political theatre modernism -...
TRANSCRIPT
Political Theatre
MODERNISM & THE CONDITIONS OF MODERNITY
Late 19th Century
• Industrial Revolution
• Individual Alienation
• Psychological States/Analysis
Late 19th century
• the rejection of all religious and moral principles as the only means of obtaining social progress.
• The wrestling with all the new assumptions about reality and culture generated a new permissiveness in the realm of the arts
https://www.mdc.edu/wolfson/Academic/ArtsLetters/art_philosophy/Humanities/history_of_modernism.htm
Symbolism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Dadaism, Futurism
• The result was a new art that appeared strange and radical to whoever experienced it because the artistic standard had always been mimesis, the literal imitation or representation of the appearance of nature, people, and society. In other words, art was supposed to be judged on the standard of how well it realistically reflected what something looked or sounded like.https://www.mdc.edu/wolfson/Academic/ArtsLetters/art_philosophy/Humanities/history_of_modernism.htm
Van Gogh The Starry Night 1889
Edvard Munch The Scream 1893
Otto Dix, Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas 1924
Kathe Kollwitz Weavers on the March 1897
In short, Modernism was in most countries an extraordinary compound of the futuristic and the nihilistic, the revolutionary and the conservative, the naturalistic and the symbolistic, the romantic
and the classical. It was a celebration of a technological age and a condemnation of it; an
excited acceptance of the belief that the old regimes of culture were over, and a deep
despairing in the face of that fear; a mixture of convictions that the new forms were escapes from
historicism and the pressures of the time with convictions that they were precisely the living
expressions of these things. And in most countries the fermenting decade was the eighteen nineties.
Malcolm Bradbury and James Walter McFarlane, Modernism, 1890-1930 (Harvester Press, 1978).
What are the causes of Modernism?Consider Nietzsche—art imposes order; it transcends the real
The Anglo-European Viewpoint: • Virginia Woolf—modern style comes from the opportunity for change in
human relationships and human character •Wallace Stevens—art abstracts reality and gives it substance and
meaning Modernism is the one art that responds to the scenario of our chaos—
resulting from: 1) the destruction and demoralization of WW I
2) the reinterpretation of the world by Marx, Darwin, and Freud 3) the changes wrought by capitalism and constant industrial
acceleration 4) existential exposure to absurdity or meaninglessness
5) it is the literature of technology 6) it is the art consequent on the dis-establishment of communal reality
Malcolm Bradbury and James Walter McFarlane, Modernism, 1890-1930 (Harvester Press, 1978).
Modernism is not an irrational swing away from the ordered world of Realism or a continuation of individual assertions
inherent in Romanticism. It is founded on a tension between “reason and unreason, intellect and emotion, subjective and
objective.”
Malcolm Bradbury and James Walter McFarlane, Modernism, 1890-1930 (Harvester Press, 1978).
The modernist movement, at the beginning of the 20th century, marked the first time that the term "avant-garde", with which the movement
was labeled until the word "modernism" prevailed, was used for the arts (rather than in
its original military and political context). Surrealism gained fame among the public as
being the most extreme form of modernism, or "the avant-garde of modernism".
Malcolm Bradbury and James Walter McFarlane, Modernism, 1890-1930 (Harvester Press, 1978).
https://floatinonaturnip.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/alfred-jarrys-ubu-roi-how-comic-amusement-is-generated-from-texts-that-set-out-to-challenge-or-
disrupt-logical-thought/
“Jarry’s toying with genre and aesthetics in un-established territory leaves Ubu Roi’s humour largely dependent on conventional modes of
comedy..”
Symbolism
Dadaism
SurrealismFuturism
Absurdism
Theatre & The Avant Garde
Theatre of The Oppressed
Theatre of Cruelty
Post Modern Theatre
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx2qHHFS5Yk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQG0m1cnYm0&list=PLUnSK-qxi6iMjtoX1wQaFGweo3I1Krn31
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuKd0IJziB0&list=PLW32gj3GlFc0uAlHPt_a9v43vxT8Pwp5p
&index=8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuDiZPNryW4&index=4&list=PLW32gj3GlFc0uAlHPt_a9v43
vxT8Pwp5p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQIJiIQjoRU
Ubu Roi (1965)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggFGDzCxLEk
Ubu Roi (2013-2015) Cheek By Jowl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhPJhQ09yTI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsbgBUOint4&t=9s