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A Glimpse of
Theater History

NOTES ON ANTI-REALISM IN THE THEATRE

A number of conscious artistic movements rebelled against the triumph of Realism and
Naturalism in the Theatre. By "conscious," we mean intentional, in the sense that each was
launched by specific individuals with stated goals in mind-artists setting out as on a cause
to transform Art, as opposed to creating art. Among these are Symbolism, Futurism,
Dadaism, and its step-child Surrealism. There followed a number of "movements" created
by critics who saw certain unifying themes or methods in the work of various practicing
artists. Among these were Expressionism and the Theatre of the Absurd. All wanted to
transcend, if not supplant, the methods, restrictions and outcomes associated with Realism
and Naturalism.
SYMBOLISM
The first of the Anti-Realist Movements was Symbolism. Jean
Moreas's Manifesto, published in Le Figaro in 1886, declared that
realism was dead and asserted that symbolic poetry was the ideal to
be cherished from that point on. As with many literary (and anti/non-
literary artistic movements) the movement began elsewhere, but had
its first widespread exposure in the theatre. But this movement might
also be thought of as a transition to the more stark anti-literary
movements that were to follow, for Symbolism finds the Truth not
just in the words themselves, but in the symbols and subtexts of the
whole piece. The principle poet/exponent of the Symbolist movement
was Stephen Mallarmé. The main Symbolist playwright was
francophone Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) (left).
Early on, Maeterlinck wrote a number of puppet plays, but he is best known for two plays:
Pelleas and Melisande (1892) and The Blue Bird (1908).
The first was produced by the only significant producers to emerge from the movement,
visionary Paul Fort and Antoine disciple Aurelien Lugne-Poë at the Theatre Art, May 17,
1893. Staged on settings by Paul Voegler, the production used the trademark delivery of
what was to become the Theâtre Art l'Ouevre, chanted, singing speech, punctuated by
choppy, angular, "stylized" gestures. Voegler's settings utilized no furniture or props; the
drops were all shades of painted gray; all the lighting was from overhead, eliminating the
weird shadows created by the then popular footlights-a striking innovation at the time.
Costumes were based on paintings by the 15th Century artist Memling. All the action took
place behind scrims as if in mist.

The play is, on the surface, a melodramatic tale of a young wife who falls in love with her
husband's younger brother; hubby kills his brother and wifey dies of grief. The story is
merely the frame on which the plot is draped; and the plot is not the center of attention.
Maeterlinck's symbols and poetic devices (especially his characteristic use of repetition)
that he uses to tell his tale-a ring, a tower, a seemingly bottomless pool of water, etc.-give
the piece its unique quality. In fact, as melodrama, the play probably seems static and
untheatrical, but the point of the enterprise is not the thrills and excitement generated by a
melodrama, or even a moral message about the dangers of illicit affection. It should be
viewed, or listened to-as many critics of the genre insist-by one's "soul." It should be
appreciated, as Gordon Craig might have said, as poetry-not in the theatre, but of the
theatre.
Rarely performed today, Pelleas and Melisande is best known to modern audiences for the
still famous incidental music of Gabriel Faure. Though Maeterlinck was not a fan of the
opera, Claude Debussy's score is regarded by many (including this author) as one of the
finest marriages of music and drama ever written. Stylistically, the opera appropriately
staged would be a perfect embodiment of the aesthetic it seeks to employ.
The play dates from the period scholars recognize as the time when the formal movement
of Symbolism was functioning. Since the movement produced no other major playwrights,
and since by 1897 Lugne-Poë was tiring of the Symbolist points of view and issued a
manifesto of sorts declaring that since the movement had produced no significant writer
except Maeterlinck, he was going to pick plays regardless of their genesis. Mallarmé died
in 1898, when Maeterlinck himself moved away from the movement in 1898, its formal
existence ceased. But its influence was to linger on in myriad, sometimes less recognizable
ways.
A prolific writer of essays, Maeterlinck (right) expounded some of the aims and aesthetics
of the movement from his point of view.
"Indeed, it is not in the actions but in the words that are found the beauty and greatness of
tragedies that are truly beautiful and great; and this not solely in the words that accompany and
explain the action, for there must perforce be another dialogue besides the one which is
superficially necessary. And indeed the only words that count in the play are those that at first
seemed useless, for it is therein that the essence lies. Side by side with the necessary dialogue will
you almost always find another dialogue that seems superfluous; but examine it carefully, and it
will be borne home to you that this is the only one that the soul can listen to profoundly, for here
alone is it the soul that is being addressed…

