VPDP 11H3:

Theatre
History II

The Early
Avant-

Matt Jones

mf.jones@mail.utoronto.c

Today
Quiz: 12:10-12:50 then break
Return at 1:00
Pecha Kuchas
The early avant-garde

Wednesday:
Quiz review
Alfred Jarrys Ubu Roi
Course review

The avant-garde
The troops at the head of an army
Revolt against the established order of modernity
Material
Spiritual

maelstrom of perpetual
disintegration and renewal, of
struggle and contradiction, of
ambiguity and anguish. To be
modern is to be part of a
universe in which, as Marx said,
"all that is solid melts into air."
Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air (1983)

The bourgeois theatre and its

discontents
Critique of bourgeois theatre:
The limits of reason
The limits of realism
The problem of consumerism
Everything becomes quantifiable
Genre becomes static, formulaic
The audience becomes passive consumers

Four avant-garde movements

Symbolism
Aestheticism
Futurism
Dada

Symbolism
Not slice of life but spirit of life
The actor-priest and the audience-congregation
Reliance on non-literal language
Symbols, metaphor, poetry, incantation

Attention to non-textual, immaterial aspects of

production
Light, sound, rhythm, movement, shapes

Imperialism

Meyerholds The Inspector General

Meyerholds Hedda Gabler

Life is not like this, and it is not what Ibsen wrote.Hedda Gableron the stage of
the Dramatic Theatre isstylized. Its aim is to reveal Ibsens play to the spectator by
employing new unfamiliar means of scenic presentation, to create an impression
(but only animpression) of a vast, cold blue, receding expanse. Hedda is visualized
in cool blue tones against a golden autumnal background. Instead of autumn being
depicted outside the window where the blue sky is seen, it is suggested by the pale
golden tints in the tapestry, the upholstery and the curtains. The theatre is
attempting to give primitive, purified expression to what it senses behind Ibsens
play: a cold, regal, autumnal Hedda.
Precisely the same aims are adopted in the actual production of the play (the work
of the director with the actors). Rejecting authenticity, the customary lifelikeness,
the theatre seeks to submit the spectator to its own inspiration by adopting a
barely mobile, stylized method of production with a minimum of mime and gesture,
with the emotions concealed and manifested externally only by a brief lighting of
the eyes or a flickering smile.
Pavel Yartsev, Assistant Director

Adolphe Appia

Aestheticism
Art for arts sake
The autonomy of art

The separation of art from real life

Abandonment of utility

The artist as work of art

Oscar Wilde