Modern Drama - Major

Playwrights

August Strindberg Bertolt Brecht

August Strindberg

오거

스트

스트

린드

베리

(1849-1912)

August Strindberg

오거

스트

스트

린드

베리

(1849-1912)

• Swedish playwright

• naturalistic drama

expressionistic drama

자연주의극 , 표현주의극

• Miss Julie (1888):

a [one-act] naturalistic tragedy

자연주의 단막극

• A Dream Play (1901):

symbolist and mystic style

4

Natu

ralis

m

• . . . a movement, initiated by

Emile Zola; the application of

the new positivist, scientific

spirit of the age to literature.

• Zola not only wanted a realistic representation of

everyday life, he rejected the

idea which had infused the

classical, the romantic and

even the realistic theatre of

his period, that art should

strive to show the beautiful,

heroic, uplifting and inspiring.

5

Natu

ralis

m

• Zola wanted the artist to

uncover the truth about society in the same spirit of

objective inquiry as that of a

natural scientist’s approach to

nature. • It was in this spirit that Ibsen

in Ghosts brought a hitherto

taboo subject like venereal

disease into the theatre and

caused an enormous scandal.

6

Naturalism The basic impulse behind the

naturalistic movement was a

determination to capture the whole of

human experience, however sordid

and ugly, to leave nothing unsaid. It

did this by an accumulation of

significant detail. In romantic drama,

the heroes talked in lofty poetic

terms about love or glory . . .

7

Naturalism By concentrating on the concrete

detail rather than on abstract

sentiments, naturalism tended to

transform itself into a style in

which objects increasingly

became symbols, embodiment of

ideas. So naturalism merged into

symbolism.

Natu

ralis

m

Strindberg, who had started out

as naturalist, took a slightly

different path. In his determination to represent

experience exactly as it really

was, he soon discovered that

depicting the external world tells

only half the story; you also had

to include the way that world was

experienced by an individual -

the internal world.

8

Expr

essi

onis

t dra

ma

Hence Strindberg wrote a

number of plays – The Ghost

Sonata, To Damascus and the

Dream Play itself which, in the

spirit of naturalism, tried to depict

a dream. In expressionist drama the

characters frequently do not even

have names (in Ghost Sonata:

the Old man, the Student, the

Mummy, the Colonel, etc.).

9

10

Vide

o, p

art 1

11

Vide

o, p

art 2

12

Miss Julie - trailer

Bertolt BrechtEpic Theatre

14

Berto

lt Br

echt

Born on 10 February 1898 in Augsburg, Germany and one of the country's most influential

poets, playwrights and screenwriters. His most famous work was the musical "The Threepenny

Opera” (with Kurt Weill). Died 14 August 1956

15Be

rtolt

Brec

ht’s

‘epi

c th

eatre

’ (브

레히

트의

서

사극

)

[Bertolt Brecht] rejected naturalism as well as the

classical and romantic theatre . . . although he

took many ideas from them. His favourite

term . . . was ‘epic theatre’.

16Be

rtolt

Brec

ht’s

‘epi

c th

eatre

’ (브

레히

트의

서

사극

)

Brecht wanted an ‘undramatic’-

an epic-theatre, in which the

audience watch the play in a

detached, critical frame of

mind. This is the famous

Verfremdungseffekt . . . translated as alienation effect.

It really means strange-making

effect.

17Br

echt

and

epi

c th

eatre

18

Threepenny opera

Mac the Knife