"Great drama, if we observe it closely, is made up of three principal elements: first: verbal beauty;
then, the contemplation and passionate portrayal of what actually exists about us and within us,
that is to say, nature and our sentiments; and, finally enveloping the whole work and creating the
atmosphere proper to it, the idea which the poet forms of the unknown in which float about beings
and things which he evokes, the mystery which dominates them, judges them, and presides over
their destinies. I have no doubt that this is the most important element." (from 'The Tragical in Daily Life'
by Maurice Maeterlinck in The Treasure of the Humble, 1916)

Indeed, Maeterlinck seemed to herald the advent of the anti-literary movement that was to
dominate much of the 20th Century:
 Ihave grown to believe that an old man, seated in his armchair, waiting
patiently, with his lampbeside him; giving unconscious ear toall the eternal
laws that reign about his house, interpreting, without comprehending, the
silence of doors and windows and the quivering voice of the light,
submitting with bent head to the presence of his soul and his destiny--an
old man who conceives not that all the powers of this world, like so many
heedful servants, are mingling and keeping vigil in his room, who suspects
ot that the very sun itself is supporting in space the little table against
which he leans, or that every star in heaven and every fibre of the soul are
directly concerned in the movement of an eyelid that closes or a thought
that springs to birth--I have grown to believe that he--motionless as he is,
does yet live in reality a deeper, more human, more universal, life than the
lover who strangles his mistress, the captain who conquers in battle, or "the husband who avenges
his honour."
Maeterlinck's most successful play, The Blue Bird, while technically not from the
Symbolist period, nonetheless has many characteristics that can be labeled "symbolist." It
was first produced in 1909 by Konstantin Stanislavski at the Moscow Art Theater where it
ran for nearly a year. It had successful runs in London (1909), and Paris (1911) as well.
New York saw a performance in 1910. It has been made into at least two movies, one with
Shirley Temple (1940) and another regrettable one with Elizabeth Taylor (1976). The story,
which bears a striking resemblance in many regards to L. Frank Baum's more optimistic
The Wizard of Oz, is a quest for happiness symbolized by the Blue Bird. Conceived as a
children's story, the play is too long for the attention span of children, and perhaps too
trying for modern adults accustomed to flashier, more violent diversions. Maeterlinck may
have also been grinding an anti-clerical ax here.
The play centers on the children of a poor woodcutter, Myltyl and Tyltyl, who are bitterly
disappointed by the meager Christmas their father could provide. When they fall asleep,
they dream of an impressive fairy Berylune who sends them to find 'the bird that is blue'-
the blue bird of happiness that became the subject of a number of other books in the era and
the object of ridicule by Johnny Carson. The little darlings start their quest with a diamond
with which they are able to see the souls of the objects that surround them. The children
visit the Land of Memory. In the forest they are attacked by animals and trees but the
faithful Dog saves Tyltyl's life. They continue through the Palace of Happiness and the
Kingdom of the Future before they return home and are awakened by their mother. Their
neighbor Berlingot (the fairy Berylune) begs Tyltyl's little bird for her dying children and
Tyltyl notices that the bird is blue and the one they have been looking for. The child
recovers but the bird escapes and the children ask the audience to return it. I leave it to the
nit-pickers to decide whether James Barrie got there first with Tinkerbell.
Paul Fort (1872-1960) was the first important Symbolist producer. He founded the
Theâtre Mixte in 1890 (when he was 17 years old!). It was an "independent theatre" after
the model of Andre Antoine, albeit with greatly different goals. After only one production,
the Theâtre Art Mixte merged with Louis Germain's Theâtre Art Idealiste and eventually
the Theâtre Art Art emerged. After working on Pelleas et Melisande with Lugne-Poë in
1893, Fort retired from the stage (at 21!), second in influence only to Antoine.
Fort intended to present works not meant for the stage. His first program consisted of
recited poems. Later programs included dramatic pieces as well and almost always
thereafter were mixtures of various kinds of pieces, most of which made for long evenings.
One program in 1891 lasted until 5 a.m.! He was 19 at the time…
Fort's programs were all amateur in the sense that no one was paid, but some big names lent
their talents. In addition to a number of professional actors, some prominent painters
contributed set designs, among them Paul Gaugin, Maurice Denis, and Eduard Vouillard.
The settings they created were all very simple in accordance with the motto of the Theâtre
Art Art:
"the word creates the décor."
In The Girl With the Severed Hands, Pierre Quillard enunciated more fully the ideal:
…the décor ought to be a pure ornamental fiction which completes the illusion by color and line
analogous with the drama. Most often some mobile draperies will suffice to give the impression of
the infinite multiplicity of time and place. The spectator … abandons himself completely to the
will of the poet and will see, according to his soul, some terrible or charming figures and
imaginary lands where no one but himself can penetrate; the theatre will be what it ought to be: a
pretext for dreams.
In practice, this manifested itself in the use of Japanese style screens and scrims, behind
