Drama 242 - Quiz 3 (Module 4)

A Doll’s House

• One of the most important plays in modern drama

• Written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen

• Infamous for its shocking ending, which attracted both violent criticism and censorship, but also admiration from audiences when it premiered

Modernism

• The birth of modernism and modern art can be traced to the Industrial Revolution

• This period of rapid changes in manufacturing, transportation, and technology

The Modernist period in music

Began with a rejection of the “grand style” music characterized by Wagner’s grand operas

Modernism (In Art) 

Global movement in society and culture sought a new alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life 

Modern Dance

Generally understood to be those styles of dance that were developed by early to mid-twentieth-century American and German choreographers who attempted to create contemporary, individualistic modes of expression

Arnold Schoenberg

12 tone system (the technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another)

Igor Stravinsky

Rite of Spring - Away of reverence - Return to folk roots - pagan rituals

Bela Bartok

Pioneer in Ethnomusicology (studying music from within the culture it belongs to) - Adding Folk elements

Duncan’s philosophy of dance

Moved away from rigid ballet technique and towards what she perceived as natural movement

Restore dance to a high art form instead of merely entertainment, she strove to connect emotions to movement

Modern theatre began with

The revolt of the younger generation against the material injustices of society

Those in revolt founded

So-called independent theatre to present a more critical or scientific view of the working of society, or so-called art theatre to rise above vulgar materialism, with the establishment of aesthetic standards 

The Margravial opera House is a Baroque opera house in the town of…

Bayreuth, Germany

Home of the Wagner’s festival

Modern Play Elements

• Objective (Want or Desire) 

• The Active Agent (The Stakes/Drive) 

• Conflict (Obstacle) 

• Cause & Effect (Action/Reaction) 

The Nathanson Family (1818) by the Danish painter C.W. Eckersberg

Representation of the growing economic and political power of the middle class in the Nordic countries

Gesamptkunstwerk

An artistic creation that synthesizes the elements of music, drama, spectacle, dance, etc. 

Georg ll. Duke of Saxe-Meningen

• Saxe-Meningen is a Saxon dutchie (a country) which is now germany

• Known as the first director

• Believed in a complete conceptual and aesthetic vision

• Similar to Gesamtkunstwerk; synthesizing together different elements of theatre

• Beginning of a realist movement, away from the growing absurdity of spectavle and entertainment

• Incredible attention to detail - the floor 

• Each chorus member has a full backstory/specific individual line

• Did not use Star Actors; if used had to conform to the assemble

1874, the duke began a practice that made his company a major influence in the history of theatre.

He sent his company on tour

The Meningen rehearsal method demanded that

Every part of the play be rehearsed so thoroughly that the result would be one artistic whole, expressing completely the intentions of the poet 

The Duke outlined his principles for directing a play, the most important were:

• The creation of a Stage Picture (the pictorial effect created by the synthesis of the actors with set and props) 

• Historical exactitude in the mise-en-scene

• An acting style which used Precis Gestural and Vocal Imitation 

• The use of Period or Authentic Clothing and Costumes 

• The use of Group Orchestration by precise planning and direction of all group and crowd scenes 

Henrik Obsen

• Born in Norway 

• The first great REALIST writer

• Turned European stage away from what it has become, introduced a new order of moral analysis 

• Fathers merchant collapsed when he was 8, family was pulled into povery

• Spent 6 years as a pharmacist’s assistant

• Became assistant stage manager of a new theatre in Bergen, eventually became Artistic Director

• He was failing, early plays did little, he left Norway and spent the next 27 years in Italy and Germany 

• His most famous plays were written during his time in exile

Plays by Henrik Ibsen

1866 - Brand

1867 - Peer Gynt

1877 - Pillars of Society 

1879 - A Dolls House 

1881 - Ghosts 

1882 - An Enemy to the People

1884 - The Wild Duck 

1890 - Hedda Gabler

1892 - Master Builder

Ibsen discarded

Asides, soliloquies, and other nonrealistic devices, and was careful to motivate all exposition

THE WELL MADE PLAY

• a specific structure, usually three acts, with a particular arc; there is a problem, this thing affects everything, it plateaus up, and there’s a fall-off, a coda, at the end

• also has a fourth fall, lots of people in costumes pretending to be someone they’re not and no acknowledgement of reality

• The problem lies in the notion of neutrality inherent in what it presents as naturalism and realism - which is not in fact natural or realistic

THE PROBLEM PLAY

• Term commonly used to describe a play which examines a specific social or political problem with the aim of igniting public debate 

• Genre apparently originated in France 

• Notable examples are: 

• Ibsen’s A Doll’s house; questioning the subordination of women in marriage

• Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession; examining attitudes towards sex work

• John Galsworthy’s Justice; exposing the cruelties of solitary confinement and the legal system

Nora (commonly titled in Germany)

• Takes the audience into a very modern, bourgeois setting

• Newly rich bankers, always afraid of losing their hard-earned social standing

Ostermeier directed a new ending for the piece

Nora shoots Helmer. Several times. He falls backward with his left arm and his head, entering the huge fish tank. Nora fires again then removes Tolvald’s wedding ring 

General Themes

• Hypocrisy (Honesty) 

• Isolation 

• Social/Political realities

• Women’s emancipation

• The Family 

• *Inside the home

Realism

Refers to the attempt to represet familiar and everyday people and situations in an accurate, un-idealized manner

