Spanish theater of the first half of the 20th century
The Spanish theater of the first half of the XX century, divided and marked by the Spanish civil war, can be divided into two periods. The first of them (1920-1937), of increasing sign, and with two clear references, the dramatic work of Valle-Inclán and the impossible theater of García Lorca, the only Spanish author with international projection. The second, shorter and grayer period, recognized as post-war theater, had two dramaturgies, the one developed and performed in Spain, defined as "a theater that entertains by ideologising", and the theater written in exile by authors such as Rafael Alberti, Alejandro Casona or Max Aub, among others.
"There can be no theatre without a poetic atmosphere, without invention..." —Federico García Lorca |
In the European context
At the beginning of the XX century, Spanish theater continued stuck in nineteenth-century formulas, oblivious to the renewal undertaken in other European countries by directors and playwrights such as Stanislavski, Gordon Craig, Antoine or the Swiss Adolphe Appia.
Already throughout the XIX century, theatrical supply and demand had been ordered into two categories: a theater & #34;select" (due to the selection of themes, related to the bourgeoisie that consumed it), "expensive" (and therefore also economically select) and materialized in very diverse subgenres, from high comedy to poetic theater of modernist affiliation; and in front of it, a "popular" theater, whose characters were stereotypes of the lower classes, which reached its maximum expression in the social sainete, and with the stellar participation of great authors such as Carlos Arniches or Benavente, later Nobel Prize.
Tradition and ideology
Until 1920, an important part of the Spanish theater scene was still anchored in an outdated romanticism, with Eduardo Marquina as its best representative, author of titles as rancid and sonorous as The sun has set in Flanders (1910) or For the King's Sins (1913). A spirit that also pervaded Valle-Inclán's first works, such as Voces de gesta, from 1911. For the most part, the most traditional line of national theater – and its discourses most attached to traditionalism Catholic in particular– had come into conflict (and sometimes in aggressive controversy) with the liberal theatrical discourse and the ideological, human or political commitment of authors such as Galdós (deputy in 1907); Unamuno (socialist from 1892 to 1897, he ran for deputy in the 1896 elections); Azorín (in his youth he boasted of being pro-anarchist); Blasco Ibáñez (Republican and congressman on several occasions), or Linares Rivas (Canovista politician). the hegemony of José Echegaray, minister in 1897 and 1905, and Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904, with his post-romantic and melodramatic dramas, «...his works were authentic top-hat dramas, the study of which provides important clues for the sociology of the scene of the time".
A type of "poetic" theater, sometimes versified, with modernist keys, was also relatively popular at the beginning of that century. Its main representative was the poet Francisco Villaespesa, whose arguments used historical or legendary themes. Other authors of verse dramas were the brothers Antonio and Manuel Machado, in addition to the aforementioned Eduardo Marquina.
Theater for divas, task for geniuses
Regarding the framework and environment of Spanish theater before and after the turn of the century, the very servitude of art to the tastes of those who maintained it had instituted in Spain an implacable dictatorship of companies of great actors and actresses pampered by an elite audience. Thus, some great stars of the scene imposed their criteria on directors and businessmen, reduced to mere extras. Margarita Xirgu or the businessman and modernist playwright Gregorio Martínez Sierra. The timid renovation efforts were left in charge of small theaters, among which the "Teatre Íntim" of Adriá Gual, symbolist playwright, painter, set designer and theater entrepreneur, promoter of the Catalan School of Dramatic Art. Among the youngest, it is worth highlighting the poetic and mysterious theater of Alejandro Casona, creator of the "Teatro ambulante" or "Teatro del pueblo", and an active participant in the Pedagogical Missions, created during the Second Spanish Republic.
Commercial theater from the first third of the 20th century
Three main lines can be distinguished: the evolution of the bourgeois drama towards the social drama, the creation of a variety of the comic genre, the 'humorous theatre' (supposedly a precursor of the theater of the absurd), and the development of a theater of experimentation and avant-garde.
Social drama and bourgeois drama
Initially, the "social theater", which as Torrente Ballester pointed out had its origins in Lope de Vega, and was Benito Pérez Galdóss favorite dish, had its main representative in Joaquín Dicenta, who disrupted the bourgeois drama with its own weapons (melodrama), presenting characters from the less favored social classes in situations until then reserved for nobles and bourgeois.
For its part, "bourgeois drama", a legacy of the Spanish XIX century, specialized in in portraying conflicts that arose within the upper-middle class of society, which was its most frequent audience; hence the criticism contained in some of his best examples was kindly presented. The best exponent was Jacinto Benavente, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922, and with him Gregorio Martínez Sierra. Already towards the middle of the century, some authors started from the structure of the bourgeois comedy to contribute particular visions. This is the case, for example, of Alejandro Casona with works full of fantasy, nostalgia and popular references, which he continued in exile.