which the action seemed to "float." One set for a recitation of Poe's "The Raven" was a
completely plain drop made of gray wrapping paper. Another production sported a gold
backdrop festooned with 7,000 red lions which had been cut out painstakingly by hand with
scissors and pasted on. Fort even attempted a mixed media event for Roinard's The Song of
Songs of Solomon in which lights, music and perfumes changed to suit the shifting moods.
For the latter effect, Fort stationed people all over the theatre with atomizers. Alas, as the
ventilation system was not suited to a quick exchange of the air in the room, the end result
was an overpowering mixture that drove out much of the audience. No one ever accused
Fort of being practical. That lot fell to Lugne Poë.
Aurelien-Marie Lugne-Poë (1869-1940) attended the first performance of the Theâtre Art
Libre while he was a student at the Paris Conservatoire. He later performed with Antoine at
the Theâtre Art Libre. He roomed with Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, and Pierre
Bonnard, and through them became acquainted with the Symbolist Movement. He soon
shifted his allegiance from Antoine to Paul Fort and the Theâtre Art Art. After Pelleas and
Melisande, (and Fort's departure), the name of the group was changed to Theâtre Art
l'Ouevre (as in ouevre d'art, or work of art.) Clearly the guiding principles remained those
of Paul Fort's Theâtre Art, but under Lugne-Poë, the productions were much better
executed.
Each performance was preceded by a lecture intended to illuminate or increase the
appreciation of the night's proceedings. Some of these became rather lively affairs
occasioning riots and disturbances between various factions. Police were always in
attendance to arrest anarchists and other troublemakers. On at least one occasion (for
Hauptmann's Lonely Souls), the production was canceled because the speaker was
supposed to be an anarchist. Art wasn't stuffy in those days. And notice it wasn't a
manufactured rebellion; it was at least genuine…
Critics generally viewed the plays and the productions as puzzling and/or sill and/or trivial.
Eventually the performances were (horror of horrors!), as such things are now, tolerated.
Said Sarcey:
"There was a time when I was overcome with laughter when the curtain went up to
discover that green scrim behind which were the mute puppets of a vast marionette show.
But we have come to the point where we are no longer astonished by the most nonsensical
eccentricities."
Novelty, by its very nature, is short lived in any age.
Later, about 1898, Lugne-Poë turned away from Symbolism and changed the goals of the
theatre, the main one being to familiarize the public with the great foreign drama, in which
endeavor, he largely succeeded. In addition to abundant helpings of Ibsen (Rosmersholm
An Enemy of the People, The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, Brand, Pillars of Society, Jarry's
adaptation of Peer Gynt, Love's Comedy, John Gabriel Borkmann), he produced as well
plays by Gerhardt Hauptmann, Oscar Wilde and Bjorstjerne Bjornson as well as classic
works like Marlowe's Edward II, Otway's Venice Preserv'd, and even Sanskrit plays,
Shakuntala and The Little Clay Cart. The shift, however led to bitter acrimony with attacks
and counter-attacks and passionate defenses, the upshot of which was the desertion of the
core audience and the folding of the Theâtre Art L'Ouevre in 1899.
FUTURISM
Futurism was launched by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian poet, in February, 1909
on the front page of Le Figaro in a manifesto which he simultaneously mailed to influential
Italians. He wrote:
We declare that the world's spendor has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A
racing motor car, which looks as though it is running on shrapnel, is more beautiful than the
Victory of Samothrace. … The oldest among us are thirty; we have, therefore, ten years at least to
accomplish our task. When we are forty, let others, younger and more valiant, throw us into the
waste basket like useless manuscripts … We wish to glorify War-the only health giver of the
world-militarism, patriotism, the destructive arm of the Anarchist, the beautiful Ideas that kill, the
contempt for women…
In his poem, "My Pegasus," Marinetti declares the racing car to be the
modern Pegasus. The Futurists possessed a love of energy and
aggressiveness embodied in the ideal of an aggressive masculine
fighter, who looks to the future, ignoring the past. Is it any wonder
Hitler was possible?
The Movement found a visual image which embodied the better parts of
their philosophy in a photograph taken by precocious photographer
Jacques Henri Lartigue for the Grand Prix of the Automobile Club of
France in 1912. A racing car sped past him and the shutter moved down
at its normal rate producing a distortion that gives the impression of forward motion and
speed, a technological representation of "My Pegasus."
Futurists firmly rejected the past; wanted to transform man; glorified the speed and energy
of the machine age and sought to make scientific rates of change-which they naively saw as
"speed"-the bases of their art.
Despite their apparent moral bankruptcy, the Futurists introduced a number of innovations
which are still with us:
· The attempt to rescue theatrical art from a museum-like atmosphere
· Direct confrontation and intermingling of audience and performers
· The exploitation of modern technology to create multi-media presentations
· The use of simultaneity and multiple focus (directorial)
· An anti-literary and anti-logical bias
· The breaking down of barriers between the arts
They were done in by the reality of the hostilities of WWI, but they left behind a
fascinating mixture of remarkable methods and terrifying philosophy.

