Early 20th-century Theater

I: Luigi Pirandello




Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936)

- Born in Sicily

- 1887-1991: University in Rome and Bonn

- 1894: Marries Antonietta Portulano

- 1904: first novel

- 1914-17: Sons POW in WWI and wife growing insane

- 1919: Wife in mental institution

- 1921: Six Characters in Search of an Author

- 1923: Henry IV; joined fascist party

- 1934: Opera libretto criticized by fascist authorities; doesn’t support Mussolini’s march into Ethiopia 


[I]n dramatic art, what is staging if not a huge,
living illustration in action? What are the actors
if not illustrators in their own right?
But necessary illustrators in this case, alas. [ . . . ]
Unfortunately, there always has to be a[n]
unavoidable element that intrudes between the
dramatic author and his creation in the material
being of the performance: the actor” (Pirandello,
“Illustrators, Actors, Translators,” Luigi Pirandell.
Ed. Bassnett and Lorch. 26-7)





Pirandello in Context

Sean O'Casey, Juno and the Paycock





O’Casey/Ireland Bio

- 1880: Born in Dublin slums to a Protestant family

- 1883: Father dies; self-educated at home owing to an eye disorder

- 1913: General strike

- 1916: Easter Rising; Nationalists occupy strategic points in Dublin to protest British rule; main leaders are executed

- 1919: Irish Volunteers (now IRA) begins “War of Independence”

- 1920: “Bloody Sunday”--The Black and Tans (decommissioned Brit. [and Irish] WWI officers sent to police) open fire at a Dublin crowd watching a Gaelic football match

- 1922: Ireland becomes a Free State

- 1922: Civil War (now known as the "Troubles") between Republicans and Free State supporters

- 1923: Works as a laborer; The Shadow of a Gunman at the Abbey Theatre

- 1924: Juno and the Paycock at the Abbey Theatre

- 1926: The Plough and the Stars at the Abbey Theatre; Juno performed in NYC

- 1927: The Silver Tassie rejected by Abbey Theatre, and O’Casey permanently emigrates to England after a row with Yeats

- 1929: Juno produced as Hitchcock’s first “talkie”

- 1937-49: Free State abolished and Eire founded; Ireland remains neutral in WWII

- 1949: Republic of Ireland

- Through 1950s: Lesser acclaimed plays and poetry

- 1964: Dies in England

- 1972: Escalation of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland







(North) Dublin Slang in O’Casey

Angelus: call to prayer twice a day (noon and 6 pm)

aw rewaeawr (96): au revoir

beyant: beyond

chiselurs (83): children, young people

Co.: County (similar to an American ‘state’; our counties are more akin to Irish parishes)

Easter Week (71): Easter Rising 1916

Fenians: Irish nationalists

Free Staters: Compromised to have an Irish “Free State” by seceding Northern Ireland to Britain (currently: Fine Gael)

gawn (111): go on (and do it)

O’Connell Street: Major street in Dublin and site of many uprisings

Novena: Virgin Mary festival lasting a month

Parnell (87): Irish political leader brought down by the Church in a sex scandal

Paycock: peacock

Republicans: Refused to compromise Nothern Ireland and insisted on having Ireland’s 32 counties in one country (currently: Fianna Fáil, Sinn Fein)

snug: Booth at a bar

Soggart (100): priest

Wicklow (87): county north of Dublin

Whisht (144): be quiet












L. 12: Interpretive Questions

1. How is death represented?

2. Some critics, such as J. L. Styan, have suggested that O’Casey made a “fatal miscalculation” in ending the tragedy as he did (174-75, 263); the Boyle’s actions supposedly undermine the emotional impact of Juno’s final prayer. Do you agree or disagree? Is the ending of the tragedy a “fatal miscalculation” or not? Why or why not? 

3. What is the role of education and literature in the play? How does it shape characters?

4. What is O’Casey’s message about war and violence? How do people manage to ‘rationalize’ and live through civil war?

Styan, J. L. The Dark Comedy: the Development of Modern Comic Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1968.



Sheela Na Gig

L. 13


The GOAL of today’s class is for you to leave with a clear sense of your paper’s argument and a better sense of the work you are writing about.


