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14 - Continuity and innovation in Spanish theatre, 1900–1936
- Edited by Maria M. Delgado, Queen Mary University of London, David T. Gies, University of Virginia
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- Book:
- A History of Theatre in Spain
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 05 April 2012, pp 282-309
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Summary
Continuity was the defining feature of Spanish theatrical practices from 1875 to 1936, with attempts to bring real innovation to the stage hardly bearing fruit until the 1920s and, more particularly, the 1930s. In 1875 the Bourbon Alfonso XII (1857–85) succeeded to the Spanish throne, opening what is commonly known as the Restoration period. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Madrid was expanding as a city (mimicked, to a degree, by the provincial capitals), and with urban growth came a larger middle class. The pace of construction of new theatres over this period (documented below) strongly suggests a close correlation of supply and demand. It should surprise no one that demand was, primarily, for the familiar; in the theatre as in other spheres, there was a persuasive argument to be made for ‘business as usual’. On the one hand, mainstream audiences tended to shy away from anything perceived as overly intellectual, artistic or otherwise disconcertingly innovative. On the other, the theatre provided a cultural space in which disturbing changes wrought by modernisation could be rendered tractable, and thus less threatening, by means of humour, ridicule or musical fantasy.
The Restoration period was characterised by its constitutional monarchy (Alfonso XII was followed by Alfonso XIII [1886–1941]; the two major political parties – Conservatives and Liberals – alternated in power), and despite a variety of increasingly grave problems and crises (diplomatic, economic, military, labour-related, etc.), this system of government continued on in Spain until the 1923 coup led by General Primo de Rivera (1870–1930). After a period of dictatorship (1923–30), the Second Republic was declared in 1931, and civil war broke out in the summer of 1936. The country had remained neutral during the First World War, and in the 1920s European avant-garde movements slowly began to make their presence felt in Spain, but only in the most progressive of playwrights and designers and hence on the margins of mainstream theatre. During the 1930s, certain advances were consolidated (for example, the emergence of the theatrical director), and with the advent of the Second Republic the stage mirrored the heightened political climate: a number of propagandistic plays were written and produced, while the government's sociocultural programme led to support for such initiatives as the Misiones Pedagógicas and La Barraca.
Preface
- Edited by Martha E. Schaffer, University of San Francisco, Antonio Cortijo Ocana
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- Book:
- Medieval and Renaissance Spain and Portugal
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 May 2023
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- 20 December 2006, pp vii-vii
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Professor Arthur Askins has given new meaning to the word retirement. Eschewing the usual sense of quitting the field after long years of dedication to his profession, he preferred the Luso-Hispanic connotations of jubilar. Reliable documents confirm that Professor Askins did indeed “retire” in 1994, but since that year – to our joy – he has devoted himself ever more to research, taking advantage of additional time to finish, update and initiate scholarly projects, address learned societies in the United States and abroad, search out manuscripts from secreted archives in Portugal, and publish his elegant, rigorously prepared texts in print and electronic venues. All the while, our friend and colleague has continued to enrich the life of the department he served faithfully for more than thirty years. For Professor Arthur Askins, the commonplace meaning of retirement must itself be retired, to be replaced by a word more faithful to the man and his scholarly pursuits: jubilation.
Though it is true, as Portia states in The Merchant of Venice, that “he is well paid that is well satisfied,” the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and the Portuguese Studies Program, at the University of California, Berkeley, wish to increase our colleague's satisfaction as best we know how: with a beautiful book. Mindful of how much we owe this passionate bibliophile, we think a book of learned essays prepared by his colleagues, students and friends, is a fitting tribute to an exemplary scholar and beloved teacher.
The two individuals most responsible for this volume have modestly declined to increase its pages, preferring instead to coordinate and edit the essays of other distinguished scholars of Portuguese and Spanish medieval and renaissance texts. Warm thanks are due to Professors Martha E. Schaffer and Antonio Cortijo Ocaña for their generous dedication to a project that joins science and sentiment, erudition and style, the very hallmarks of the man whose life and work have inspired so many of us.