From farce to absurdity
Before the trauma of the Spanish Civil War, a large part of the theater billboard was dominated by the different comic modalities. Carlos Arniches and his sainetes, Joaquín and Serafín Álvarez Quintero, Francisco Serrano Anguita, Anselmo C. Carreño, José Fernández del Villar, Francisco Ramos de Castro, Enrique García Álvarez, Luis Fernández de Sevilla or Pedro Muñoz Seca with the astrakhan, representatives more or less fortunate of a popular theater heir to a whole tradition in Spanish literary history. However, the most original chapter of the comic genre in the Spanish commercial theater of the first third of the century XX, did not arrive until the end of this period, in the years immediately after the Civil War. The literary precedent could be Ramón Gómez de la Serna. His greatest executors, two from Madrid: Miguel Mihura and Jardiel Poncela, parents of a "sweet, friendly and sentimental" theater of the absurd, with a hint of almost childish surrealism.
Experimentation and vanguards
The XX century has been considered that of the great renovation of the Theatre. The appearance on the international level of directors who revalued the texts of authors such as Ibsen or Chekhov, the incorporation of technical advances such as electric lighting, new set possibilities and the appearance of cinema as a new art, determined the scenic renewal. In Spain, the theoretical contribution of authors concerned with overcoming the barrier of a bourgeois audience and converting theater into a cultural medium committed to the popular classes was decisive.
The evolution of the history of Spanish theater in the XX century was defined by the innovative attempts of a group of playwrights, many of them coming from other literary genres and members of the so-called Generation of 98 and Generation of 27. Thus, for example, Azorín (and his theater without drama) or Miguel de Unamuno, the latter author of works that, despite their shortcomings in the conception of theatrical performance, present singular interest. Jacinto Grau and Ramón Gómez deserve special mention of the Serna. However, the authors whose proposals have endured the longest were Ramón María del Valle-Inclán and Federico García Lorca; Both, as a whole, perhaps represent the best of contemporary Spanish theater. Among the younger ones could also be included the names of Rafael Alberti, who cultivated a poetic theater full of symbols, and the also poet Pedro Salinas, whose works, due to exile, would be little known in Spain and when, later they were released or edited did not have a special echo.
Civil war and rout
The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War shocked the theater scene. The quality of the works declined in favor of the propaganda policy of the different ideologies. There were, however, interesting initiatives during that controversial period; Thus, for example, the research work of Rivas Cherif and his group El Caracol, or phenomena with university roots, such as El Búho, by Max Aub, or La Barraca, by Eduardo Ugarte and Federico García Lorca, born at the beginning of the Second Republic and integrated into the government project of the Pedagogical Missions, aiming to bring classical Spanish theater to areas with little cultural activity in the Iberian Peninsula. Other young poets who began in the war years in an imaginative theater more circumstantial than valuable were Rafael Alberti and Miguel Hernández.
One of the most devastating consequences of the war of thirty-six was, in the theatrical context, the rout of an important group of authors who spread throughout the world on the way to Spanish exile.
Postwar Theatre
As of 1939, authors with a glorious past continued to appear on theater billboards, such as Jacinto Benavente or Eduardo Marquina, Pedro Muñoz Seca, Carlos Arniches and the Álvarez Quintero brothers. Along with them, it is necessary to write down the playwrights sympathetic to the regime who had started their careers before 1939, or who did so in the following years, and who, over the course of three decades, achieved notable successes with the public: Joaquín Calvo Sotelo, Luis Escobar, Agustín de Foxá, Juan Ignacio Luca de Tena, Edgar Neville or José María Pemán. Many of them followed the guidelines of Benavente's theater, the transcendent dramas -with depth thesis more apparent than real-, and the defense of the most rancid traditional values. At the same time, they cultivated the comedy of evasion, poetic, humorous, sentimental, fantastic or inconsequential. The historical drama was recovered, in order to idealize the past or to reconstruct it ideologically.
In spite of everything, the classic texts and those by prominent foreign authors were progressively accepted in the national theaters Español and María Guerrero, created in 1940, and with more presence in the "intimate" and "chamber" theaters and in the university groups heirs to the Spanish University Theatre.
Comedy theater
Postwar humor theater had its best representatives in Jardiel Poncela and Miguel Mihura, accompanied, in a more traditional line, by Tono Andreu, Álvaro de Laiglesia and Carlos and Jorge Llopis. Many of them could be considered heirs to the crazy and absurd humor of Ramón Gómez de la Serna. In his defense, many critics have agreed that the yoke of censorship sharpened the wits and limited the fields.
The threshold of change
In 1949, with the premiere of Historia de una escalera, by Antonio Buero Vallejo, an important change began in Spanish theatre. For Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, the Madrid public attended the performances of this work to "contemplate something deeper than reality -because lies are a form of reality-. I was going to see the truth, simply."
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