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Home , Ernst Toller, Waiting for Godot

Modernism Enlightenment

• There is a singular, • Humans can accomplish universal truth anything using science • You can reach the truth through art • Even meaninglessness • Originality is possible has meaning (arsc genius) • There is a difference between culture that elevates versus culture for the masses The Modernist Avant-garde

• Symbolists • People need to be shocked out of their • Futurists apathy • Dadaists • Expressionists • Surrealists Symbolists

• (first of the non-realisc movements) • 1893 Théâtre de l'Oeuvre • founded by Aurélien-Marie Lugné Poë (1869-1904) Inspired by:

• Edgar Allan Poe • • Romanc poets • The Iliad • The Bible • Believed in geng to deeper meaning under the words through mythology and spirituality (1873-1907)

• - staged in 1896 by Lugné-Poë • A vulgar and disgusng parody of classical tragedy (mostly Macbeth) • A man kills the king and his family so that he can become king • First word causes a riot Jarry's woodcut of Ubu Futurists - 1910s, Italy

• Filippo Marine (1876-1944) • Belief in technology, speed, and machinery • Associated with Italian fascist ideology • Incited riong in Trieste by burning Austrian flag (pro-war) • Art of Noise - use words and noises that sound like machinery and arllery • Movement - gesculate geometrically Art of Noise - 1916-1920, Zurich

• Cabaret Voltaire , (1896-1963), Hugo Ball (1886-1927), • and Emmy Hennings (1885-1948) • Sound poems • Trying to convey the nonsense of current events • simultaneity and indeterminacy Hugo Ball Expressionist Painng

Edvard Munch - The Scream (1893) Gert Wollheim - The Wounded Man (1919) - Street Scene (1913) Erich Heckel - Two Men at the Table (1913) Expressionists - 1910s-1920s,

• (1893-1939) - Transfiguraon (1918), and Man and Masses (1921) • Sophie Treadwell (1885-1970) - Machinal (1928) • Distorted line, exaggerated shape, abnormal coloring • Universal character types • Set looks like world as seen through the eyes of the protagonist • Usually aacks war, industrializaon, and prisons and suggests a utopian future • episodes Transfiguraon Elmer Rice - The Adding Machine Surrealists 1920s-1930s, France Parade (1896-1948)

• Meningis as a child • syphilis as a young adult • addicted to opium and laudinum • Theatre and Its Double (1938) • Jet of Blood (1925) • Primivism - looked to primive cultures for truth • "Theatre of Cruelty" to disrupt logic and help audience find the truth in their sub-conscious minds Epic Theatre

• (1898-1956) • Epic Theatre - Believed in a theatre that would awaken people to reality. • Verfremdungseffekt - alienaon effect. • To make the spectators aware of the fact that they are watching a : Verfremdungseffekt

1. The use of projecons and other mechanical devices visible to the audience. 2. Using songs and narrave passages. 3. Having characters refer to themselves in the 3rd person. His plays

• The Three-penny Opera (1928) - Cabaret-style polical sare. Based on John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728). • Mother Courage and her Children (1939) • Galileo (1939) - what happens when people don't sck up for their principles. Later revised in 1949-51 aer the bombing of Hiroshima. Mother Courage

• Absurdism is a label invented by scholar Martin Esslin. It is important to note that none of these people saw themselves as part of a movement. • Absurdist plays deal with existential issues (the meaning, or lack, of our existence), but in an absurd way. • Plays lack a clear narrative structure, characters, and contain nonsensical dialogue. Eugène Ionesco (1912-1994)

• Rebellion against conventional . • The Bald Soprano (1949) - mostly exercises in nonsense. A parody on language and cliché. • The Chairs (1952) - Futility of conveying a message. Jean Genét (1910-1986)

• The Maids (1948) • The Balcony (1957) • reenactment and memory, "playing" at gender and race, deviants as important part of society (1906-1989)

• Born in Ireland, moved to Paris. • Friends with , and initially a writer of Irish poetry. • In Paris, he met Ionesco and others, and began writing in French. • (1950) - a play about nothing. Two men wait and wait and wait. • Staged in 1953 to great acclaim. • Act Without Words (1956) and Play (1963) Waiting for Godot