The Modern Stage (1)
Ibsen and the Rise of Naturalism
What is Modernity?
• When?
• Where?
• Now?
What is Modernity?
“What is modernity? First of all it is an ambiguous term: there are as
many types of modernity as there are societies. [...] Modernity has
been a universal passion. Since 1850 she has been our goddess and
our demoness. In recent years, there has been an attempt to exorcise
her and there has been much talk of ‘postmodernism’. But what is
postmodernism if not an even more modern modernity?”
“We pursue modernity in her incessant metamorphoses yet we never
manage to trap her. She always escapes: each encounter ends in flight.
We embrace her and she disappears immediately: it was just a little air.
It is the instant, that bird that is everywhere and nowhere. We want to
trap it alive but it flaps its wings and vanishes in the form of a handful
of syllables.”
(Octavio Paz’s Nobel Lecture, 1990)
Modernity and Modernism
Modernity
• ‘Age of Enlightenment’
• Reason, science,
progress and freedom
(as opposed to
metaphysics,
superstition and
religion)
Modernism
• Artistic expression,
sympathetic to or
critical of the project of
modernity...
• Experimental
movements, generally
opposed to realistic
forms of representation
(Avant-Garde: ‘isms’)
Modern(isms)
Impressionism
Symbolism
Impression Sunrise (1872)
by Claude Monet
The Wounded Angel (1903)
By Hugo Simberg
The Late 19th Century: Context
• Second Industrial Revolution:
 transport & communication
 capitalist economy
 the ‘bourgeoisie’
• Scientific Discourse:
 Biology (Darwin: heredity and environment)
 Psychology (Freud: understanding the mind)
 Economics (Marx: ‘scientific’ socialism)
• Decline of Religion (...and fixed moral values)
The Proscenium Arch
Theatrical Context
Before Naturalism...
• Melodrama: sensationalism, virtue versus
vice, the rescued heroine
• The ‘well-made play’: formulaic, plot-driven
(secrets, letters, etc.), the fallen woman
Is Ibsen free of these conventions?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef6hHa2Qc8Y&list=PLVdh6EboHaySaD7ju5QlWnOhEzPiDfyow
Theatrical Context
• Émile Zola (1840-1902) and the Naturalist
‘Manifesto’: do as I say not as I do
• Thérèse Raquin (novel, 1876; play, 1873):
ugly reality, but not yet ‘a slice of life’
• Zola’s principles: objectivity (a study of nature:
heredity and environment) = truth on stage, i.e.
‘real life’ characterisation, setting, language, etc.
• The project was effectively realised by Ibsen
(1828-1906) as a dramatist and Stanislavski
(1863-1938) as an actor and director
Stanislavski’s ‘System’
• Scenic truth + ‘Psycho-physical’ training
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AreT0mpU-cU
• My Life in Art (1924) + An Actor Prepares (1936)
+ compilations (Building a Character & Creating a Role)
• The Magic ‘If’: Given Circumstances + Imagination
(fed by Sense/Emotion Memory)
• Dividing the text: Units/Bits (noun) +
Objectives/Tasks (verb) + ‘Super-Objective’
Nora: 1879 and 2012
Ibsen at the Norwegian League for Women’s
Rights (1898):
“I have been more the poet and less the social
philosopher than people generally seem
inclined to believe. I thank you for the toast,
but disclaim the honour of having consciously
worked for the women’s rights movement. [...]
My task has been the description of humanity”
Nora: 1879 and 2012
Carrie Cracknell (director):
“Of course the landscape of women's rights has changed irrevocably in
the last 100 years; but there are also complex dilemmas for many
women which are no closer to being resolved.
[According to Kat Banyard’s The Equality Illusion], British women still
earn 22.7% less than men per hour, and are more sexualised and
objectified than ever. [...] The inexorable forces of capitalism have
intensified gender stereotyping, with girls besieged by glittery-pink
role models, something that continues to have a negative impact on
the scope of their ambitions: in a recent UK study [...] it was found that
just 4% of girls between 13 and 18 want to pursue a career in
engineering, while 12% would like to be a housewife, and 32% a
model...”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2012/oct/18/nora-ibsen-dolls-house-video