A chamber play is a play of usually three acts which can be performed with a small cast and practically no sets or costumes in a small space. The form became popular in the early 20th century, with leading exponents being
Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt (; born Maximilian Goldmann; 9 September 1873 – 30 October 1943) was an Austrian-born Theatre director, theatre and film director, theater manager, intendant, and theatrical producer. With his radically innovative and avant-gard ...
and
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg (; ; 22 January 184914 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, and painter.Lane (1998), 1040. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg wrote more than 60 pla ...
. The first
cinema adaptation was ''
Kammerspielfilm
''Kammerspielfilm'' is a type of German film that offers an intimate, cinematic portrait of lower middle class life.
History
The name derives from a theater, the '' Kammerspiele'', opened in 1906 by a major stage director Max Reinhardt to stage ...
'' in the 1920s, and the format was later adapted for cinema by
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman (14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish film and theatre director and screenwriter. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential film directors of all time, his films have been described as "profoun ...
and
Carl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer (; 3 February 1889 – 20 March 1968), commonly known as Carl Th. Dreyer, was a Danish film director and screenwriter. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers in history, his movies are noted for emotional austerity ...
.
The name is derived from the term
chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of Musical instrument, instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a Great chamber, palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music ...
.
See also
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Closet drama
A closet drama is a play (theatre), play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader. The earliest use of the term recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1813. The literary historian Henry Augustin Beers, H ...
*
Drawing room play
A drawing room play is a type of play, developed during the Victorian period in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. They set upper- and middle-class characters confronting a social problem of the time with a comedic twist. The play ...
*
List of films set in a single location
This page lists films that are set fully, or almost entirely, in only one location. Such films are sometimes referred to as "bottle movies" or "chamber pieces". In June 2023, film critic Chris Stuckmann speculated that the limitations that chamber ...
References
Drama
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