Teatro inglés Unit 1  Sofia Luz Montaner

UNIT 1: DEFINING TERMS

1. DEFINIITIONS

 Drama: derives from the Latin word “drama”, meaning a “play”.

According to the Greek meaning it signifies both doing a deed and playing
a role.
The chief term is used, though, to refer to theatrical performances,
marked by the list of characters from the beginning of the 17 th C. as the
2dramatis personae” 8people of the drama).
We use the word drama generally to refer to dramatic scripts and their
study. And to a form of literature (that we study along with prose and
poetry). At the university we engage with dramatic texts that we read as
literature. Dramatic theatre is that form of theatre that uses
predominantly the spoken word.
When one deals with dramatic texts one has to bear in mind that drama
differs considerably from poetry or narrative in that it is usually written
for the purpose of being performed on a stage. Dramatic texts are
generally meant to be transformed into another mode of presentation of
medium (theatre).
 Theatre: according to the Greek meaning, it signifies “a place for
viewing”. It originally referred to both a place and to a particular form of
sense perception. Today the term theatre can refer to:
o A building.
o An activity.
o An institution.
o An art form.
 Audience: it is sed to refer to a group of people that gather in a particular
place to listen or watch a play, a film, or to someone speaking. The
presence of an audience is central to the definition of theatre.

The etymologies of the terms seen so far point to the highly complex nature of
theatre. While drama implies that something is done, theatre implies that
something is seen. Listening to the actors’ speech is also essential in the
perception of theatre, which is synesthetic. We could say, then, that when we
see a play, we listen with our eyes and see with our ears.

 Performance: there are different definitions:

o “How well a person, machine, etc. does a piece of work or an
activity”.
o “The action of entertaining other people by dancing, singing, acting
or playing music”.
o “The action of performing a play, piece of music, ceremony, etc.;
execution, interpretation”.
What defines a theatrical performance is, according to Osipovich, a
particular kind of interaction between performers and observers (actors
and audience members) in a shared physical space. A necessary
component of this interaction is that the performers pretend that the

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interaction is something other than what it actually is and that the

observers are aware of this pretense”.
Also, according to him, theatrical performances cannot exist without:
 At least one performer and at least one observer in the same
space and at the same time.
 A pretense on the part of the performer that the interaction
between performer and observer is somehow other than it
actually is.
 An awareness on the part of the observer that the pretense is
occurring.
 Theatrical illusion: theatre demands an imaginative engagement with
what is happening on the stage. What Coleridge would later refer on as
“the willing suspension of disbelief for the moment”. The expression
“willing suspension of disbelief”, however, is often used in the theatre
milieu: everything we see on a stage is an illusion, but as members of an
audience we (need to) accept that fiction and engage with it (despite its
being fictional).

2. DRAMATIC GENRES AND STYLES

2.1. CLASSIC GENRES: COMEDY AND TRAGEDY

Comedy and tragedy were major genres in theatrical production until the 20 th C.
and they remain major genres in the contemporary scene.
Yet, traditional and clear-cut generic distinctions were challenged throughout
the 20th C. in Modern British Drama. In fact, Innes suggest that three major
types of theatre have defined Modern British Drama:
 Realism.
 Comedy.
 Poetic drama.

A. Realism:
Realism is usually used as a synonym or derivative of Naturalism: a critical label
describing the “objective reproduction of ordinary contemporary life”.
However, realism in the theatre did not emerge in the late 18 th C. as a genre
with specific features, but rather as a style of reproducing reality on the stage
that was to a great extent enabled by developments in the theatre technology.
The latter allowed to construct scenery that responded to the desire to provide a
simulation of reality as a setting for the action.
Critic Raymond Williams identifies three main features distinguishing realist
plays from preceding tragedies:
 A conscious movement towards social extension.
 A movement towards the siting of actions in the present, to making action
contemporary.
 An emphasis on secular action.
Christopher Innes says of British Realist playwrights that they “deal usually with
political issued, often addressing questions of justice or calling for revolutionary
change. their aims differ in degree, but are comparable in range: from
presenting ethical challenges to the audience to raising ideological

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consciousness, or from working to correct abuses within the system to inciting

violent action against it.

