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Of Theatre. 71 “The Theatrical Pendulum: Paths of Innovation in the Modernist Stage” by Andrés Pérez-Simón A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto © Copyright by Andrés Pérez-Simón, 2010 “The Theatrical Pendulum: Paths of Innovation in the Modernist Stage” Andrés Pérez-Simón Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto 2010 Abstract This dissertation examines the renovation of the modernist stage, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the late 1930s, via a retrieval of three artistic forms that had marginal importance in the commercial theatre of the nineteenth century. These three paths are the commedia dell’arte, puppetry and marionettes, and, finally, what I denominate mysterium, following Elinor Fuch’s terminology in The Death of Character. This dissertation covers the temporal span of the first three decades of the twentieth century and, at the same time, analyzes modernist theatre in connection with the history of Western drama since the consolidation of the bourgeois institution of theatre around the late eighteenth century. The Theatrical Pendulum: Paths of Innovation in the Modernist Staget studies the renovation of the bourgeois institution of theatre by means of the rediscovery of artistic forms previously relegated to a peripheral status in the capitalist system of artistic production and distribution. In their dramatic works, Nikolai Evreinov, Josef and Karel Čapek, Massimo Bontempelli, and Federico García Lorca present fictional actors, playwrights and directors who resist the fact that their work be evaluated as just another commodity. These dramatists collaborate with the commercial stage of their time, ii instead of adopting the radical stance that characterized avant-garde movements such as Italian futurism and Dadaism. Yet they also question the illusionist fourth wall separating stage and audience in order to denounce the subjection of the modernist artist to the expectations of bourgeois spectators. Jan Mukařovský’s concept of practical function in art is central to understanding the didactic nature of the dramatic texts studied in this dissertation. By claiming the importance of Mukařovský’s phenomenological structuralism, I propose a new reading of the theoretical legacy of the Prague School in conjunction with recent contributions in the field of theatre studies by Elinor Fuchs, Martin Puchner and other scholars whose work will be discussed here. iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my doctoral committee. My supervisor, Veronika Ambros, generously shared her time with me during the last three years and proved to be not only a thorough scholar but a person entirely devoted to her doctoral students. And, in alphabetical order, I would like to thank Alan Ackerman, who provided me with feedback of extraordinary value for every chapter of this dissertation and always directed me to the current debates in theatre scholarship; Stephen Rupp, critical reader and mentor in his role of professor and Chair of Spanish and Portuguese, of great assistance in my search for my first academic position; and Luca Somigli, the Italian comparatist who I knew would be part of my doctoral committee as soon as I took my first class with him in September 2005. My work has benefited greatly from several graduate courses I attended at University of Toronto from 2005 to 2007. In chronological order, I mention the following professors: Linda Hutcheon, whose course on literary history I was lucky to attend just days after landing in Toronto; Mario J. Valdés, who attracted my attention to phenomenological approaches to film and theatre; Luca Somigli, professor of Italian modernism and avant-garde, on two occasions; and Michael J. Sidnell, whose full-year course at the Drama Centre granted me the tools necessary to undertake a doctoral thesis on European modernist theatre. I also benefited from three graduate courses with my supervisor Veronika Ambros, who first introduced me to the dramatic works of Josef and Karel Čapek. I would also like to thankRoland LeHuenen and Neil ten Kortenaar, respectively the past and the current directors of the Centre for Comparative Literature,for their support; the work of the graduate coordinators Barbara Havercroft and Jill Ross; and the generous assistance of iv Aphrodite Gardner and Bao Nguyen. My thanks go also to my friend and colleague Adil D’Sousa, who did the copyediting job and, most important, was always ready to sacrifice his time in order to help me meet the next deadline. And Ruth Molina made everything happen. v Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Theoretical perspectives. 1.1. Limits and possibilities of theatre semiotics. 17 1.2. From the ‘meta’ prefix to a functional approach to art. 33 Chapter 2: The modernist commedia dell’arte. 2.1. The rebirth of commedia dell’arte in the modernist years. 49 2.2. Evreinov’s The Merry Death. Theory and praxis of theatricality. 61 2.3. Josef and Karel Čapek’s The Fateful Game of Love. Fictional audiences and the “impossibility” of theatre. 