20th Centaury Theatre By Aya Bseiso

My Timeline In 1904 Irish poet W.B Yeats and his friend, playwright and folklorist lady Augusta Gregory, co-founded the Abbey theatre in Dublin to present woks by Irish playwrights on Irish slejects Rabindrath Tagore was the first modern Indian dramatist to achieve a world wide reputation, receiving the Nobel Prize for literature in In the 1920s and 30s reacting against what they saw as over- emphasis on artistic illusion and aesthetic emotion in theatre, two Germans, director Erwin Piscator and playwright Bertolt Brecht, went out to create a new style “epic theatre” or “ Theater of alienation,” that would serve a Marxist social purpose of educating audiences. Arthur miller Perhaps the most intelligent of 20th century American playwrights, Miller is best known for his Death of a Salesman. First preformed in 1949 and since produced to great acclaim worldwide, the play successfully combines realism and symbolic expression in a study of personnel wealth versus personal value. Edward Bond was challenged by the government for unlawful performances in the mid 1960s,Bond’s savagely realist plays Saved and Early Morning created a debate ultimately led to the end of censorship, which had plagued Shakespeare's days. Bond’s plays always challenged the political status quo in Britain. Between the 1970s-2000 August Wilson's commitment to portraying African Americans realistically and sensitively and to “raise consciousness through theatre, ”has produced some of the finest plays of the contemporary theatre”, including Black Bottom, Fences, Joe turners com and go, and so on. Each of these plays is set in a different decade,and taken together,to form a cycle presenting African American life in the 20th centaury. In the 1990s creating political theatre in the tradition of Bertolt Brecht, British playwright Caryl Churchill writes plays with feminist and socialist themes, such as Top Girls, which feature famous women from the past who defied conventions.

Characteristics  Melodrama was the main form of theatre during the 19 th century. The main characteristics of melodrama were:  The use of music to raise emotions  Morals were much simpler  Episodic; in series  2-5 acts never more than 5  The use of special effects

Theatre Developments  Gas lightening made it possible to darken theatre and light the stage  Costumes became historically accurate  Scenery became elaborate and realistic  During one of the plays of Hannibal, live elephants rumbled across the stage

Notable actors and playwrights Widowers' Houses Catiline Beyond the Horizon

Questions for review  In what year did W.B Yeats and Augusta Gregory co- founded the Abbey theatre?  Who was Rabindranath Tagore?  What was one of Eugene O'Neil's plays?

Bibliography     chdmuseum.nic.in/art_gallery/images/rabindran.. 

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