The Modern Stage (3)
Strindberg and Early Modernist
Experimentation
August Strindberg (1849-1912)
• “...the most modern of moderns,
the greatest interpreter in the
theatre of the characteristic
spiritual conflicts which
constitute the drama – the blood!
– of our lives today”
(Eugene O’Neill, 1924)
• His plays “have somewhat
bewilderingly been labelled
realist, naturalist, symbolist,
expressionist, surrealist,
existentialist and absurdist as if
they were endlessly malleable”
(Törnqvist and Steene, 2007)
August Strindberg (1849-1912)
• A versatile artist: playwright, essayist, poet,
painter, photographer...
• A ‘European’: born in Sweden, lived in Germany,
France, Switzerland, Denmark and Austria
• An innovator: after the ‘Inferno crisis’ (1897) he
returned to Stockholm, where he launched the
Intimate Theatre (1907)
• A misogynist? His personal life (three marriages)
influenced his writing
Miss Julie (1888) and its Preface
• Naturalism: the strong and the weak (Nietzsche
and ‘social Darwinism’)
• Julie as unnatural: a “man-hating half-woman”
• Man/Woman = Superior/Inferior, but...
“it is just as common for a bee to kill a lion or at
least to drive it mad”
• Intensity: one-act play, asymmetrical setting
• Complex motivation: 13 reasons for Julie’s action!
• Symbolist elements: stage imagery, dreams,
‘monologue’, ‘mime’ and ‘ballet’
Naturalism and Symbolism
Ibsen
• Poetic drama, e.g.
Peer Gynt, Brand
• Naturalist plays, e.g.
A Doll’s House, Ghosts,
An Enemy of the People
• Symbolist plays, e.g.
The Master Builder,
John Gabriel Borkman,
When We Dead Awaken
Strindberg
• Historical drama, e.g.
Master Olof
• Naturalist plays, e.g.
The Father, Miss Julie,
Creditors
• Symbolist plays, e.g.
The Road to Damascus,
A Dream Play,
The Ghost Sonata
Naturalism versus Symbolism
Naturalism
• Origin in the ‘realist’ novel
(1830s: Balzac, Flaubert,
Stendhal / 1860s: Zola)
• Scientific truth, objectivity
• Materialism - Realism
• The present (modernity)
• The actor’s body
• Antoine’s Théâtre Libre
(1887)
Symbolism
• Origin in poetry (1850s-70s:
Baudelaire, Verlaine,
Rimbaud / Mallarmé)
• Mysticism, cosmic harmony
• Idealism - Abstraction
• Out of time (modernism)
• Beyond the body: puppets
• Paul Fort’s Théâtre d’Art
(1890)
Symbolism in the Theatre
• Influences: Richard Wagner and the ‘total work of
art’; Friedrich Nietzsche: Apollo versus Dionysus
• Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949): a drama of
silence and stillness... a forerunner of Beckett?
Intruder (1891), The Blind (1891), Interior (1894)
• Against domestic issues and moral questions:
transcendence; an ‘enlightened consciousness’
• Against the ‘transparent’ stage: metatheatre
Symbolism in the Theatre:
Lighting and Stage Design
Adolphe Appia
(1862-1928)
Edward Gordon Craig
(1872-1966)
Miss Julie in Performance
• BBC ‘Theatre Night’ Series (1987)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TGjwdnlw9k&l
ist=PL07A3401F077C1E1E
• After Miss Julie by Patrick Marber (BBC
‘Performance’ Series, 1995 / On stage:
Donmar Warehouse, 2003; Young Vic, 2012)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6lssHdvufo
Exercise 1: Emotion Memory
Choose from the following lines:
• JEAN. Now you see what a contemptible creature you are! Why do you
prink yourselves up and stick your noses in the air as though you were the
lords of creation? Very well, I shall order you. Go up to your room, get
dress, get some money for the journey and come back here.
• CHRISTINE. No, [I am angry] with you! It’s a wicked thing to have done,
wicked! Poor lass! No, I don’t care who hears it, I don't want to stay any
longer in a house where people can’t respect their employers.
• MISS JULIE. [...] You think I’m so weak – oh, I should like to see your blood,
your brains, on a chopping block – I’d like to see all your sex swimming in a
lake of blood – I think I could drink from your skull, I’d like to bathe my
feet in your guts, I could eat your heart, roasted!
Exercise 2: Tableaux
In groups of 6, create a tableau or series of
tableaux expressing 6 moments (or objectives)
of one character within the play:
• Jean
• Julie
• Christine
Exercise 3: Text and Emotion
•
•
•
•
•
In groups of 3 (1 male + 2 female or 3 female
members), stage an extract concentrating on
the emotion underlying the text:
Groups 1, 2: pp. 98-99
Groups 3, 4: pp. 100-101
Groups 5, 6: pp. 131-132
Groups 7, 8, 9: p. 130 (you can go beyond realism)
Groups 10, 11, 12: p. 133 (you can go beyond realism)