People · 1873–1907
Alfred Jarry
French writer whose Ubu Roi (1896) shattered stage decorum. Invented ’pataphysics, “the science of imaginary solutions.” A forerunner of Dada, Surrealism and the Absurd.
Layer II — The reference shelf
People · 1873–1907
French writer whose Ubu Roi (1896) shattered stage decorum. Invented ’pataphysics, “the science of imaginary solutions.” A forerunner of Dada, Surrealism and the Absurd.
People · 1849–1912
Swedish playwright who moved from naturalism (The Father, Miss Julie) to dream drama (To Damascus, A Dream Play, The Ghost Sonata). Founded the Intimate Theatre in Stockholm, 1907.
People · 1862–1949
Belgian Symbolist; plays of stillness and dread such as The Intruder and The Blind (1890), Pelléas and Mélisande (1892). Nobel Prize in Literature, 1911.
People · 1869–1940
Actor-manager who founded the Théâtre de l’Œuvre (1893), the home of Symbolist production in Paris and the venue of Ubu Roi.
People · 1872–1960
Founded the Théâtre d’Art (1890) as a Symbolist answer to Antoine’s naturalist Théâtre Libre.
People · 1862–1928 / 1872–1966
Scenic visionaries who replaced painted realism with light, rhythm and abstract volume. Craig proposed the actor as Über-marionette.
People · 1878–1945
Leading German Expressionist dramatist: From Morning to Midnight (1912), the Gas trilogy.
People · 1893–1939
Political Expressionist; Masses and Man (1920) written in prison after the Bavarian Soviet Republic.
People · 1880–1918
Poet whose The Breasts of Tiresias (1917) gave the world the word “surrealism.”
People · 1896–1948
Actor, poet and theorist. The Theatre and Its Double (1938) called for a Theatre of Cruelty that would bypass reason and assault the senses.
People · 1896–1963
Dada founder at Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire (1916); author of The Gas Heart.
Plays · 1896
Jarry’s grotesque parody of Macbeth. Père Ubu murders his way to the Polish throne. Its opening word caused a near-riot.
Plays · 1901 (staged 1907)
Strindberg’s episodic drama structured by dream logic, following Agnes, daughter of Indra, through human suffering.
Plays · 1907
Strindberg chamber play: a vampiric old man, a mummy in a closet, a ghost supper — decay beneath bourgeois respectability.
Plays · 1912
Kaiser’s Stationendrama of a cashier’s doomed one-day flight from his dull life.
Plays · 1922
Eugene O’Neill brings Expressionism to America: stoker Yank’s search for belonging.
Plays · 1923
Elmer Rice’s satire of Mr. Zero, an accountant replaced by a machine.
Movements · c. 1885–1910
Theatre of suggestion over statement: mood, mystery, the spiritual. Scrims, dim light, chant-like delivery.
Movements · c. 1910–1925
Projects inner, subjective states outward. Distorted sets, types instead of characters, the scream (Schrei).
Movements · 1909–1930s
Marinetti’s Italian movement worshipping speed and machines; ultra-brief sintesi plays and variety-theatre provocation.
Movements · 1916–1924
Anti-art born in wartime Zurich: sound poems, chance, cabaret chaos.
Movements · 1924 onward
Breton’s movement to release the unconscious through automatism and dream imagery.
Terms
“Station drama”: episodic structure modelled on the Stations of the Cross; one protagonist moves through a series of scenes.
Terms
Expressionist telegraphic dialogue — clipped, ecstatic fragments.
Terms
Jarry’s mock-science of exceptions and imaginary solutions.
Terms
Artaud’s concept: theatre as ritual shock, using sound, light, gesture over text.
Terms
Craig’s ideal performer, freed from personal ego and naturalistic imitation.