DADAISM
Roumanian Tristan Tzara and Hans Arp, together with some like minded pacifist souls,
launched dadaism in neutral Zurich, Switzerland at the Café de la Terasse in 1916 as a
reaction against the insanity of WWI. Dadaism illustrated their world view that if this
ghastly war, with trench warfare, mustard gas, machine guns mowing down walls of people
in an instant, etc. were possible, then life could have no meaning. Here is anti-logicalism at
its most earnest and, ironically, its most light-hearted. Even the word dada, French baby
talk for hobbyhorse, was chosen at random from the dictionary. The point was that
nonsense and the irrational were as true as all the ordered world, and perhaps, in view of
the war, even more so. Hence nonsensical objets d'art like Marcel Duchamp's china
lavatory bowl, etc.
Driven by pacifist motives (in contrast to the Futurists), the dadaists (like the Futurists)
railed against museum art, which was part of the culture that had brought on WWI. They
actively tried to confuse and offend their audiences to demonstrate or more properly
embody, rather than explicate their philosophy. But the movement was not without humor,
conscious or otherwise. Said Guillaume Appolinaire in L'Esprit nouveau et les poetes
(November 24, 1917), "The New Spirit does not seek to transform the ridiculous; it assigns
its own flavorsome role." Duchamp told of the good-natured, almost juvenile atmosphere
that prevailed among the dadaists. Anytime the discussion veered too far into seriousness, it
was replaced by "all the germs of Dada," in fits of laughter and outrageous posturing and
ludicrous argument.
When the war was over, the movement was as well. Ultimately, the movement was defined
by something it opposed, so that when that something was no more, there was no longer
anything by which to define itself. Probably the most important and lasting contribution
(anathema to the dadaist, a lasting contribution) was the still current attitude that almost
anything could be art.
SURREALISM
An outgrowth of dadaism, Surrealism--in French "super realism" or "greater than realism"
--began more or less unofficially with the publication of the Preface to Guillaume
Apollinaire's only play, The Breasts of Teiresias, in which he referred to the play as "un
drame surréliste." The play was performed in Paris in 1917-18. Apollinaire had been
influenced by Picabia and his semi-intellectual approach. Picabia had used one of Ovid's
images from the Metamorphoses--Prolem sine matre creatam--as a metaphor for originality
and creativity. In his drawing la fille née sans mere (the child with no mother)Apollinaire
saw the idea of a work of art with no precedent, or any creation ex nihilo. Said Picabia in
1913, "Art is to create a painting without models." Picabia had been obsessed with the
image of machines as motherless daughters, and Apollinaire became obsessed with Ovid's
"monster created without a mother." In his introduction to The Breasts of Teiresias, he said
"A man capable of childbirth is new in the theatre." But Apollinaire wanted man to become
capable of making reasonable use of the unlikely. The "surreal image" of la femme à
barbe--a bearded woman--was already in vogue when Apollinaire used it in his play. The
curious mixture of the comic and the tragic inherent in that image is perhaps his point. The
idea of a literally motherless child came back into currency a few years ago when a pair of
Australian scientists advanced their theory that a fetus is a sufficiently hardy parasite to be
able to survive in the belly of a man. They were supposedly looking for volunteers to have
an embryo implanted to test their theory, but surprisingly in this day and age, got no
volunteers. So the new sense of logic that Apollinaire wanted has perhaps already arrived.
Andre Breton emerged as the main spokesman for Surrealism. In fact, he sometimes
thought he owned surrealism to the frequent disgruntlement of other surrealists. He (and a
few others) produced a vast theoretical literature. A few principles common to many such
surrealist pronouncements:

