Chapter 11

Minstrel shows White performers made up as caricatured blacks

- Daddy Rice Created a jump dance called Jim Crow
Burlesque parodies of serious plays, such as Shakespeares works and
melodramas
- Burlesque extravaganza @ Olympic theatre - inspires Gilbert &
Sullivan
Vaudevilles (variety) performances of song and dance in one show
Voix du Ville Voice of the people
Astor Place Riot 1849 @ Comedie Francaise
- Rivalry grows between William Charles Macready, English Star And
Edwin Forrest, American Star. Both were to play same role at once
Romanticism Movement: revolutionary, philosophical and literary trend of 19 thc.
- 5 Acts
-Rejecting neoclassical rules, all artistic rules
-Plays were episodic and epic, genre was not pure.
All subject matter was considered
Melodrama Song Drama or Music Drama
- 3 Acts
- Music accompanying plays, similar to music played with silent movies
and background music in films.
- Heroes and Villains: Stock Characters
~Uncle Toms Cabin- One of most popular American melodrama (49
Touring companies)
~ The Octoroon Dion Boucicault, 1859
Melodrama Tragedy
Farce Comedy
Young Germany Movement 1830-1840
- Opposed to romantic idealism
- Contemporary problems masked in ancient stories
- Emerges:
o Georg Buchner (Dantons Death, Leonce and Lena, Woyczek)
o Sympathetic to lower class protagonist, expressionistic
structure, naturalistic subject matter
The Well- Made Play- Piece Bien Faite
- Play that builds mechanically to its climatic moments and is intended
mainly to arouse the audiences interest in these continued climaxes

Eugene Scribe
Victorian Sardou
o A Scrap of Paper 1860
o Lets get a divorce 1880
(IBSEN uses Well Made Play formula with his problem plays)
Theatres Cater to Public
- Major Theatres in London: Haymarket, Covent Garden, Drury Lane
- Minor forms
o Burletta Comic Opera (3 acts,5 songs per act)
o Melodrama Any play of 3 acts w musical score
- Adaptations of Melodrama
o Nautical Jerrolds Black Eyed susan
o Sadlers Wells Water Tank for aquatic specticles
o Astleys ampitheatre Equestrian melodramas
o Gentlemanly melodrama Edward Buler-Lyton
o Parisian Melodrama
Theatrical conditions in England
- Higher costs of theatres
- Auditoriums increase in size for increasing audience
- J.P. Kemble- great illustrator of drama
- Robert Elliston Drury Lane
- Charles Kemble J.R. Planche
Historically accurate VS Theatrical effectiveness
Great Actors
- Kemble Family (John Phillip, Sarah Siddons, Charles, France Anne)
- Edmond Kean Master Carey
International Stars
- George Fredrick Cooke
o 1810 First Tour of America by a star
o known for playing villains
o erratic acting habits
o was an alcoholic
-Resident companies acting with a star
-Combination companies tour w entire production, company, and star
-William Charles Macready 1793 1873
- Actor/ Manager, Management Reforms, Shakespearean originals,
gentlemanly melodrama, historically accurate productions, Astor
place riots
- Rachel

- found street performer, known for her tragic roles. Known as a

Societaire shareholder in the company
-Mme. Vestris & J. R. Planche
-English Actress, Contralto
-popular of the time, known as a theatre manager
-1815 debuts
-Manager of Olympic theatre
- Box Sets
-Planches 175 works
-Influences G & S
-Burlesques (popular dramas, myths, current events)
-Extravaganzas (myths, fairy tales, dance, spectacles)
-Royall Tyler The Contrast 1787
-First American play featuring the yankee
- William Dunlap Andre 1798
-play based on revolutionary war
Expanding American Theatre
-USA triples in size 1803-1850 Louisiana purchase
- Samuel Drake 1815
-First professional theatre in west
-James Caldwell, 1st competitor
-1820 40, Mississippi valley
- Noah Ludlow and Solomon Smith
-Dominant in St. Louis, mobile, new Orleans
-Accounts of Frontier Theatre
Laura Keene Brings dignity to the stage unmatched
-Actress/manager
-Worked with mme. Vestris
-Wallacks theatre NYC 1852
- Laura Keenes Varieties NYC 1855 her own theatre company
- produced Tom Taylors Our American Cousin play at Fords Theatre
When Lincoln was assassinated
- Retires in 1873, dies then
Delsarte Acting Codifies actor training method with scientific basis
-Emotional response combined with a system of gesture and movement
- Method taught by Steele Mackeye
Anna Cora Mowatt
- Writer actress playwright
- Came from upperclass family
- Performed at park theatre

18 performances
Essentially a comedy of manners
a critique against foreign sensibilities
Yankee type, French maid, African-american servent, French count,
American hero