44 - Theatrical reform and renewal, 1900–1936
- from VIII - TWENTIETH-CENTURY SPAIN AND THE CIVIL WAR
- Edited by David T. Gies, University of Virginia
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- Book:
- The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature
- Published online:
- 28 March 2008
- Print publication:
- 13 January 2005, pp 587-594
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Summary
Like the field of political power, Spain’s theatre was a site of struggle, during the first decades of the twentieth century, between forces of continuity and renewal. The latter term suggests a critical assessment of the theatre as a stagnant institution, one of the main issues in a long debate over the “crisis of the theatre,” perhaps the clearest manifestation of the battle to reshape the theatrical field. Critics and playwrights alike took sides, often depending on whether they profited from the status quo, which was governed by commercial interests. The distinction between theatre as business and theatre as art was basic to the language of reform and to the many experiments launched by individuals or small groups during this period.
The many calls for renewal sought to bring Spain’s stage up to date (European ventures, like Jacques Copeau’s Vieux Colombier and the Moscow Art Theatre, were evident models) by promoting at least four advances: (1) expansion of the stage’s thematic range to include questions of sexuality, social justice, and institutional oppression; (2) changes in the economic structure of the free commercial market in favor of state-funded programs, collectives, or companies supported by community subscription; (3) modernization of stagecraft to take advantage of expressive possibilities offered by mechanical innovations like electric lighting and rotating stages; and (4) the staging of Avant-Garde plays in and beyond the small art-theatres, whether by Spanish or foreign companies. These goals were shared by a small but significant coterie of authors, directors, actors, actresses, and critics who occasionally joined forces to launch experimental programs.
43 - The commercial stage, 1900–1936
- from VIII - TWENTIETH-CENTURY SPAIN AND THE CIVIL WAR
- Edited by David T. Gies, University of Virginia
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- Book:
- The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature
- Published online:
- 28 March 2008
- Print publication:
- 13 January 2005, pp 579-586
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The theatre in Spain during the first three decades of the twentieth century presents a variety of faces to the historian. It was first and foremost a thriving industry employing thousands of actors and actresses who traveled a circuit of theatres that covered the peninsula and extended to Spanish cities in Africa and the former American colonies, especially Havana and Buenos Aires. Theatres were the favored sites of public entertainment, and, until film achieved rival status in the mid 1920s, they constituted a principal network for communication between social classes. Theatre also provided a reliable, and respectable, source of pleasure, both on and off the stage. Finally, the stage was a space reserved for the nation’s self-representation as a collective body, a forum in which national concerns, myths, and memories were debated, celebrated, and debunked.
Theatre thus served society’s needs on many levels. Here I will emphasize the commercial, social, and cultural conditions that influenced how plays were written, staged (or suppressed), and received. Because productions were almost entirely financed by private investors, authors who wrote professionally tended to cultivate one of the five established sectors of the market: (1) the one-act play with or without music (sainete) based on popular, melodramatic plots involving lower-class types; (2) the elaborate musical comedy (opereta, revista) which became the dominant theatrical mode after the First World War; (3) the sentimental comedy that engaged current social problems for the entertainment and elucidation of the middle classes; (4) the farcical comedy aimed especially at petit-bourgeois audiences (juguete cómico, astracán); (5) the sophisticated comedy, drama, and musical play (zarzuela grande), whose audiences were drawn from the educated elite.
15 - Theater and culture, 1868-1936
- from V - Culture and theater
- Edited by David T. Gies, University of Virginia
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish Culture
- Published online:
- 28 May 2006
- Print publication:
- 25 February 1999, pp 211-221
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The Revolution of 1868 marked the beginning of a cultural process that by 1936 left Spain torn into warring camps. The period that began with revolution and ended in Civil War was punctuated by the short-lived First Republic (1874-1875), the restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy (1875), a disastrous war with the United States (1898), a coup d'etat by General Primo de Rivera (1923) and the proclamation of the Second Republic (1931). No wonder that in 1897 the novelist and playwright Perez Galdós wrote of living in a time of “confusión evolutiva” (evolving confusion) and underscored the “rapidez con que se transforman ahora nuestros gustos” (the rapidity with which our tastes are now being transformed). What was the role of the theater in such tumultuous times? Poised at the center of social and intellectual life in urban centers and enjoying a popularity that no other art form could rival until the advent of film, the stage served as a point of mediation between tradition and modernity, high culture and mass culture, Spain and the rest of Europe.
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