Naturalism

Heightened realism. Attempting to offer a photographic reproduction of reality. Regularly explore sordid subject matter previously considered taboo on the stage in any serious manner (eg suicide, poverty, prostitution) 

Symbolism

Considered to be a reaction against the plays that embodied naturalism and realism at the turn of the 20th Century

Thomas Ostermeier

• Theatre Director

• Aged 31, became co-artistic director of the Schaubühne

• 2009, was appointed “Officier des Arts et des Lettres” by the French ministry of culture

• Recieved the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale in 2011

Lee Breuer

• Theatre director, filmmaker, writer, and teacher

• Co-founding artistic director of Mabou Mines Theatre Company in New York

• Merging the theatre and art worlds and pioneering performance art

• In the earliest productions, collaborated with conceptual artists, musicians and dancers as well as puppets 

• adaptations of Samuel Beckett, Sophocles, Henrik Ibsen and J.M. Barrie have won his numerous awards

As it flies off into nightmarish Fellini-style sequences, it smashes …

not just the conventions of the 19th century bourgeois marriage but also those of bourgeois theatre itself 

Ibsen’s message is still sadly relevant, but his style not so. 

Pan Pan Theatre asks audiences to watch them play with Ibsen’s dolls

True story behind a Doll’s House

• story of Laura Kieler; written a novel in the 1860s

• Brand’s Daughters, and got to know the Ibsen, Ibsen called her his “skylark”

• In 1867 she sent the manuscript of another novel, hoping Ibsen would recommend it

• He thought it was a very bad idea

• She needed money because she has burrowed (like Nora) to take tubercular husband to Italy to “save his life”

• On receiving Ibsen’s letter she forged a cheque, was discovered and treated like a criminal by her husband

• Committed her to a lunatic system taking her back only grudgingly

Laura Kieler

• German writer who served as the inspiration for Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House 

• Was involved in the women’s movement’s organizational work 

• Attended the International Women’s Congress during the World Expo in Chicago in 2893 

• Co-organizer of the Women’s Exhibition in Copenhagen 

• Wrote approx 30 literary works 

• Avid debater in the women’s magazines 

• Slipped into obscurity, the work she inspired became one of the most important plays in the history of theatre

A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day which is…

an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view

Production in the form of entrepreneurship became

a male-gendered ‘virtue’, while female consumption is coded socially as an unnecessary luxury

I am not a member of the Women’s Rights League

I am not even quite clear as to just what this women’s rights movement really is. To me it has seemed a problem of humanity in general.

August Strindberg

Playwright, novelist and short-story writer

Combined psychology and Naturalism in a new kind of European drama that evolved into Expressionist drama 

Greatest Hits: The Father, Miss Julie, Creditors, A Dream Play, The Ghost Sonata

Massive misogynist, paranoid, flirted with insanity and HATED Ibsen

Not everyone is capable of madness;

and of those lucky enough to be capable, not many have courage for it

Miss Julie

• An aristocratic young woman

• Has a brief affair with Jean, her father’s valet

• After the sexual thrill has dissipated, they realize they have little to nothing in common

• Heredity, combined with social and psychological factors, has determined their futures

• Strindberg portrays Julie as an aristocrat whose era has passed and Jean as an opportunistic social climber to whom the future beckons 

That the Count is unseen is not incidental

The objects that symbolize his dominion are his boots and the bell

The tarantella

A dance in which the dancer and drum player constantly try to upstage each other by playing faster or dancing longer than the other, subsequently tiring one person out first 

Cure poison from the bite of a tarantula

Town folks would play music and the afflicted person would dance non-stop to avoid succumbing to the poison

The director is restricting the actor’s ability to move in a natural way, or express themselves fully,

just as women in particular (but men too) are restricted by cultural expectations and also by law

Nora’s infamous door-slam is re-conceived as

A woman stepping out of one time and directly into another

For the Symbolist playwright,

the deeper truths of existence, known instinctively or intuitively, could not be directly expressed but only indirectly revealed through symbol, myth, and modd

‘Symbols’ can create

unconscious depth

For the playwright

Not all symbols are consciously created

Symbol vs. Metaphor

• they’re related

• metaphor is used to draw a comparison between two distinct objects (specific instance)

• symbol is used as a stand-in for a much more complex, and generally more abstract idea (major part of the theme) 

A simile is

Saying something is like something else.

(Metaphor is often poetically saying something is something else) 

Symbols in a Doll’s House

The Title - Dolls

The Nicknames (A cage) 

The Christmas tree (The Holidays - New Years - Ending and Beginnings) 

The Letters - Communication - Formality 

The Tarantella (The dress - the hair - image) 

The Secretes (Masks - Roles) 

Dr. Rank (Syphilis - Inheritance - Fate?) - *Rot

The arrangement of the stage was

Wagner’s greatest innovation

Wagner wished to create a

“Classless Theatre”

Worked to remove side boxes and Gallery style

Considered all seats “Equally Good,” so there was only one ticket price

Foreshadowing

Gives the audience hints or signs about the future. It suggests what is to come through imagery, language, and/or symbolism. It does not directly give away the outcome, but rather, suggests it. 

An exit should

always be dramatic

Ibsen referred to the new ending (that he wrote) as

“a barbaric act of violence”

Edward Brandes said…

“Satan Ex Machina”