Unit 3 Drama & Theatre Studies
An introduction to
Non-naturalistic Performance Styles and
Theatrical Conventions
THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Drama as a performing art is only a few thousand years old. Drama as we know it today
has evolved from the ancient rituals and ceremonies of primitive tribes. The solemn rites that
involved praying to the gods to appeal for help or beg for forgiveness became the beginnings of
theatre. The ceremonies involved the repetition of ritual, use of masks and costumes (animal skins,
painted skins), dance, imitation of people or gods and the use of special effects like fire, smoke,
strong smells and music to have theatrical impact on their audience.
Our theatre history has its origins in Greek theatre, involving conventions such as the
amphitheater stage, use of mask, exaggerated gesture, costume, scenery, and chorus. Playwrights
such as Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides wrote structured plays that are still studied and
performed today. The development of theatre progressed through different performance styles,
such as Roman Theatre, Medieval Theatre, Italian Commedia Dell ‘Arte, British Elizabethan
Theatre and Restoration Theatre, including melodrama.
STANISLAVSKI AND THE THEATRE OF REALISM
Further Reading: Living Drama pp201 – 209
The last half of the nineteenth century was a time of enormous changes in the world and
writers began to emerge whose plays reflected these changes and their effects on society. The style
of realism emerged as a reaction to the simplistic entertainment of melodrama, where writers like
Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw, August Strindberg and J.M. Singe wrote
plays that concerned the lives and behaviours of real people and real issues in society.
A young Russian actor named Constantin Stanislavski created a system of actor training, known as
Method Acting, that is the foundation of most actor training today. Stanislavski believed that
everything that happened on stage must appear to be real and that actors must really believe in the
characters they were portraying. Some of the techniques he used to direct actors to achieve
believable characters were:
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Concentration – circles of attention. Actors learned to increase their levels of concentration
and awareness of the space around them.
Voice – actors do regular voice exercises to be able to control projection, resonance, pitch,
tone and volume.
Physical Skills – Exercise, mime, dance, stillness, breathing are all important for muscular
control.
Emotion Memory – For an actor to be convincing, they must be able to experience the same
emotion as the character. A way of doing this was to try to recall an emotional experience that
would allow them to actually feel the emotion as their character delivered their lines.
Observation – Observe and remember, people’s behaviours and use these to give action to
characters
Harmony –Actors have to work together as an ensemble both on and offstage, by listening to
each other, making eye contact and cooperating above their own personal ambitions and
desires.
Analysis – Actors were expected to analyse each character and situation of the play in great
detail. Actors had to find the characters “Super-Objective’ (their aim or thing they wanted
most) and then look for the objectives within each line of script. Once they discovered this,
they could understand the reasons why their characters behaved as they did, as all the actions
would be aimed at gaining what the character wanted.
The Magic If – actors had to use their imagination and ask What if I was this character in this
situation? What would I do? Answer the question, not by talking but by improvising.
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What Stanislavski required of actors was the difficult but rewarding skill of personalisation. To
achieve it, actors had to research, use their emotions, observations and experiences to create a
realistic character, then become that person as completely as possible on stage. Whilst acting they
had to seem to be the character, yet be in complete control of their performance to return to being
themselves as soon as the play was over.
THE MODERN THEATRE – NON-NATURALISM
The twentieth century has produced the most incredible variety of performance styles and
techniques in the history of theatre. In a reaction to the tight structure of realism from the early
1900’s, performance styles up to now can be categorised as non-naturalistic. Most plays that we
see today are “eclectic” meaning they use a range of realistic and non-naturalistic conventions,
rather then perform in a pure style. Epic Theatre, Theatre of Cruelty and Poor Theatre are 3 styles
that have had a major influence on the way plays are created and performed today.
EPIC THEATRE
Further reading: Living Drama pp 228 - 234
Epic Theatre evolved from Expressionism, which was an artistic movement developed in
Germany after the First World War as a reaction to realism. Plays were written where characters
were not real people, but symbols of good and evil, power or oppression. The expressionist stage
was bare, lit by shafts of white light against a dark background. The ideas of expressionist Theatre
were expanded by the work of Erwin Piscator and Bertold Brecht in the 1930’s, influenced by the
effects on society of Hitler and the Second World War.
Brecht believed that theatre should be used to make a political statement and to make the
audience think. Brecht called his plays Epic Theatre, a type of play that tells a story, usually
historical, on a large scale, including a number of people in a series of events over a long period.
Brecht used his plays to present his political views, showing types of human behaviour to show
why they happened and how they could be improved. The conventions of Epic Theatre are often
known as ‘alienation’ techniques. Brecht used these conventions to alienate or distance the
audience from becoming involved with the characters or story. He wanted the audience to observe
the action and think about the message.