71 Chapter 3: The modernist puppet theatre. 3.1. Puppets, from symbolism to the modernist revival of the fairground booth. 90 3.2. Bontempelli’s Hedge to Northwest and the Italian tradition of the teatro grottesco. 106 3.3. Lorca’s theatre of the 1920s. How to do critical theatre with puppets. 119 Chapter 4: The modernist mysterium. 4.1. The modernist mysterium, between allegory and didacticism. 136 4.2. Lorca’s The Public. Between modernism and the tradition of the auto sacramental. 148 4.3. Karel Čapek’s The Mother. Allegories of war and nationhood. 172 Conclusion 189 Works Cited 198 vi SERVANT. Sir. DIRECTOR. What? SERVANT. There is the public. DIRECTOR. Show them in. (Federico García Lorca) “If theater could be an initiatory participatory game, it could be at once entertaining and fateful” (Richard Schechner) vii Introduction viii This dissertation investigates the activation of audiences in modernist theatre from the early years of the twentieth century to the late 1930s. During this span of approximately three decades, Nikolai Evreinov, Josef and Karel Čapek, Massimo Bontempelli, and Federico García Lorca contributed to the renewal of the European stage by reinterpreting certain traditions that had received scarce attention in the preceding decades of realist and naturalist theatre. Their collaboration with the commercial stage distinguishes them from the overt confrontation, made in the name of a radical “modern” rupture, which characterized avant-garde movements such as Italian futurism and Dadaism. This project focuses on three paths that had marginal relevance in the bourgeois stage of the nineteenth century, be it melodrama or realist theatre, and that did not receive the attention of high-brow dramatists until the emergence of symbolist theatre in the closing years of the century. The first source is puppetry and marionettes, relegated in the nineteenth century to the realms of folk theatre and children’s entertainment; the second, commedia dell’arte, whose improvisatory nature had no place in a time when theatre was synonymous with scripted drama; and, finally, a third path developed into a form of didactic theatre that relied on the expository nature of the mystery play and, in broader terms, allegorical religious drama. I refer to this third form as the modernist mysterium following Elinor Fuchs’ terminology in The Death of Character (36-51). By adapting these peripheral traditions to a historical context different from their original, the playwrights studied here performed a process of refunctioning. I derive this concept of refunctioning from the research of Jan Mukařovský mainly in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Mukařovský investigated how when a work is perceived against a new background (social, religious, philosophical) the recipient’s response can reverse those components that were thought to be carriers of aesthetic function in the first place. And, vice versa, aspects previously 1 considered non-aesthetic can be later evaluated as containing aesthetic value. The precedent of this idea of artistic refunctioning is to be found in the term aktualizace, originally coined in the field of linguistics by Bohuslav Havránek, one of the cofounders of the Prague Circle in 1926. Mukařovský first applied this concept to the analysis of poetic language in the early 1930s, when he studied the historical emergence of poetic forms against the backdrop of both standard (communicative) language and poetic language. From a wider perspective, used in connection to the history of artistic series, aktualizace can be translated as the process of making topical, or foregrounding, works, styles or authors of marginal importance in the canon of a certain era. The numerous folkloric elements of Lorca’s theatre of the 1920s, for instance, demand an aesthetic response that was not present in previous contexts of production and reception. Similarly, the presence of puppetry in Bontempelli’s Hedge to Northwest can also be described in terms of a change of function, for the puppets’ speeches are perceived against an ideological background that is significantly different to the folkloric context to which they had been previously associated. Mukařovský conceives the work of art as an “autonomous sign”—one that is free of an immediate, practical correspondence with reality—without denying, at the same time, its intrinsic ability to set in motion extra-aesthetic values, assumptions, and beliefs. The variable nature of Mukařovský’s aesthetic function, which I will analyze more extensively in section 1.2, helps in understanding the particular relationship between the fictional components of theatre and the practical (read: didactic, political, revolutionary) condition of certain works under certain historical conditions. A good example is The Mother, written by Karel Čapek, in 1937, in solidarity with the Spanish anti-fascist troops, and a play that mobilized the patriotic sentiment of a Prague audience that could sense the closeness of the German invasion.
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