

Movement grounded in the rejection of WWI values, replacing logic with chance.

Expressionism

Movement contending that industrialism perverted the human spirit, turning humans into machines.

The Hairy Ape

Play by Eugene O'Neill demonstrating Expressionist techniques and episodic structure.

Federal Theatre Project

The first US government financial support of theatre, active from 1935 to 1939.

Living Newspaper

Federal Theatre Project plays written to advocate for social reform.

The Group Theatre

Highly respected company that promoted the Stanislavsky system of acting in the US.

Epic Theatre

German theatrical movement developed by Bertolt Brecht to encourage critical audience evaluation.

Brechtian Alienation

Distancing spectators from stage events so they can view them critically.

Gestus

Brecht's concept of expressing the social content of a scene in one sentence.

Surrealism

Movement emphasizing the unconscious mind, dreams, and stream of consciousness.

Antonin Artaud

Creator of the Theatre of Cruelty, believing theatre should drain humanity's collective abscesses.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Existentialist philosopher who believed humans are "condemned to be free" and choose their values.

Albert Camus

Philosopher who defined the human condition as absurd in an irrational universe.

Absurdist Drama

Theatre style that abandons cause-and-effect relationships to reflect a chaotic truth.

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett play that explores a state of being rather than an action.

Kazan and Mielziner style

Post-WWII American style using simplified, skeletal settings for fluid time shifts.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Tennessee Williams play featuring continuous action and a late point of attack.