Aspects of Modern Drama

• Drama is one of the best literary forms through which

dramatists can directly speak to their readers, or
the audience, and they can receive instant feedback of
audiences.
• A few dramatists use their characters as a vehicle to
convey their thoughts and values, such as poets do
with personas, and novelists do with narrators.
• Since drama uses spoken words and dialogues, thus
language of characters plays a vital role, as it may give
clues to their feelings, personalities, backgrounds, and
change in feelings.
• In dramas the characters live out a story without any
comments of the author, providing the audience a
direct presentation of characters’ life experiences.
 Definition
• Modern drama signifies the struggle for self-realization
and freedom; the turn from declamatory speech in
classical drama to the intimacies of interpersonal
exchange which include silence, pauses, and
inarticulateness; and the exploration of anxiety and
alienation, a feeling of waiting for something
inscrutable.
• Ibsen's A Doll's House is often considered the first
"modern drama“ In a rich, naturalistic style, Ibsen
examined the struggle against the unyielding
constraints of social conformity, particularly as they are
applied to women in their marriages. Nora,
the protagonist, ultimately rejects the marriage that
would smother her, something that genuinely shocked
audiences around the world when the play first
premiered in the late 1800s.
 Historical Background
• The first phase of modern drama began in the late
19th century with the rise of Romanticism.
• The outstanding movement in the dramatic field
was that of Romanticism.
Romanticism had been the predominant artistic
movement in Europe from the late eighteenth century
onwards, with an intense focus on the consciousness
of the individual in terms of imagination, emotion and
an intense appreciation of the beauties of nature.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the
Romantic emphasis on emotion over reason and of
the senses over intellect had given way to a much
more objective and scientific way of examining the
human condition. A number of factors contributed to
this:
• A year of revolutions in France, Germany, Poland,
Italy, and the Austrian Empire during the so-called
Springtime of the Peoples in 1848 showed that
there was a widespread desire for political, social,
and economic reform
• Technological advances in industry and trade led to
an increased belief that science could solve human
problems;
• The working classes were determined to fight for
their rights, using strikes as their principal weapons;
• Romantic idealism was rejected in favor of
pragmatism;
• The common man demanded recognition and
believed that the way to bring this about was
through action.
 Theatrical definitions
The terms realism and naturalism are closely linked
but there are significant differences in what they
mean in the theatre:
• Realism describes any play that depicts ordinary
people in everyday situations
• Naturalism is a form of realism that particularly
focuses on how technology and science affect
society as a whole, as well as how society and
genetics affect individuals.
Realism:
• Beginning in the early nineteenth century, realism
was an artistic movement that moved away from
the unrealistic situations and characters that had
been the basis of Romantic theatre. The
playwright Henrik Ibsen is regarded as the father of
modern realism because of the three-dimensional
characters he created and the situations in which he
put them. People in the audience could relate to
the activities occurring on stage and the individuals
involved.
• characters are believable, everyday types
• costumes are authentic
• stage settings (locations) and props are often indoors and
believable
• settings for realistic plays are often bland (deliberately ordinary),
dialogue is not heightened for effect, but that of everyday
speech (vernacular)
• the drama is typically psychologically driven, where the plot is
secondary and primary focus is placed on the interior lives of
characters, their motives, the reactions of others etc.
• realistic plays often see the protagonist (main character) rise up
against the odds to assert him/herself against an injustice of
some kind (eg. Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House)