The typical conventions of Epic Theatre include:
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Play structure is usually a series of independent scenes (episodic structure), sometimes
skipping years in time and moving from place to place
Each scene is there to make a particular point about human behaviour
Audience is expected to observe events in a detached way in order to make a judgement.
Unlike realism, where the audience is expected to become involved with the characters and
what happens to them.
Set Design is minimalistic and functional. Single pieces of furniture and/or props suggest
whole locations. Scenes changed in front of audience, usually by actors. No front curtains.
Costumes are sometimes complete, but usually only a single item of costume or prop is used.
Costume changes occur on stage in front of audience.
Lighting – bright, white light was used to flood the stage. No mood or special effects.
Narration – Brecht used large screens or signs within the play to introduce scenes, or give the
audience information, to project images or to make comment about the action happening on
stage. A Narrator, or actor talking directly to the audience, also can be used.
Songs – songs are used as another alienation effect. By breaking the mood or action of a
scene and bursting into song, the actors remind the audience they are watching a play that has
a message. Songs are used to comment on the action or make a particular point about one of
the actors. Sometimes actors step out of character to sing the song directly to the audience.
Movement – Brecht was influenced by Asian Theatre in the way that movement was used to
tell a story in a stylised, unemotional way. Chinese Theatre uses formal gestures (like in sign
language or mime) and these are used to represent emotional states. (e.g. In Chinese theatre,
the gesture for crying is moving a finger up and down in front of the eyes, instead of actually
weeping)
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Voice – actors use their voice in a variety of non-naturalistic ways, such as singing, chanting,
using mechanical and strange-sounding voices, disconnected non-human sounds, range of
accents. Class distinctions are an important part of the language and use of voice.
Acting – the actor’s role is not to become that character, but ton demonstrate what happened.
Unlike Stanislavski and Realism the actor should
- perform with an awareness of being watched
- remain uninvolved with the other actors, physically & emotionally
- make your own movements on stage when it suits you
- speak your lines as thought they were a quotation or a speech
- occasionally speak stage directions out aloud
- Use opposite styles of acting, such as performing a serious death scene in a comic style.
- Use non-naturalistic movements and voice.
THEATRE OF CRUELTY
Further reading: Living Drama pp213 - 218
Atonin Artaud was born in 1896 and died insane and in poverty in 1948. Yet, he revolutionised
theatre with his approach, which he called the Theatre of Cruelty. Artaud saw the world he lived
in as one that was in desperate need of change, a world of people all mad, desperate and sick. This
was not uncommon in the 1930’s, where his generation had lived through the first world war, the
Great Depression and the rise to power of ruthless dictators – Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler and Franco
who threatened to destroy human liberty and world peace. Artaud’s view of the world was that it
was full of lies, hypocrisy and meanness and that human life was meaningless and pointless. This
was also the view of existentialist philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre denied the existence
of any god, any reason for living. We are born with nothing and return to nothing. Artaud believed
that if the world of theatre could be transformed then the ugliness of the outside world and society
would be altered.
Antonin Artaud established the Theatre of Cruelty in October 1932. He developed this style from
a stint in surrealism, and went on to become one of the most important avant-garde figures of his
time.
He was influenced by a desire for non-naturalistic drama, and was further motivated by Balinese
dance styles.
So what is this Theatre of Cruelty all about?
Contrary to interpretation, the term cruelty does not involve the use of physical violence or bloody
shows of aggression. Cruelty here refers to the human condition, and Artaud wanted to force the
audience to face themselves - to confront their unconscious fears and anxieties and to discover
what it is that leads them to their destructive behavior ( e.g. violence, racism, hatred, aggression
etc.) It is these fears and anxieties which he theorized that all people in our modern society are,
unknowingly, plagued by.
Why did it develop?
Artaud decided he had seen enough limited drama, in the forms of naturalism which explores the
pain or anguish or problems of just one person or their society. All of this was a superficial
representation of man’s situation. Artaud felt it would be more beneficial for theatre to help
people get in touch with their unconscious selves, thus leading them to understand what motivates
them and others in their acts of cruelty towards others.
His master plan was to work entirely on the nervous system of the audience.
Artaud aimed to ‘assault the senses’ of his audience as he believed they had been desensitised by
the world they inhabited. There was no point appealing to their intelligence – he wanted the
theatre to hypnotise them like a snake charmer, putting them into a trance in which they could be
shocked into confronting themselves and way of life.
Theatre of Cruelty does not mean deliberate or violent cruelty, but an attack on the emotions
designed to shock the audience and wake them up to their own ‘cruel’ social behaviour. He
changed the acting spaces, and took the audience out of the conventional theatre, into barns,
factories and airplane hangars. He wished to place an audience in the center of the action by
locating acting areas in the corners, on overhead catwalks and along the walls. In lighting, he
called for a “vibrating shedded” effect, and in sound he favored shrillness, abrupt changes in
volume and the use of the human voice to create harmonies and dissonances.
