The History of World Theater: From the English Restoration to the Present

660 Pages·1999·112.128 MB·English

by  Felicia Hardison Londre

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
Copley Square
THE HISTORY OFyW3$tffirk.EATER
From the English Restoration
to the Present
THE' HISTORY OF
WORLD
THEATER
FROM THE
ENGLISH RESTORATION
TO THE PRESENT
Hardison Londre
Felicia
CONTINUUM NEW YORK
/
,
1999
TheContinuumPublishingCompany
370LexingtonAvenue
NewYork,NY 10017
Copyright© 1991 byFeliciaHardisonLondr6
All rightsreserved. Nopartofthisbookmaybereproduced,
stored inaretrieval system,ortransmitted, inanyformor
byanymeans,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,
recording,orotherwise,withoutthewrittenpermissionof
TheContinuumPublishingCompany.
Printed intheUnitedStatesofAmerica
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Londr6, FeliciaHardison
Thehistoryofworldtheater
Contents: FromtheEnglishRestorationtothepresent/
ISBN0-826—4-1167-3 (pbk : alk. paper)
1. Theater History. I. Londr6,FeliciaHardison, 1941-
theEnglishRestorationtothePresent. 1991. II. Title
PN2104.B413 1999
—
792’09 dc20
ThequotationfromFaust copyright©Translation/Stageadaptation 1988byRobertDavidMacDonald,
isusedbykindpermissionofTessaSayle,LiteraryandDramaticAgency.
FrontspiecephotographofDouglassStewartasWitchDoctorin TheEmperorJonescourtesyofMissouri
RepertoryTheatre, 1988. All otherphotocreditsaregivenwiththecaptions.
Contents
Preface
The Stuart Court andRestoration England
INIGOJONES AND STUART COURT ENTERTAINMENTS,
1
THE COMMONWEALTH PERIOD, lO
davenant’s pre-restoration productions, 13
THEATER COMPANIES, l6
PRODUCTION VALUES, 20
RESTORATION AUDIENCES, 25
PLAYS DURING THE REIGN OF CHARLES II, 29
A CHANGING REPERTOIRE, 37
RESTORATION ACTORS AND ACTRESSES, 43
THE COLLIER CONTROVERSY, 46
The Eighteenth Century
FRANCE AND ENGLAND ON THE PATH TO ENLIGHTENMENT, 49
ITALIAN OPERA, FAIR THEATERS, AND THEIR MUSICAL OFFSHOOTS, 57
ENGLISH THEATER UNTIL THE LICENSING ACT OF 1737 70
,
TWO GIANTS AND A NEW GENRE, 78
THEATER ARCHITECTURE AND PRODUCTION VALUES, 98
THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF RUSSIAN THEATER, 130
THE GROWTH AND REBIRTH OF GERMAN THEATER, 138
THEATER AND DRAMA IN NORTH AMERICA, 160
BEAUMARCHAIS AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 173
The RomanticImpulse andPopular Offshoots
ALTERNATIVES TO NEOCLASSICISM, 190
PANORAMAS, 198
MELODRAMA, 201
AMERICAN MELODRAMA, 206
vi / THE HISTORY OF WORLD THEATER
ROMANTICISM IN THE THEATER, 214
French Romantic Drama I The Romantic Period in Spain /
Russian Romanticism I The Romantic Drama in Poland /
A Romantic Postscript
THE VAUDEVILLE AND OTHER PLEASURES, 258
Romantic Ballet /American PopularEntertainment / Pleasure
Gardens Parades and Pantomimes
, ,
The Drama Sobers Up: Realism andNaturalism 285
MIDDLE-CLASS VALUES, 285
acting: an international art, 312
INNOVATORS AND THEIR INFLUENCE, 326
NATURALISM, 350
THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE, 359
TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY FRIVOLITY, 374
Pluralism andExperimentation 384
A CHANGING AUDIENCE, 384
SYMBOLISM AND DECADENCE, 386
FUTURISM, DADA, AND SURREALISM, 392
EXPRESSIONISM, 403
THE SOVIET GOLDEN AGE, 41 1
BRECHT AND DIALECTICAL THEATER, 430
THE THEATER OF THE ABSURD, 438
THE POLISH AVANT-GARDE, 445
OTHER EXPERIMENTAL WORK SINCE THE 1960s, 457
Currents in the Mainstream 470
DIAGHILEV AND HIS INFLUENCE, 470
THE IRISH RENAISSANCE, 475
Spain: ’98 ’27 post-war, and post-franco, 482
, ,
MAINSTREAM MAVERICKS, 489
DECENTRALIZATION OF THE THEATER, 513
FROM SOCIALIST REALISM TO PERESTROIKA IN THE USSR, 544
INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED DIRECTORS, 553
Epilogue: Converging Theaters around the Globe 564
Bibliography 583
Index 621
Preface
In Nature everything is connected, everything is interwoven, every-
thingvaries with respecttoeverythingelse, everythingfluctuates when
confronted with something else But given this infinite multiplicity,
.
Nature can befully grasped only by a limitless intellect. In orderfor
more limited minds to take full advantage of their share of this
enjoyment, they must have the abi—lity to setfor themselves arbitrary
limits that do not exist in Nature the ability to dismiss some things
from consideration and to refocus their attention as the spirit moves
them.
—
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, The HamburgDramaturgy,
No. 70
The guiding premise behind this book could not be stated more
