20th Century Spanish Theater: Realism, Avant-Garde, and Innovation
Early 20th Century Theater: Realism and Renewal
At the beginning of the 20th century, the predominant trend in drama was **realistic and naturalistic theater**. This was the most commercial form of theater, aiming to reflect the social reality of the moment. The characteristics of this stage included:
- Sets that created the illusion of reality for the viewer.
- Actors embodying characters as if they were real individuals.
- The audience forgetting they were in a theater.
During the first decades of this century, a constant renewal of performing trends occurred, mainly due to the following causes:
- Application of various technical advancements to theatrical performances.
- Influence of cinema.
- Growing importance of the director, often imposing their artistic vision.
Consequently, various refreshing theatrical trends emerged, such as Symbolist theater, Expressionist theater, Brecht’s “Epic Theater,” and Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty.”
Spanish Theater in the Early 20th Century
In Spain, the theater of the first third of the century was divided into two main categories: **commercial theater**, which achieved success and appealed to a bourgeois audience, and **innovative theater**, which introduced new techniques and ideological approaches.
Commercial Theater in Spain
Within commercial theater, the following trends were prominent:
Benaventine Comedy
Benavente’s comedies portrayed the upper classes, exposing their hypocrisies and conventions. Notable works include comedies such as *Sábado Noche* and rural dramas like *La Malquerida*.
Verse Drama
This style combined Post-Romanticism with modernist aesthetics. It often featured a highly conservative ideology, extolling traditional Spanish noble values and past heroic deeds. The Machado brothers were particularly important, with works like *La Lola se va a los Puertos*.
Comic Theater
This genre recreated popular social conventions. The main representatives were the Álvarez Quintero brothers, who often set emotional problems in Andalusia, as seen in works like *El Genio Alegre*.
Innovative Theater in Spain
On the other hand, innovative theater featured distinct figures:
Ramón María del Valle-Inclán
Valle-Inclán’s work can be divided into three stages:
Valle-Inclán: Aesthetic Ideas Stage
With an anti-bourgeois stance, Valle-Inclán criticized the society of his time. His plays were often not performed due to their themes clashing with the prejudices of the bourgeois public.
Valle-Inclán: Transition to the Esperpento
This stage began with the *Comedias Bárbaras* (*Águila de Blasón*, *Romance de Lobos*, and *Cara de Plata*). It continued the rural Galician theme but introduced strange, foolish, violent, and tyrannical characters.
Valle-Inclán: The Esperpento
*Divinas Palabras*, related to the *Comedias Bárbaras*, is a violent drama set in a sordid Galicia. All characters are deformed from social, moral, and even physical perspectives. *Luces de Bohemia* defines the esperpento as a mixture of tragedy and burlesque. In the esperpento, reality is distorted, exaggerating its most objectionable features.
Federico García Lorca
Lorca’s work often explored the conflict between reality and desire. He disliked the commercial theater of his time, believing it lacked characters that truly depicted human conflicts. His influences included rural drama, 19th-century theater, Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, Spanish Golden Age theater, and the avant-garde.
Lorca: Early Works
In 1920, he wrote *El Maleficio de la Mariposa*, a work that was not successful. Three years later, he wrote *Teatro de Títeres*, a piece that portrays childhood as a lost paradise. His first major success came with *Mariana Pineda* (1925). This verse play depicts the conviction of a woman from Granada for embroidering a liberal, anti-dictatorship flag, resonating against Primo de Rivera’s regime.
Lorca: Avant-Garde Experimentation
Following the publication of *Romancero Gitano* and his subsequent trip to New York, Lorca underwent a personal crisis, leading him to embrace a surrealist aesthetic. *El Público* is a play where characters symbolize Lorca’s deepest psychic obsessions: a critique of society and a proclamation that all love is legitimate.
Lorca: Period of Fullness
In 1933, Lorca left his Surrealist phase and began a new period, creating avant-garde theater accessible to all audiences. A main theme is the portrayal of marginalized women in an intolerant society. For example, *Bodas de Sangre* tells the true story of a bride who runs away with her lover on her wedding day, breaking social barriers. As a postscript, *La Casa de Bernarda Alba* was written in the year of his death (1936).
Other Renewal Streams: Generation of ’27
Other streams of renewal also emerged, such as the **Generation of ’27**, which significantly renovated national drama with three key objectives:
- To break with commercial theater.
- To bring theater closer to the people.
- To incorporate new, cutting-edge trends.