Theater and Post-War Literature: Scenarios, Styles, and Key Authors

Posted on Jan 29, 2025 in Latin

Theater

Lighting Scenarios:
- Realistic – Commercial, realism, naturalness, character actor
- Politico – Changing society (Almnes: Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht)
- Of Cruelty – Evils protest against the world (text, music or gestures) unpleasant pictures. (Alfred Jarry, Antonin Artaud)
- Psychological – Psychological burden of characters trying to transmit things. (Henrik Ibsen)
- Theater of the Absurd – Reflects the absurdity of human existence (incoherent characters, illogical situations) (Luigi Pirandello, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett)
- Bourgeois Comedy – Jacinto Benavente, elegant and natural dialogues criticizing bourgeois society
- Theater of Humor – Enrique Jardiel Poncela, Miguel Mihura, Pedro Muñoz Seca
- Avant-Garde Theater – Ramon Gomez de la Serna, Federico Garcia Lorca (modernist theater, comedies, dramas)
- Existential Drama – Pessimistic, serious and concerned. Transits truth, restlessness. (Antonio Buero Vallejo, Alfonso Sastre)
- Commercial Theater – Franco dictatorship. Commercial theater (to entertain an audience) Antonio Gala
- Experimental Theater – Incorporates avant-garde tradition. Theatrical spectacle as a whole. Effects. (Fernando Arrabal)

Abandonment of traditional venues, text secondary to the location.

Non-commercial theater groups and non-professionals.

The theater was conceived as a spectacle. The characters are profiled. Allegorical language. Special effects. Viewer. Character.

Europe: In the 50s groups (Teatro Pequeño Sant’Erasmo)

Spain: Joglars, Els Comediants, Dagoll Dagom

Contemporary issues with an ironic tone.

Europe:

Lars Norén (Swedish family)
Heiner Müller (committed to justice)
Tom Stoppard (British, humor, parody) author and screenwriter (Shakespeare in Love)

Spain: A tendency towards vanguard and experiment and the realist

Luis Riaza (black humor, theater of the absurd)
Manuel Martinez Mediero (universal social dramatist, questions false appearances)
Francisco Nieva (theater of farce and furious drama and calamity)
Fernando Fernan Gomez (Bikes are for Summer, postwar writers tribute Spanish)
José Sanchis Sinisterra (human questions oneself and society) and culture humor (¡Ay, Carmela!)
José Luis Alonso de Santos (current realities, parodies of society characters well portrayed)

Franz Kafka (Prague, frustration, helplessness… father criticizes his way of conceiving things. Incomprehension of others. The Metamorphosis)
James Joyce (Irish. Contributions to literature. Ulysses based on the Odyssey. Stream of consciousness)
Marcel Proust (French, In Search of Lost Time, his memories and society. Small details relating to the universal)

Crisis period, pessimism and anxiety.

Existentialism: Reflects on the human condition, the insignificance of being and its relation with God. Breaks with the existence of Socrates.

Jean-Paul Sartre (French, contributions as philosopher and novelist. Daily nausea, anxiety condemns any)
Albert Camus (French, philosophy of the absurd, existential anxiety, mechanical routine. The Stranger)

Censorship

Restorers of Realism:

Traditional (Benito Perez Galdos, no innovation)
Innovative (Miguel Delibes, need to denounce violent themes, distress and choking sensation – tremendous novels)

Representatives of Tremendismo: Camilo Jose Cela, Carmen Laforet, Miguel Delibes, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester.

50s: Social realism (open structure, collective protagonist, Spanish reality, technical renovation of narrative)
Tendencies: Objectivism and critical realism.
60s: Experimental novel (breaking the linear plot, alternation, use of external monologue, the protagonist)

Miguel Delibes, Juan Goytisolo.

Factors (internet, growth of the publishing market)