Preliminary: Write your argument/thesis/controlling idea for your paper and submit it to the instructor.

A. Discuss the general question addressed to your group. These questions are designed to hopefully give you another perspective on your topic.

I. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

In what ways does the setting, dramaturgy of the story, and our views of the characters resemble more a theatrical production than a traditional film? What impact do these theatrical conventions have on spectators’ understanding of the tragedy of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?

II. Juno and the Paycock (two or three groups)

Reread the height of the Boyle family’s prospects at the beginning of the second act (101-06), perhaps by reading the parts aloud with each other. In another world, given the luxury of money and equality, what kind of roles could the Boyle family have led? What social, economic, and historical forces have kept them from realizing their potential?

III. Six Characters in Search of an Author

Try to piece together the actual “play” of the six characters. Is it possible to extract the action of this play from the making of it? What difficulties arise in trying to separate the two worlds? What does this exercise reflect about Pirandello’s purpose in writing this play?

 


B. Present your argument for your paper to another classmate. Your classmate should then suggest a counterargument or antithesis to your paper’s controlling idea. With this feedback, construct a new argument.

II: Samuel Beckett


Post-1945 Theater

Influenced by the drastic events of WWII: 61 million lives (civilian and military) lost
Post-modern theater vs. Classical theater

1. Aristotle’s theater = Neoclassical
2. Postmodern theater: Fractured structure, time, and action; ‘lowly’ characters

Samuel Becket Biography (Brief Highlights)

- 1906: Born to Anglo-Irish middle class family
- 1923-27: B.A. in French and Italian from Trinity College in Dublin (favorite author: Proust)
- 1928: Teaches at École Normale Supérieure in Paris; meets Joyce and helps him with Finnegan’s Wake
- 1930: Whoroscope (poetry)
- 1933: Psychotherapy in London after father’s death
- 1938: Novel, Murphy; living in Paris permanently
- 1941: Joins French Resistance
- 1948-49: En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot)
- 1951: Molloy
- 1953: Waiting for Godot produced at Théâtre de Babylone
- 1957: Fin de partie (End Game); prisoners in San Quentin, CA watch a performance of Godot
- 1961: Marries
- 1964: Film
- 1969: Nobel Prize in Literature
- 1989: Dies same year as his wife

The “Theater of the Absurd”

- Existentialism is he set of philosophical ideals that emphasizes the existence of the human being, the lack of meaning and purpose in life, and the solitude of human existence.
 
- Existentialism maintains existence precedes essence: This implies that the human being has no essence, no essential self, and is no more that what he is. He is only the sum of life is so far he has created and achieved for himself. Existentialism acquires its name from insisting that existence precedes essence.

- In their treatment of ‘freedom,’ Existentialists imply that humans are free to do as they please; after all, there good and evil do not exist, only existence. But they also show that humans are a product of situations of their own making

- Cross reference Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Nietzsche (1844-1900 [“God is dead”]), and Camus, and Sartre (1905-80 [“Hell is other people”])

- WWII ended the international exchange of artistic, scientific ideas. In fascist countries, the intelligentsia were brutally persecuted.

- In the postwar world, existentialism symbolized the isolated individual and his abandonment.

- Existentialism served to brace the individual for survival in a failed, fallen, and no longer trustworthy world.

- “Nothing to be done.”

Beckett L. 16

1. What do the leaves on the tree represent?

2. Beckett subtitles the play a “tragicomedy.” How does the tragic combine with the comic, and the comic inform the tragic?

3. What lines, gestures, and/or actions are repeated and by whom (from the first and in the second act, for ex.)? What is the significance of these repetitions?

4. Is the play set in the past, the present, or the future? Is time (both the passing of time and the setting) important here? Has the author tried to distort logical time at all here?

5. How does Beckett make an effective drama out of a play in which nothing (apparently) happens? (Estragon: “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!” [43].)