Thus, he wanted to ‘assault’ his audience, to break down its resistance, to purge it morally and
spiritually, and he sought to do this through devices “addressed first of all to the senses, rather
than to the mind” for “the public thinks first of all with its senses” (Antonin Artaud)
The typical conventions of Theatre of Cruelty are:
 Lighting is now used to convey emotions and to symbolize ideas /concepts, as opposed to
lighting up the actor so the audience can see his or her.
 Use of stylised movement like that of Asian theatre and Dance, combined with music and
sound effects to create ‘visual poetry’ for emotional impact
 Use of masks, ritual objects, traditional and striking costumes
 No scenery, just symbolic objects, sometimes distorted into nightmare shapes
 Use of movement/dance, music & lights to create dream like states
 Performance all around audience so they feel involved – not removed as spectators
 Use of violent, terrifying and shocking actions and images to create strong emotional
impact
 No structured scripts – mostly improvised based on issues or concerns in society (e.g. the
mandatory detention of refugees in Australian Detention Centres)
 Actors must believe in the truth of what they are portraying, similar to the total involvement
expected by Grotowski.)
 Language –limited use of dialogue, non-naturalistic e.g. robotic, repetition , lyrical
Artaud believed in the concept of total theatre – a synthesis of music, movement, voice, symbolic
scenery and lighting and even multimedia. Since the 1960’s this has become the foundation of our
contemporary ‘eclectic’ theatre.
POOR THEATRE and THEATRE OF TRANSFORMATION
Further reading: Living Drama pp 248 - 258
During the 1960’s and 70’s, Jerzy Grotowski created a theatre company in Poland called the
Theatre Laboratory. Grotowski used the group o factors he recruited to study the way theatre
worked and to experiment with new acting techniques. His concept of ‘Poor Theatre’
revolutionised the staging of plays around the world. Grotowski realised that theatre could not
compete with film and television in the use of technical equipment, lighting, music, costumes,
make-up and special effects. He set out to eliminate these from the plays he directed, creating a
theatre of poverty, or poor theatre, where only the important elements were the actors themselves.
He abandoned the traditional style of theatre building with its raised stage and auditorium full of
rows of seats, instead staging his plays in old buildings or ordinary rooms, with small audiences of
between 40 to 100 people. Actors and audience shared the same space; there was no special stage
or acting area. He directed the action to take place all around the audience, so close that sometimes
the actors were inside the spectators personal space.
His aim was to bring the audience face to face with the living characters and live action.
Grotowski believed that audiences came to his plays in search of the truth about themselves and
their purpose in life. Often his direction and the way he changed the setting of a script worked to
challenge the audience to become more aware of a social issue, to identify with the characters so
they have to wonder what would I do if I was in that situation? Grotowski, like Stanislavski,
developed a unique approach to actor training, involving rigorous physical and vocal exercises and
expecting actors to be prepared to sacrifice years to achieve proper training and skills.
The typical conventions of Poor Theatre, in addition to those mentions above are:
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Use of stillness and silence to create tension/dramatic impact
Complete physical control of body language and facial expression
Breathing control and flexibility/variety of voice
Minimalistic Set – often no set, or simple pieces of furniture or boxes used in a variety of
ways
Transformation of object – i.e. a chair or a piece of cloth could be used to represent a range of
things
Transformation of place – the actors have to use their bodies and voice to create imaginary
worlds as there is no scenery
Costume rarely used – usually ‘theatre blacks’ – again making the actors use their physical
skills and voices, concentration and commitment.
Actors playing more than one role – ensemble performance
Grotowski did not want his actors to just ‘pretend’ – like Stanislavski, he wanted them to look for
the real truth in any situation or human relationship, and to behave in response to that truth. British
director Peter Brook further developed his concept. Both Grotowski and Brook were influenced by
Artaud’s theatre of cruelty, using techniques to shock and mesmerise their audience. Like Brecht,
they also wanted to create plays, which had strong social and political messages and made use of
Brechtian techniques such as a narrator, actors changing roles during a play and the use of simple
objects to represent place. The influence of these other styles, particularly on Brook, has in turn
influenced the eclectic nature of theatre today. Their contribution to drama is described as ‘theatre
of transformation’, where the skill of the actors is to transform themselves and the acting space
into the world of the play, representing the characters as well as the locations, the sounds, the
whole context of the play. They transform the imagination of the audience by transforming
themselves onstage.
References:
Living Drama 3rd Edition – Bruce Burton
NF 792 BUR
Acting In Person and In Style – Crawford, Hurst and Lugering
Internet
NF 792.028 CRA