1] The subconscious is the real repository of truth. Here the Surrealists

are linked to Strindberg through his preoccupation with hypnotism and,
of course, Freud, though the surrealists sought not a "scientific"
exploraton of the Nature of the subconscious, but rather an intuitive,
perhaps even a Nietschean one.
2] The need to distinguish between the conscious and the subconscious
led to the exploration of the conflict between the two in the belief that
truth is most apt to surface when the ego's "logic" and the superego's
"censorship" have beennew\utralized. Note how very Freudian this all is.
3] In moments of truth (as in 2] above), life's contradictions and
paradoxes are transcended. Breton: "There is a certain point for the mind
from which life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the
future, the communicable and the incommunicable, the high and the low
cease being perceived as contradictions." Note how relativist all this is:
truth and falsehood are aspects of the same thing.

Surrealist "thought" is still very much in our modern consciousness, if not our
subconscious...
EXPRESSIONISM
As its name suggests, expressionism is an attempt to discover a technique and a method
which will express what the dramatist conceives the inner reality of his drama to be, more
perfectly and impressively than any of the othe dramatic modes are capable of doing.
Expressionism is a protest, on the one hand, against the sentimental unrealities of
romanticism and, on the other, against the tendency of realism (or naturalism) to content
itself with a scrupulous representation of the surfaces of life, the speech-habits, milieu,
manners, emotions, ideas of one or another class in society. Narrowly, expressionism
reveals the influence on the drama of the contemporary preoccupation with the rich and
complex, conscious and subconscious experience of modern personalities,and ath the same
time it betrays the impatience of dramatist and producer with the limitations of late
nineteenth-century naturalist staging, and an eagerness to exploit to the full the tremendous
resources of modern theatrical mechanics and lighting, and to project through concepts of
an experimental drama.
Expressionism encourages the freest possible handling of styles or tones or technical
means. In the same way, we are likely to find sudden and sometimes inexplicable shifts
from verse to prose, from objective realism to highly subjective monologue, from
conventional realistic dialogue to monosyllable or telegraphic utterance. Since the emphasis
is on the essential experiences of individuals or masses, there is in expressionistic drama a
tendency to simplify plot, to minimize objective action, lest attention be diverted from
major issues. To emphasize the general significance of the themes developed, characters
are likely to be represented as types in order to minimize individuality and to emphaisize
typicality. The conviction that the machine age has ironed out individual differences
undoubtedly accounts for the representation of character in the simplest and most abstract
terms.
Expressionistic dialogue approaches (especially the German genre) a sort of telegraphic
tone and style, apparently intended to give the impression that everything except the
essentials of human speech has been pared away. The sentence disappears, and phrases or
iterated words serve for communication. There has been, likewise, a re-emergence of the
monologue, which is obviously of great assistance in projecting subconscious or semi-
conscious material, but the expressionistic monologue is more broken, incoherent, and
illogical than the traditional monologue.
Probably the setting exercises the strongest influence in expressionism. The tendency is to
minimize the setting until it shall indicate only the absolute essentials of form and feature.
The desire of the expressionistic playwright to objectify as tellingly as possible complex
psychological states, particularly of an abnormal sort, has driven him to utilize stage
devices, akin in their super-rationality to the devices of romantic staging, but dependent on
the elaborate mechanical resources of the modern theatre for realization.
One of the most useful scenic devices used by the stage expressionist was the introduction
of frankly expressionistic painting into his settings, called decor blague or "ironic setting."
The best known "expressionist" settings from the early period are in the famous film The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION COME BACK SOON!