B. Comedy:
According to Innes, comedy is different in kind, “intrinsically distancing and
depending on stock formulae to produce humour… Although traditionally
reflecting society and embracing social criticism, it works obliquely and through
distortion.

C. Poetic drama:
It can be written in verse but is not synonymous with it, as many plays that are
not written in verse have poetic qualities:
“They have their own internal rhythms, their orchestration of sounds, the use of
striking motifs, images and metaphors and their ability to touch upon the
transcendent”.
Two major attempts to generate a truly poetic theatre in the history of Modern
English Theatre should be singled out:
 That of playwrights W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, J.M- Synge and later Sean
O’Casey in the creation of a national Irish dramatic tradition at the Abbey
Theatre in Dublin, in the early twentieth century.
 That of the Group Theatre founded in London by the dancer Rupert Doone
in the 1930s. Poets Including W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, T.S.
Elliot, Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender aimed to challenge the norms
of the commercial theatre with a style of performance and theatre
language.
“Contrasting with the primarily social concerns of realistic and comic drama,
there is a third line of development represented by playwrights whose values
are existential or spiritual. From this universal perspective, materialistic
questions or political solutions are largely irrelevant. Their characters tend to be
mythic or, like Beckett’s figures, to embody ‘all mankind’. Alternatively, their
themes are religious, whether dealing with martyrdom or questioning the
existence of God. This is the area traditionally associated with poetic drama,
although increasingly, towards the end of the twentieth century—particularly
with the feminist assertion that ‘the personal is the political’—poetic plays have
taken political dimensions.”

3. OTHER THEORY

Definitions of comedy and tragedy

 Tragedy: it had four major periods of pre-eminence and development:

o Athens in the 5th C BC.
o Elizabethan England.
o 17th C France.
o 19th C Scandinavia.

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It is not totally simplistic to say that a tragedy is concerned with human

suffering and, because of some disastrous action, ends in unhappiness,
and often in death.
Characters are shown as sometimes weak and vulnerable and at other
times almost invincible. Greatness is contrasted with total defeat and the
heroes of tragedy fight against forces embodied in the other characters or
in their environments or, most painfully, in their inner selves.
The audience witnesses and empathises with the suffering and inevitable
defeat of the hero or admires the personal tenacity in the face of disaster
and begins to make sense of the paradox of pain and human existence.

Aristotelian tragedy was characterized by a number of concepts:

o Hamartia.
o Peripeteia.
o Anagnorisis.
o Hubris.
The structure is summarized by Pavis the tragic story imitates human
actions in which the prevailing note is suffering and pity, until the moment
of recognition by the characters of one another, or of realization of the
source of the affliction.
The moment of recognition that follows the hero’s struggle frequently
takes one of two paths:
o Recognizing that there is evidence of a world order and eternal laws
and that suffering may be instructive.
o Acknowledging that human acts and suffering are futile, but the
protagonist’s protests are to be celebrated.

You should remember, however, that it was the Roman dramatist Seneca
whose tragedies were employed as a model during the Renaissance.

Raymond Williams’s approach is to explore the cultural definitions of the

“tragic” in relation to the historic forms that have been employed to
express that concept in drama.

Despite the fact that not all tragedies have followed the Aristotelian
model, his ideas on tragedy have reminded central to any discussion of
concept.

 Units: concept originally articulated by Stanislavsky as part of his system

of actor training. He insisted that the play be divided into small sections or
‘units’ to facilitate close study and the identification in the problems that
the play poses.
He suggested that each unit be given a label beginning with the words ‘I
want to’. Actors would be able to gain an understanding of the needs and
wants that would determine the behaviour of their characters.
The concept of a unit has come to include the idea of a section of a play
that appears to have some form of unity and which might constitute a
suitable section for close study or rehearsal.

