Spanish Theater: Post-Civil War to Modern Era
The Drama: The vitality of Spanish drama diminished after the Civil War due to the death or exile of authors, the Franco regime’s rigor, and increasing film prominence. The avant-garde aesthetic and critical tone of theater seemed forgotten, with traditional drama or Golden Age classics preferred as escapism.
From the fifties, theater tentatively offered the public reflection on reality, gaining ground in the sixties through allegorical language and freer expression. However, it wasn’t until the seventies that theater and its people gained greater social and artistic recognition.
The Theater in the Forties
Early postwar Spanish theater took two main paths: ideological drama and comedy. Authors recognized before the war, like Jacinto Benavente and Carlos Arniches, aimed to distract the public from everyday problems, i.e., away from reality. Ideological drama, conceived as an educational vehicle, disseminated the conservative thought of those years, with José Mª Pemán as a representative author.
High comedy featured restrained and elegant styles, starring the wealthy upper classes, while farce, more spontaneous, reflected the customs of the masses. Notable authors of high comedy included Jacinto Benavente, Edgar Neville, and Lee Eubie. The farce successfully represented works by established authors like Arniches and the Álvarez Quintero brothers.
Henry Jardiel Poncela deserves special mention for his humorous figure, original handling of situations, improbable scenarios, and particular use of language, foreshadowing the theater of the absurd.
The Theater in the Fifties
Both comedy and drama began to show significant changes, departing from frivolous and evasive stances. Miguel Mihura’s Three Top Hats (1952) used absurd humor to satirize a society full of conventions and limited individual freedom. In drama, two initial works of social realism emerged: Antonio Buero Vallejo’s Story of a Staircase (1949) and Alfonso Sastre’s Squad Towards Death (1953). Both addressed Spanish society’s problems from a compromised position.
The Theater in the Sixties
Two distinct approaches to the dramatic genre emerged: commercial and committed/innovative. The latter derived from social realism and maintained a critical stance against social problems while seeking new forms of expression. Key figures include Alfonso Paso, Antonio Gala, and Fernando Arrabal.
The Theater from the Seventies to Now
With the advent of democracy, censorship disappeared, enabling the representation of works by exiled authors like Max Aub and Rafael Alberti. Contact with foreign theater became more fluid, renovating Spanish theater and generalizing the use of an avant-garde aesthetic, tentatively explored in the previous decade by authors like Francisco Nieva.
As the eighties progressed, a coexistence of styles emerged: from realistic to experimental theater. Key figures include Antonio Buero Vallejo and José Luis Alonso de Santos. Independent theater groups proliferated, and theater festivals offered the public access to classic Greco-Roman theater (Mérida), Golden Age theater (Almagro), and experimental/avant-garde theater (Tárrega).
Contemporary theater maintains, with varying intensity, a social commitment, a critical tone, and the treatment of controversial topics: sexuality, politics, and war.