• realistic dramas quickly gained popularity because the everyday
person in the audience could identify with the situations and
characters on stage
• Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (A Doll’s House, Hedda
Gabler) is considered the father of modern realism in the
theatre
Naturalism:
• In drama a naturalistic focus addresses subjects in
a scientific manner.
• the naturalist writer should not use his
imagination, but only search and record facts -
social, biological, psychological facts. They usually
made extensive preparatory research before
writing. Like a medical scientist, the writer makes
experiments and observes the results : after
setting characters in a given situation and
environment, they observe their reactions. In a
way, they aim at dissecting the human mind and
the body.
• costumes, sets and props are historically
accurate and very detailed, attempting to
offer a photographic reproduction of reality
(‘slice of life’)
• as with realism, settings for naturalistic
dramas are often bland and ordinary
• naturalistic dramas normally follow rules set
out by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, known
as ‘the three unities’ (of time, place and
action)
• the action of the play takes place in a single
location over the time frame of a single day
• jumps in time and/or place between acts or
scenes is not allowed
• playwrights were influenced by naturalist manifestos
written by French novelist and playwright Emile Zola
• naturalism explores the concept of scientific determinism
(spawning from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution) –
characters in the play are shaped by their circumstances
and controlled by external forces such as hereditary or their
social and economic environment
• often characters in naturalistic plays are considered victims
of their own circumstance and this is why they behave in
certain ways (they are seen as helpless products of their
environment)
• characters are often working class/lower class (as opposed
to the mostly middle class characters of realistic dramas)
• naturalistic plays regularly explore sordid subject matter
previously considered taboo on the stage in any serious
manner (eg suicide, poverty, prostitution)
 Convergence and divergence
Differences between realism and naturalism
• Naturalism approached art in a more scientific, almost clinical,
manner than realism
• Realistic plays often had characters to whom the audience could
relate and sympathise
• Naturalistic plays, which were difficult to create and rarely
popular, approached every element with the detachment of a
scientist
• Realistic plays could show characters breaking free from difficult
situations and allow the audience to empathize with their plight.
• Naturalistic works, on the other hand, sought only to study the
situation, characters and other factors without interpretation.
• As time went on, the two genres blended together so as to make it
very difficult to classify plays as either completely naturalistic or
totally realistic. Elements of both could and did exist alongside one
another.
• Similarities between realism and naturalism
• Realistic and naturalistic plays depict events that
could happen in real life, maybe even to members
of the audience.
• Both genres focus on individuals and families in
everyday situations.
• During the late 1800s and early 1900s, playwrights
found ample subject matter for both genres as the
sciences advanced and people struggled and fought
against oppressive governing systems.
• Modern Drama began toward the end of the nineteenth century
with the work of dramatic pioneers Henrik Ibsen, August
Strindberg, and George Bernard Shaw, there was a decided break
from the moralistic, often sensational, melodramatic fare that
dominated much of the nineteenth century.
• One major (but not universal) element of modern drama
is realism. The nineteenth century marked the beginning of a type
of prose drama performed on a proscenium stage, in which one
could almost imagine that one was looking through a transparent
"fourth wall" into the lives of ordinary people. This sort of realistic
bourgeois drama is exemplified by playwrights such as Ibsen,
Shaw, Chekhov, Wilde, Arthur Miller, and Noël Coward and can
range from drawing room comedy to tragedy.

