Realism (dramatic arts)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Realism in the theatre was a general movement in the later 19th century that steered theatrical texts and performances toward greater fidelity to real life. The realist dramatist Thomas William Robertson in Britain, Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg in Scandinavia, and Anton Chekhov and Maksim Gorky in Russia, among others, as well as Eugene O'Neill, in the United States of America, rejected the complex and artificial plotting of the well-made play and instead present a theatrical verisimilitude that would more objectively portray life as recognizable to the audience. This is accomplished through realistic settings and natural speech which give form to the general philosophy of naturalism which is, roughly, the view that man's life is shaped entirely by his social and physical environment.^[1]

[edit] Notes