III.: Jean Genet


1910: Born in Paris and abandoned by unwed mother
1916: Placed in foster care in a small village
1920: Fingered for petty thefts
1923: Leaves village school with highest grades
1924: Apprenticed to Parisian typographer and runs away; sent to live with a blind composer, from whom he steals; sent to reform school
1933: Papin sisters murder their female employer and her daughter, mutilating the bodies afterwards; they are found together in bed
1936: Deserts army and begins European wanderings
1938: Caught as deserter but discharged for amorality and mental imbalance
1938-42: Spate of petty thefts followed by brief imprisonments
1943: Begins writing his first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers, while in prison for theft
1944: Cocteau and Sartre, admirers of his work, get him amnesty for his criminal activities
1947: The Maids
1949: The Thief’s Journal
1950: Un Chant D’Amour (A Song of Love, silent film)
Deathwatch
1956: The Balcony
1958: The Blacks
1961/66: The Screens
1965: Refused an American visa for sexual deviancy
1970s: Supporter of Black Panthers, PLO, prisoners’ rights, and Arab immigrants’ rights
1979: Diagnosed with throat cancer
1986: Died in Paris but buried in Morocco

Gide: “We should note one thing: [the play] is not a plea on behalf of maids. I suppose there is a union for domestic workers—that’s not our concern” (qtd. in Lane 880)

Translation issues

I. Frechtmann translation: “All that you’ll ever know is your own baseness” (43).
French: Je grandis davantage pour te réduire et t’exalter.
Lane’s translation (literal): I ennoble myself the more to diminish and exalt you.

II. Frechtmann: “Let me get it out of my system” (50).
French: “Que je me vide!”
Literal: “Let me annul myself!”

III. Frechtmann translation: “When slaves love one another, it’s not love” (61).
French: “S’aimer dans le dégout, ce n’est pas s’aimer.”
Lane’s translation (literal): “To love each other in such disgust is not to love.”

IV. “Madame is very kind” (70)
“Madame est trop bonne”
Madame is too good/too much like a maid

Lane, Christopher. “The Voided Role: On Genet.” MLN 112.5 (1997): 876-908.


Discussion L. 19

Group Discussion Questions


1. How is this play similar to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot?


2. What’s the significance of the ending? How does it compare to other plays we’ve read?


3. Are Claire and Solange really, as Madame suggests, a ‘family’? Or are they, as was suspected of the Papin sisters, lovers?

Jean Paul Sartre (1905-80)


- Known as premier French Existentialist
- 1931: Professor of Philosophy
- 1938: Nausea (novel)
- WWII: Part of French Resistance
- 1943: Being and Nothingness (philosophy); The Flies (play)
- 1946: “Existentialism is a Humanism”
- 1947: No Exit (play): “Hell is other people.”
- 1964: The Words (autobiography); awarded Nobel Prize but declined it
- Married to feminist Simone de Beauvoir

Whirligig--OED


1. a. Name of various toys that are whirled, twirled, or spun round; spec.    (a) a top or teetotum (cf. GIG n.1 1);    (b) a toy consisting of a small spindle turned by means of a string;    (c) a toy with four arms like miniature windmill-sails, which whirl round when it is moved through the air.


2. Applied to various mechanical contrivances having a whirling or rotatory movement; spec.    (a) an instrument of punishment formerly used, consisting of a large cage suspended so as to turn on a pivot;    (b) a roundabout or merry-go-round.


3. a. gen. and fig., in various applications:    (a) Something that is continually whirling, or in constant movement or activity of any kind;    (b) a fantastic notion, a crotchet (obs.);    (c) circling course, revolution (of time or events);    (d) a lively or irregular proceeding, an antic;    (e) a circling movement, or condition figured as such, a whirl.

b. A fickle, inconstant, giddy, or flighty person (cf. GIG n.1 4); also, one who turns round or moves about actively, as in a dance.


4. A water-beetle of the family Gyrinidæ, esp. the common species Gyrinus natator, found in large numbers circling rapidly over the surface of the water in ponds and ditches. Also whirligig beetle.






WRITE AN OBITUARY FOR CLAIRE FOR A SPECIFIC AUDIENCE (FRENCH LOCAL PAPER, MONTCLARION, MAIDS’ WEEKLY, POLICE REPORT, ETC.).