African American Theatre

- 1820 The African Grove
- 1st Black Theatre Company in USA
- King Shotaway
o 1st African American play
o William Henry Brown
- Ira Aldridge 1st important black actor (internationally successful)
- Roscius celebrated ancient rome actor Greatest Actor of all Time
Visual elements
- Desire for Historical Accuracy
- Audiences and critics expect accuracy by mid century
- Mme. Vestris using Box Sets
- 1816 Chestnut St. Theatre
Panorama Screen moves to create continuous scene painted on a cloth roll
and rolled from spool to spool on the back of a stage.
- Flats places in foreground, treadmills built into floor for illusion of
movement on the stage.
- Panorama evolves to our natural cyclorama
CHAPTER 12
Duke of saxe Meinengen experimental German theatre company
- long and carefully run rehearsals
- well educated, well trained artist
- ran the Duchy of saxe-meinengen during the day
- ran the court theatre at night
- Ludwig Chronek a director
- Ellen Franz Actress, trained actors
Meinengen players
- Wealthy company
- Rehearsed with settings, props, furnature
- Historically accurate productions
- Authentic materials
Richard Wagner
- Gesamtkunstwerk master artwork

Wrote many operas, total illusion through the unified production

DEVELOPMENT OF MODERNISM
- Neoclassisism
o Life as it is an ordered national world
o Life with glasses of a proper prescription
- Romanticism
o Life as it should be
o Life through rose colored glasses
- Realism
o Life as it is
o Life without rose colored glasses
- Naturalism
o Life as it is, but should not be
o Life through a microscope or magnifying glass
Realism
-

Mirror of daily life

Subject matter often shocking
Morality is a relative concern
Conclusions are not decisive
Characters become individuals

HENRIK IBSEN
- Psychological insight to character
- Wrote MANY PLAYS
- Father of Realism
- poetic symbolism
- well- made play formula
- historical plays early
- realistic plays middle
- symbolistic plays late
Naturalism
- Extreme form of realism
- Emile Zola main proponent for it
- Scientific objectivity
- a Slice of life Drama
- Strindberg
- Theatre Libre
o Andre Antoine, founder
o Plays by zola, ibsen, becque
MISE EN SCENE visual theme or placement on stage of design elements
Freie Buhne (free stage)

opens in 1889, berlin

subscription audience
Performs only on Sundays
opens with Ibsens Ghosts

Leads to:
- Freie Volksbuhne 1890 (free peoples stage)
- Neve Freie Volksbuhne 1892 (new free peoples stage)
The Independent Theatre 1891 -98
- founded by J.T. Grein, a critic
- opens with Ibsens Ghosts
George Bernard Shaw
- supports realistic movement
- a champion of ibsen
- realistic comedies of manners
- he is the product of his own making, not heredity or environment
- drama should inspire social reform
Henry Irving
- one of the last actor/ managers
- first actor to be knighted 1895
- Ellen Terry leading lady
Moscow Art Theatre
- Neimirovich Danchenko, Stanislavk
Anton Chekhov
- Short story writer
- Physician
- The seagull, unlce vanya, The three sisters, cherry orchard
- Monotomy of rural Russian life
Stanislavski
- actor, director, writer
- the system
USA
-

NYC center for all theatrical activity

Sam Nixon, Fred Zimmerman, Charles frohman alltayman, marc klaw,
and Abraham Erlanger
Mrs. Fiske and Harrison Grey Fiske present Ibsen first in the US

Shubert brothers sam, lee, Jacob real boys from syracuse

American Playwrights Clyde Fitch, William Vaughn Moody

Sarah Bernhardt known for her golden bell voice, a grand style, toured
America, lost her leg
Elenora Duse actress, signals a new realism, opposite of bernhardt, plays
same roles as sarah
Theatre deloeuvre
- the open theatre
- actor/stage manager at theatre libre
Adolphe appia
- Modern non-illusionistic scenery
- Three elements in conflict
o 3 dimensional actor
o 2 dimensional scenery
o horizontal floor
Edwin Gordon Craig
- Modern Non-illusionistic scenery
Technical innovations
- elevator stage
- revolving stage
- rolling platform stage
- improvements to lighting (wattage of bulbs)
Abbey Theatre Playwrights
- William Butler Yeats
- Lady Gregory Realistic comic plays
- J.M. Synge
Russian Idealism
- Ballet Russes
- Sergei Diaghilev Impressario
- Michael Fokine Choreographer
- Vaslav Nijinsky Great Dancer
- Leon Bakst scenic artist
- Pablo Picasso scenery and costumes
Moscow Art Theatre
- Symbolist experiments in 1907
- Stanislavskis system emerges from the first studio
- Great teachers emerge: Maria oospenskaya, Richard boleslavsky,
Chekhov

Meyerhold biomechanics a stylized physical actor training method

African American theatre
- 1895 musical evolves into revue, a little more plot than vaudeville
- 1898 a trip to coontown 1st black musical comedy on BWY,
Cole&Johnson
Lafayette players: Anita Bush A black company doing white plays
DOLLS HOUSE - 1879
Ibsen wrote subjects that were taboo in the theatre economic injustice, sexual
double standard, and unhappy marriages.
Nora saves her husbands life through an act of forgery, she discovers her
unequal status when her forgery is sent to torvald by a fired employee, krogstad.
She realizes she cannot live with torvald in a relationship where she is treated
like a child. She leaves the house.
Nora
Torvald Helmer, lawyer
Dr. Rank
Mrs. Linde
Nils Krogstad