• These playwrights introduced realism to the stage, and added to

the concept of the “well- made play” with its tidy denouement,
the possibility of the more open-ended “discussion play”
• Realism and Naturalism are a reaction against
Romanticism.
• Realism is the fact of being faithful to reality. It
was a movement away from romantic illusion,
in order to get closer to the social and
psychological reality of the time.
• Naturalism is an extreme form of literary
realism, based on the belief that science could
explain all social phenomena, and was to
provide the method for the creation of
literature. Contrary to realism, which was a
rather loose movement, it constituted a real
school of thought around its founder, the
Frenchman Emile Zola.
• Modern realism holds the idea of the stage as an
environment, rather than as an acting platform. The father of
modern realism was Norwegian playwright Henrik Johan
Ibsen (1828-1906). Ibsen was one of the first playwrights to
put realism on a modern stage.
• Ibsen's realistic plays took place in three-dimensional rooms
instead of the more traditional approach of using flat painted
or constructed backdrops (Berggren). Realism in modern
theatre also popularized the usage of “box-sets”. The box set
was first introduced in 1832 and was not used often until the
end of the 19th century where it became a common feature
of the modern theatre.
• Box sets feature very detailed, three-walled, roofed setting
that simulates a room with the fourth wall removed in order
for the audience to see the action taking place in the room.
Authentic details include doors with real moldings, windows
with outdoor scenery, stairways, and painted highlights and
shadows (Box Sets).
• Modern realism plays are very psychologically driven,
where the plot is secondary and primary focus is placed
on the mental lives of characters, their motives, the
reactions of others all while taking place in a very
normal real life setting (Cash, 2014).
• This allowed for the audience to watch the characters
develop and see their emotions to very real life
situations in a real life setting. Since the settings are
realistic to the real world, the settings for modern
realism plays are often bland compared to other forms
of theatre (Cash, 2014).
• For example, in a Shakespearean play, scene changes
often reflects a mood change of a character. A scene
may take place in a forest to reflect a mental freedom
of a character. In modern realism, this mood change of
a character would have to be detected through speech
and actions while taking place in a very normal real life
setting (King, 2012).
• Naturalism modern theatre is very similar to modern
realism theatre. Naturalism is a more extreme form of
realism and sought to go further and be more
explanatory than realism by identifying the underlying
causes for a person’s actions or beliefs and display
them in an even more natural setting than realism.
• August Strindberg was one of the first playwrights to
really incorporate naturalism into modern theatre on
stage when he wrote the 1888 play Miss Julie (Choice
Reviews Online, 2003).
• During the production of Miss Julie, Strindberg insisted
that "there is nothing so hard to find on the stage as an
interior set that comes close to looking as a
room should look. . . . There are so many other
conventions on the stage that strain our imagination;
certainly we might be freed from overexerting
ourselves in an effort to believe that pots and pans
painted on the scenery are real" (Strindberg, 1973).
• Every modern naturalism play takes place in one location therefore
only one set was used in these plays (Cash, 2012). Like realism,
the sets used on stage are very realistic and mimic real life.
Therefore, box sets were often used and again consisted of three
walls with a roof (Box Sets).
• One extreme detail naturalism would use was the use of actual
light fixtures. Actual light fixtures are used onstage to suggest the
sources of the light, and opaque shades were used on some of
these fixtures so that they cast actual patches of light against walls
and furniture (Tripp, 2014).
• One big difference between realism and naturalism on stage was
that naturalism tried to be so realistic that it did not jump in time
and stage time was real time (Cash, 2012). Meaning that three
hours in the theatre equaled three hours for the characters in the
play. What this meant for set design was that the sets did not
change. If there was a change in the scene, that time it took to
change the scene would be time that the characters also had to
lose and since naturalism mimic-ed real life to the extreme, that
would be time that just disappeared which is not possible in real
life.
• Naturalism was not as successful as realism and was
short lived on stage. This was due to most
naturalism plays attempts at imitating real life so
much that they often dealt with unpopular taboo
subjects, were pessimistic and cynical, had no
obvious climaxes, had no sympathetic characters,
and progressed slowly to the end (Trumbull, 2009).
• Therefore, alongside realism, we find expressionism, absurdism,
agit-prop, epic theatre, and the relative extremes of
metatheatrical postmodern works. All fall under the general rubric
of modern drama.
• An opposing trend associated with literary modernism breaks with
realistic conventions to either make explicit and comment on
dramatic apparatus or to use symbolic and other anti-realistic
forms of representation for aesthetic, political, or psychological
reasons. Anti-realistic playwrights include the German
expressionists, Ionesco, Beckett, Brecht, and Stoppard.

• Many themes are the common concerns of artists throughout

literary history, including social attitudes toward death, religion,
women, or ambition. Specific events that have impacted many
people and commonly feature in modern drama are also covered,
such as the Holocaust and slavery. Some themes incorporate
specific character relationships, such as those between siblings,
couples, or parents and children.
• Others more general relationships between people,
such as those generated by a sense of community,
growing up, or aging. Themes also cover specific
areas of concern from the past century, including
attitudes toward work, illness, war, and substance
abuse, as well as the particular ethnic mix of the
United States