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 Verbatim theatre: it is a form of drama that is based on documents,

transcripts, court records and other sources of words actually spoken. It
demands extensive research and a high degree of selectivity. It is
frequently used in community drama as a means of bringing history to life
or to dramatize events that have far-reaching consequences.
Verbatim theatre may, therefore, be a powerful form of political drama.

 Well-made play: Eugène Scribe has a simple formula for the structure that
has five stages:
o Exposition.
o Complication and development.
o Crisis.
o Denouement.
o Resolution.
These elements were to be arranged in Acts and scenes.
The concept of the well-made play originally depended on maintaining the
action in a series of curves and ups and downs, leading to what became
known as a scène a faire: a scene towards which all the other scenes
build.
The basic principle was to keep the audience fascinated, often lowering
the curtain at a moment of climax or suspense.

 Comedy: this concept covers a broad category. It is traditionally deemed

to have characteristics that contrast with those of his sister, tragedy:
o Humble characters.
o Happy resolutions and endings.
o The purpose is to induce laughter.
Types of comedy:
o Greek comedy: sometimes divided into old comedy (surviving plays
by Aristophanes) and new comedy (work of 60 some writers in the
period after 336 BC).
Contemporary characters or gods and abstract figures, in
combination with a chorus, act out fantastic situations that explore
topical, social or political issues using burlesque, invective, parody,
verbal wit…

o Comedy of intrigue: a variety of stock characters such as an

irascible father, young lovers, witty servants, and marriageable
widow are embodied in a crisis that probably involves money, a
secret or a clandestine relationship, and enables the actors to give a
virtuoso display of physical and verbal dexterity and wit.

o Comedy of character: a group of characters who are individually

portrayed in great detail as to their psychological and moral make-
up are involved in a situation where their motivations are made
clear and their behaviour is a source of amusement.

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o Comedy of manners: human behaviour in society, often ridiculously

exaggerated, is presented through a narrative that involves intrigue
and verbal elaboration.

o Comedy of menace: an ironic derivation of the comedy of manners

used to describe the drama of Harold Pinter and David Campton.
The characters appear to exist with a constant suggestion of an
obscure threat from an unidentifiable source from outside the main
action of the play.

o Romantic comedy and musical comedy: a narrative, very often with

love interest, provides the context for lyrical speaking and singing
and for dance, by individuals and, in some cases, a chorus. A
subplot is concerned with topical incidents, specialty acts and rich
humour.

THEATRE IN THE 19TH CENTURY

The two winter theatres, Convent Garden and Drury Lane had a duopoly,
meaning theirs were the only managements officially allowed to put on plays in
London during the winter season. They were large, often rowdy meeting places.
They did put on serious drama, but also anything that would please a large
crowd, including lion taming in a cage and battles on horseback.
Until 1809 manager John Philip Kemble opened a colossal new Convent Garden
financed by adding a tier of private boxes. It was considered a national meeting
place.

EXPANSION

These two theatres were no longer enough for the world’s largest city. Because
if this, the Lord Chamberlain’s office partially broke the duopoly by allowing a
few “burletta” licenses – permission to do plays with music – to small theatres.

INGENUITY AND INVENTIVENESS

There were restrictions that forbade the new theatres to do Shakespeare or

other straight plays. Unlicensed premises relied on silent or musically-
accompanied action, physical theatre, animals and acrobatics, and thus both
melodrama and the Victorian pantomime were developed. Without poetry and
declamation, much more was needed from scenery and visual effects, and these
were also essential in the major theatres, because lighting and auditorium
design, making it easy to see and hear the players, did not keep up with the
increasing size of theatres.
The auditorium was as well-lit as the stage, a place of social meeting and
greeting, the night was long – up to five hours.