succinctly than in these words borrowed from Lessing. In history, as in
Nature, I believe, “everything is connected.” It is not necessary to see a
direct causal relationship between one event and another, but rather to
recognize the multiplicity ofconnecting strands in a vast web of human
endeavors linked across time and space. We can see in our own time how
the catastrophic events and gradual changes occurring in Beijing or
Moscow have repercussions around the world. Less apparent though no
less real are the effects that such waves on the tide ofhistory have on the
lives of ordinary people in Kansas City or Timbuktu. Because ofevents
in China, for example, Missouri Repertory Theatre doesn’t get to bring
in an internationally renowned Chinese director to do Shakespeare, and
the season’s bill is changed; instead ofKing Lear, the company presents
Born Yesterday. What difference does it make in the lives of thousands of
Kansas City theatergoers if they see Born Yesterday instead ofKing Lear?
What is the difference in the careers ofactors who are or are not hired
for one or the othershow? Ofcourse, the historian’s assessment ofevents
can be based only upon what did happen. “What might have been” is the
subtext of history, an imaginative exercise for the reader, analogous to
the actor’s imaginative exploration ofthe possibilities ofcharacterization
beneath his spoken dialogue. The point is that history evinces a myste-
viii / THE HISTORY OF WORLD THEATER
rious interlocking of forces that may seem unrelated at first sight. As
Eugene Scribe shows in his play Le Verre d’eau a mere glass of water
,
spilled at an inopportune moment can precipitate a war between two
great nations.
The history of theater in particular must be concerned with inter-
connecting elements. In no art more than theater is there such a blend-
ing of all the arts. Theater is a nexus of rhetorical, poetic, mimetic,
pictorial, musical, and architectural arts and crafts. Never in history has
the theater developed in isolation from other human activities: politics,
religion, economics, science, and sociocultural norms. Whatappeared on
the stage at any given time and place was the product of a complex of
factors that included audience demographics, the theater’s system of
patronage or management, the physical facility, the intellectual context
articulated by critics and theorists, and so on. To situate historical de-
velopments in the theater within these various constructs across space
and time has been an ambitious, if not always attainable, goal of this
book.
As an aspect of this interconnectedness, the historian often hears
individual voices speaking to him or her across time. Lessing’s comment
from the past, for example, directly addresses my present purpose.
History is made by people. No matter how remote in time, they had
fundamentally the same “senses, affections, passions” as we do. Their
contributions to the development of the theater, however much in ser-
vice to an ideal of art, were to some extent determined by their person-
alities, their individual drives, and their relationships with other people.
The greatest and most innovative artists were certainly influenced by
and/or rebelling against the efforts ofa host oflesser-known artists who
went before, or who took parallel but less visible paths, or even those
who turned off on side roads and found themselves at dead ends.
Without espousing a “great lives” approach to theater history, I have
tried to keep the individual artist or craftsman at the center ofmy study.
The individuals who come to the fore in my narrative are not always the
ones who were considered most important in their own time. Some
earned posterity’s belated recognition for seminal contributions that
were not immediately recognized as such. Some find their places here as
representatives ofa certain direction ofenergies in a given period. Some
are here to redress a balance; for example, I have tried to bring into the
overall picture some awareness of women in other areas of theater
besides acting, and of the achievements of certain unjustly neglected
African American artists, and of important artists whose renown was
spread only within the linguistic boundaries oftheir infrequently trans-
lated languages. These people and a host of others along with all of us
involved in theater today form a network of interconnected efforts so
vast that it “could only be grasped by a limitless intellect.”