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Konstantin Stanislavsky
Kostantin Stanislavsky was a seminal Soviet and Russian theatre practitioner who was born in 1863 and died in 1938. He is known to have co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre with a man named Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and having established new possibilities for theatre and art. "Konstantin Stanislavsky became a major influence on American acting after the Moscow Art Theatre toured the United States in the early 1920s" (Brockett et al. 182). -
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Eugene O'Neill
Born in 1888 and dying 1953 Eugene O'Neill was known to be a famous playwright, dabbling in different styles in his plays. Eugene was also known to be "the first American dramatist to regard the stage as a literary medium and the first U.S. playwright to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature" (Biography.com Editors). Along with having won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama four times. -
The Enlightenment of Futurism
In 1909, Futurism was founded in Milan by an Italian man named Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. It surged as an art movement focused on the hustle and bustle of modern life and highlighting the energy and power of the machine age. "The futurists proposed to replace existing drama with synthetic drama that would compress into a moment or two the essence of a full-length play. The desire to speed up life also led them to champion simultaneity and multiple focus" (Brockett et al. 173). -
The Emergence of Expressionism
"Expressionism first emerged in 1905, when a group of four German students guided by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner founded the Die Brücke (the Bridge) group in the city of Dresden. A few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in Munich" (Motta). Expressionism in theatre focused on how humanity has been changed by fake values of the world and leaned away from industrial views. -
The Creation of Dada
Dadaism was created in Zürich, Switzerland in the year 1916 during the first World War. Dada was an art movement that expressed absurdity, and it took a part in many different art forms. Dada usually took the form of fine art, and also participated in other forms such as dance, poetry and theatre. "It (dadaism) was primarily a way for artists to deal with the unprecedented horrors that the war wrought on Europe, but it ended up having a profound legacy and impact on art as a whole" (Blakeley). -
The Dada Event
In 1920 three men by the name of Max Ernst, Hans Arp, and Theodor Baargeld hosted a Dada event. This event was hosted in a glassed-in courtyard, and you would have had to enter through a men's toilet to get to there. This event showed off different displays, such as "a young woman, dressed as if for her first communion, reciting obscene poems; a pool of bloodred liquid from which a skull and a hand projected; and a wooden sculpture to which a hatchet was attached" (Brockett et al. 174). -
Epic Theatre in the Wake of Expressionism
"Epic theatre, or German Espiches Theater, is a form of didactic drama presenting a series of loosely connected scenes that avoid illusion and often interrupt the story line to address the audience directly with analysis, argument, or documentation (Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia). Epic Theatre is often associated with Bertolt Brecht, a playwright-director who enjoyed the expressionist's views. -
The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill
The Hairy Ape is a play written by Eugene O'Neill in 1922. It focusses on Yank, the protagonist's search for identity, only to be destroyed in the end. "The Hairy Ape is representative of both the outlook and the techniques of expressionism. The episodic structure and distorted visual elements are typical, as is Yank’s longing for fulfillment, with its suggestion that society be changed so the individual can achieve a sense of belonging" (Brockett et al. 179). -
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The Federal Theatre Project
The Federal Theatre Project was a project founded in 1935 and existed up until 1939. The Federal Theatre Project's primary task was to "provide “free, adult, uncensored theatre.” As it pursued this task, it also helped to encourage theatre among minorities that had received little prior encouragement, particularly African Americans" (Brockett et al. 181). The Federal Theatre Project also happened to be the first USA funded support of theatre by the government. -
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee William
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play written by Tennessee William in 1955. This play follows the Kazan-Mielziner approach to staging, in which it focuses on combining "psychological realism in acting and directing with simplified, skeletal settings that permitted fluid shifts in time and place" (Brockett et al. 194). In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the themes of greed, lying, deception, and lust are all primary within the play.