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Therefore, a more spectacular, visual style took over from the static 18 th century
emphasis on the spoken word.
In 1843, propelled by the Victorian urge to control and educate the new urban
masses, Parliament finally changed the licensing laws and permitted all theatres
to stage straight plays, hoping both to civilize the audiences and to encourage
more literate modern playwriting to develop.
The two London playhouses, similarly dividing between high-brow and mass
offerings, became venues for two kinds of musical theatre: the opera at Convent
Garden, and a spectacular annual pantomime at Drury Lane, alternating with
sensational melodramas.

LITERARY DRAMATISTS

The new literary dramatists did not emerge very quickly, due to the faith in
Shakespeare. Consequently, the writers who produced scripts about the modern
world were not seen as real artists and were badly paid as well as socially
despised.
But at the end of the century a new critical generation, headed by the radical
actress-manager Janet Achurch and critics William Archer and George Bernard
Shaw looked to a different artistic understanding of the world, and championed
the importation of the lays of Ibsen, Zola and eventually also Strindberg and
Chekhov. This was a new ideology, a new way of seeing Realism, Naturalism and
Modernism supersede and indeed reject the melodramatic and comic world-view
of the 19th century stage. But despite those writers’ propaganda against it, that
view did not die, and its further evolution in much 20 th and 21st century
“popular” entertainment, in television and film, is now being recognised.

AN ITRODUCTION TO PYGMALION, A ROMANCE IN FIVE ACTS

Shaw’s comedy of cross-class mobility. This play has been popular with audience
ever since for the inventiveness of its comedy and what it has to say about
class, education, social mobility and feminism. To what extent can people
reposition themselves in society by changing the way they talk and act?
Pygmalion explores these issues and gloriously celebrates individual character
and personality, while exposing and satirizing the artificial constructs of the
British class system.

PHARAGRAPHS OF PRODUCTIONS OF PYGMALION IN POLAND, RUSSIA AND

FRANCE

Inspiration for the character of Eliza was taken from Beatrice Stella Campbell.
Also, Shaw, having arrived in London in 1876 as a 20-year-old Irishman self-
conscious of his Dublin accent, he knew precisely what he was talking about.

WHAT IS IN A NAME? INSPIRATION AND TITLE

Saw’s Pygmalion employs a one-word title to indicate its grounding in classical

myth. The allusion to Greek myth gives the plot extra layers of depth and

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meaning. In Pygmalion, Shaw effectively reworks his classical myth and gives it
a feminist perspective. Higgins mimics the part of Pygmalion but he has no
desire to marry Eliza. She has no wish to meekly accept the fate of Pygmalion’s
creation. Throughout the play, Eliza remains her own woman. She uses her
teaching to better effect, taking confidence from her ability to learn and
strength from her success to stand up to him.
The other inspiration is Tobias Smollett’s novel, Peregrine Pickle, published in
1751.

NOT BLOODY LIKELY

One of the most outstanding moments of the play occurs in Act 3. Eliza makes
polished small talk to begin with, but the cracks begin to show, she exclaims
‘Walk! Not bloody likely. I am going in a taxi’.
However, Shaw lamented this part of the play: they laughed themselves into
such utter abandonment and disorder that it was really doubtful for some time
whether they could recover themselves and let the play go on.
Shaw’s own concern wasn’t that people might take offence from the word, but
that the fuss surrounding it might detract from the important issues in this play.

A ROMANTIC ENDING?

Audiences expected Pygmalion to conclude with a marriage. A marriage

between Eliza and Higgins would not only compromise Eliza’s independence but
also be a plain travesty.
Audiences, along with many actors and film-makers, have long wished for a
more conventionally romantic ending. The first English film adaptation starring
Leslie Howard as Higgins and Wendy Hillier as Eliza, was directed by the
Hungarian Gabriel Pascal, and Shaw himself won an Academy Award for Writing.

MANUSCRIPT FILM SCENARION FOR PYGALION

Shaw had been vehemently opposed to musical adaptations of the play, arguing
that the language was musical enough in itself and that the addition of songs
would only hide his serious intentions.