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)

Impression Sunrise (1872)by Claude Monet

The Wounded Angel (1903)By Hugo Simberg

Impressionism Symbolism

The Late 19th Century: Context

• Second Industrial Revolution: transport & communicationcapitalist 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’ traininghttps://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