Realism was a general movement that began in

19th-century theatre A wide range of movements existed in the theatrical culture of Europe and the United States in the 19th century. In the West, they include Romanticism, melodrama, the well-made plays of Scribe and Sardou, the farces of Feydeau, the problem pl ...

, around the 1870s, and remained present through much of the

20th century The 20th century began on 1 January 1901 (MCMI), and ended on 31 December 2000 (MM). It was the 10th and last century in the 2nd millennium and was marked by new models of scientific understanding, unprecedented scopes of warfare, new modes of ...

. 19th-century realism is closely connected to the development of modern drama, which "is usually said to have begun in the early 1870s" with the "middle-period" work of the Norwegian dramatist

Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright, poet and actor. Ibsen is considered the world's pre-eminent dramatist of the 19th century and is often referred to as "the father of modern drama." He pioneered ...

. Ibsen's realistic drama in prose has been "enormously influential." It developed a set of dramatic and theatrical conventions with the aim of bringing a greater fidelity of real life to texts and performances. These conventions occur in the text, (set, costume, sound, and lighting) design, performance style, and narrative structure. They include recreating on stage a facsimile of real life except missing a fourth wall (on proscenium arch stages). Characters speak in naturalistic, authentic dialogue without verse or poetic stylings, and acting is meant to emulate human behaviour in real life. Narratives typically are psychologically driven, and include day-to-day, ordinary scenarios. Narrative action moves forward in time, and supernatural presences (gods, ghosts, fantastic phenomena) do not occur. Sound and music are

diegetic Diegesis (; , ) is a style of fiction storytelling in which a participating narrator offers an on-site, often interior, view of the scene to the reader, viewer, or listener by subjectively describing the actions and, in some cases, thoughts, o ...

only. Part of a broader artistic movement, it includes Naturalism and Socialist realism. Russia's first professional playwright,

Aleksey Pisemsky Aleksey Feofilaktovich Pisemsky () () was a Russian novelist and dramatist who was regarded as an equal of Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoyevsky in the late 1850s, but whose reputation suffered a spectacular decline after his fall-out with ''Sovre ...

, along with

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; ,Throughout Tolstoy's whole life, his name was written as using Reforms of Russian orthography#The post-revolution re ...

(in his ''

The Power of Darkness ''The Power of Darkness'' (, Vlast′ t′my) is a five- act drama by Leo Tolstoy. Written in 1886, the play's production was banned in Russia until 1902, mainly through the influence of Konstantin Pobedonostsev. In spite of the ban, the play wa ...

'' of 1886), began a tradition of psychological realism in Russia. A new type of acting was required to replace the declamatory conventions of the well-made play with a technique capable of conveying the speech and movements found in the domestic situations of

everyday life Everyday life, daily life or routine life comprises the ways in which people typically act, think, and feel on a daily basis. Everyday life may be described as mundane, routine, natural, habitual, or Normality (behavior), normal. Human diurna ...

. This need was supplied by the innovations of the

Moscow Art Theatre The Moscow Art Theatre (or MAT; , ''Moskovskiy Hudojestvenny Akademicheskiy Teatr'' (МHАТ) was a theatre company in Moscow. It was founded in by the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright ...

, founded by

Konstantin Stanislavski Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski ( rus, Константин Сергеевич Станиславский, p=kənstɐnʲˈtʲin sʲɪrˈɡʲejɪvʲɪtɕ stənʲɪˈslafskʲɪj, links=yes; ; 7 August 1938) was a seminal Russian and Sovie ...

and

Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko (; – 25 April 1943) was a Soviet and Russian theatre director, writer, pedagogue Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how t ...

. Whereas the subtle expression of emotion in

Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his b ...

's ''

The Seagull ''The Seagull'' () is a play by Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov, written in 1895 in literature, 1895 and first produced in 1896 in literature#Drama, 1896. ''The Seagull'' is generally considered to be the first of his four major plays. It dramati ...

'' through everyday small-talk had initially gone unappreciated in a more traditionally conventional production in St Petersburg, a new staging by the Moscow Art Theatre brought the play and its author, as well as the company, immediate success.Esslin (2003), pp. 353-356 A logical development was to take the revolt against theatrical artifice a step further in the direction of naturalism, and Stanislavski, especially in his production of

Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (; ), was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an aut ...

's ''

The Lower Depths ''The Lower Depths'' (, literally: ''At the bottom'') is a play by Russian dramatist Maxim Gorky written in 1902 and produced by the Moscow Arts Theatre on December 18, 1902, under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski. It became his first ma ...

'', helped this movement achieve international recognition. The Moscow Art Theatre's ground-breaking productions of plays by Chekhov, such as ''

Uncle Vanya ''Uncle Vanya'' ( rus, Дя́дя Ва́ня, r=Dyádya Ványa, p=ˈdʲædʲə ˈvanʲə) is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1897, and first produced in 1899 by the Moscow Art Theatre, directed by Konstan ...

'' and ''

The Cherry Orchard ''The Cherry Orchard'' () is the last play by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. Written in 1903, it was first published by '' Znaniye'' (Book Two, 1904), and came out as a separate edition later that year in Saint Petersburg, via A.F. Marks Pu ...

'', in turn influenced

and

Mikhail Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( ; rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪdʑ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Russian and Soviet novelist and playwright. His novel ''The M ...

. Stanislavski went on to develop his 'system', a form of actor training that is particularly well-suited to psychological realism. In

opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

, ''

verismo In opera, , from , meaning 'true', was a post-Romantic operatic tradition associated with Italian composers such as Pietro Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano, Francesco Cilea and Giacomo Puccini. ''Verismo'' as an operatic ge ...

'' refers to a post-Romantic Italian tradition that sought to incorporate the Naturalism of

Émile Zola Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (, ; ; 2 April 184029 September 1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of Naturalism (literature), naturalism, and an important contributor to ...

and Henrik Ibsen. It included realistic – sometimes sordid or violent – depictions of contemporary everyday life, especially the life of the lower classes.

Stanislavski's distinction

As part of a strategic argument in his day, Stanislavski used the term "psychological realism" to distinguish his 'system' of acting from his own Naturalistic early stagings of the plays of

, and others. Jean Benedetti argues that:

Naturalism, for him, implied the indiscriminate reproduction of the surface of life. Realism, on the other hand, while taking its material from the real world and from direct observation, selected only those elements which revealed the relationships and tendencies under the surface. The rest was discarded.Benedetti (2005), p. 17

As used in critical literature today, however, the term Naturalism has a broader scope than that within which all of Stanislavski's work falls. In this broader sense, Naturalism or "psychological realism" is distinct both from Socialist realism and the critical realism developed by the

epic theatre Epic theatre () is a theatrical movement that arose in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners who responded to the political climate of the time through the creation of new political ...

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

References

Sources

* * Benedetti, Jean (1999). ''Stanislavski: His Life and Art''. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. . * * * Harrison, Martin (1998). ''The Language of Theatre''. New York: Routledge. . {{Modern drama Drama Theatrical genres 19th-century theatre 20th-century theatre *Theatre th:สัจนิยม

Stanislavski's distinction

See also

References

Sources