Spanish Theater After the Civil War
The Spanish Theater After 1936
The theater, the most favored by circumstances, continued to depend on the interests of some employers who, in turn, submitted to the preferences of a bourgeois public of questionable taste. Along with this, the ideological limitations and censorship exercised worsened.
The Post-War Theater
The Civil War was a deep cut for the course of our theater. Some playwrights died, others suffered exile, and foreign comedies proliferated. These foreign comedies gained importance in the 1950s. The Theater Chamber and TEU (Spanish University Theater) groups were a minority experience, but presented new Spanish values and a stream of avant-garde. The following lines are noteworthy:
- A type of high comedy in the line of Benavente. On the whole, this theater is characterized by the following:
- Prevalence of room comedies or thesis dramas, sometimes with a gentle critique of customs united with a defense of traditional values.
- Concern for the work, with dialogue devoted care and scenic structures.
- In the comic theater, Jardiel had proposed to “renew the laughter”, introducing the improbable, but his daring crashed, as did Mihura’s. Both have aspects that are considered above the theater of the absurd, at least for the introduction of a wild and poetic mood.
- Birth of a serious, worried, maverick drama, which is inserted in an existential step. Historia de Buero Vallejo and Bracket to the Death of Alfonso Sastre are signs of a theater ‘other’ who wants to be a place on stage in front of the trivial or conventional.
The Realistic Theater of Protest and Complaint
At this stage, the conditioning of our drama production experienced no substantial changes, but some variations that explain, however, developments that would be consolidated by 1960. Thus, alongside the bourgeois public, a new public appeared—university youth—asking for another theater. Censorship and intolerance to some critical approaches were slightly relaxed. The social theater is a testimony to the pioneers Buero and Sastre. Alfonso Sastre presents his thesis, coinciding with his manifesto of “social realism”, where blunt claims are made with works such as Death in e/barrio (1955), The Goring (1960). After Buero and Sastre appeared:
- 1960: The Nocentes of Moncloa by Rodríguez Méndez.
- 1961: The Inkwell by Carlos Muñiz.
- 1962: Lauro Olmo’s Shirt.
- 1963: The Wild Puente San Gil by Martin Recuerda.
The theme of these works is characteristic of social theater. All address very specific problems: bureaucracy and the dehumanized slavery of the worker (The Inkwell), the anxieties of young opponents (The Innocent of the Moncloa), the situation of workers who are forced to migrate, or dream with swimming pools (The Shirt), the brutality of villagers instigated by reactionary forces (The Wild…). Usually, the subject is social injustice and alienation, and, before that, the author’s attitude will be one of witness and protest. In terms of aesthetics and art, such works are incorporated into realism.
The Search for New Ways
The social realist theater continued to be defended, during the 1960s, by a critical sector, as the only answer to the circumstances of the country. But at the same time, other playwrights launched a renewal of dramatic expression. This exceeded the current realism and foreign experimental theater groups were treated. Two groups of playwrights emerged:
- Contemporary Authors: José María Bellido, Luis Riaz, José Ruibal, Juan Antonio Castro, Francisco Nieva…
- Younger Authors: Diego Salvador, Mediero Martínez, Luis Matilla, Jiménez Romero…
The new theater was as critical as, or more than, the previous one, so they continued crashing against censorship. Fernando Arrabal opted to continue his work abroad, where he achieved the highest recognition, and Antonio in Spain.
The most common features of this new theater are: the theme revolves around the dictatorship, the lack of freedom, injustice, alienation… But what is new is the dramatic treatment. Realistic approaches are discarded and replaced by symbolic or allegorical ones. The drama is often a parable to be solved, the characters tend to be stark symbols. It turns to farce, the grotesque, a grotesque distortion: it gives access to the amazing, to dream. Language, for its part, with a direct tone, goes from poetic to ceremonial. Finally, non-verbal resources are grown: audio, visual, body, etc.
Drama from 1975 to Our Days
The arrival of democracy brought hopes for the revival of theater in Spain. With the end of censorship, the theater was finally able to regain full freedom. And theatrical politics opened up important new horizons. Yet, works by new authors have abounded. Moreover, there has been a gradual disappearance of the author, faces, and with the competition of film and television, among other major diversions. The freedoms recovered in democracy have encouraged the spread of trends in the theatrical landscape of recent years. This variety is also due to the fact that in the 80s and 90s, dramatists of various promotions and with very different degrees of recognition coexisted, although with very different public presence. Thus, at least three groups can be distinguished:
- The first consists of those already established before: Buero Vallejo, Sastre, Gala, Martin Recuerda.
- The second group, those playwrights, having written works during the dictatorship, would be announced after the transition to democracy: Nieva, Alonso de Santos, E. Cabal, Sanchis Sinisterra, etc.
- The third group includes younger authors whose works appeared already in full democracy: Paloma Pedrero, María Manuela Reina, Ignacio García May…
Despite their avant-garde experiments, Francisco Nieva, with his “Furious Theater”, and Fernando Arrabal, with his “Panic Theater”, remain backward. Within the avant-garde experimental theater, the work of certain independent theater groups, often related to the so-called ‘street theater’, also forms part. In a traditional form, Fernando Fernán Gómez, with Bicycles are for Summer (1982), presented a realistic drama set in the Spanish Civil War. The realistic orientation prevalent in other playwrights cuts traditional works and often also entered in the form of historical theater. This is seen, for example, in Ay, Carmela! (1987) by José Sanchis Sinisterra, a funny and tragic story of two actors in the middle of the war. Closer to a conventional realism are Santiago Moncada: Save the Dolphins (1979) was one of the biggest hits. And squarely in the middle-class comedy that usually succeeds in the commercial theater is Juan José Alonso Millán. But the most representative of this current stage are:
- José Luis Alonso de Santos, who has revitalized the tradition of farce. His first success was The Tobacconist of Vallecas, and his consecration occurs with Get off the Moor (1985), a popular urban comedy about youth hooked on drugs, marginalized, rebellious, selfishly integrated, or others.
- Fermín Cabal. The evolution of theatrical naturalism goes from comedy of manners like You’re Crazy, Briones and Great Night Tonight, to further reflection on the problems of his own theatrical creation in The Little Horse of Fire.