Friday 21 September 2012

Expressionist Drama


The Expressionist movement was popular in the 1910s and 1920s, largely in Germany. It explored the more violent, grotesque aspects of the human psyche, creating a nightmare world onstage. Scenographically, distortion and exaggeration and a suggestive use of light and shadow typify Expressionism. Stock types replaced individualized characters or allegorical figures, much as in the morality plays, and plots often revolved around the salvation of humankind.

Other movements of the first half of the century, such as Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism, sought to bring new artistic and scientific ideas into theatre.

Expressionism (Sean O'Casey)


Seán O'Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.

O'Casey's first accepted play, The Shadow of a Gunman, was performed at the Abbey Theatre in 1923. This was the beginning of a relationship that was to be fruitful for both theatre and dramatist but which ended in some bitterness.

Experimental theatre


Experimental theatre is a general term for various movements in Western theatre that began in the late 19th century (Alfred Jarry) as a retraction against the dominant vent governing the writing and production of dramatical menstrophy, and age in particular. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream theatre world has adopted many forms that were once considered radical. It is used more or less interchangeably with the term avant-garde theatre. Experimental theatre is what it is, trying something new.

Like other forms of avantgarde it was created as a response to a perceived general cultural crisis. Despite different political and formal approaches all avant-garde theatre opposed bourgeois literary theatre. It tried to introduce a different use of language, of the body, to change the mode of perception[1] and to create a new, more active relation with the audience.

MacWellman's School for Devils is a good example of the Experimental theatre

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