Class rundown: Ok, so this week we were lookign at naturalism and realism as a theatrical style, Irene (another member of my class) and myself had to do a presentation involving naturalism in some way or form. Irene made up a really good power point but my sucked in comparisen so i just decided to use my notes but i generally just ended up waffling on abotu things. We spoke about Irene spoke abotu realism and then i went on to naturalism talking mainly about Emile Zola and the Theatre Libre, then quite briefly spoke about Chekhov; Irene finshed the presentation talkign about Stanislaski and finally naturalism today. Before the presentation we had a test on ghosts and a conversation revolving around ghosts and naturalism then we started looking at one of the plays which we will be takign scenes from for our end of semester show case.
Naturalism and Realism: Naturalism and realism are perfromance styles which look at trying to recreate life as realistically as possible on the stage. The difference between the two is difficult to identify because from text to text they will often use them interchangable or have speciffic definitions for them both. Realism to me is just a set of conventions and techniques which attempt to portray acting in a realistic manner, pycholgoically and pyhsically. Naturalism on the other hand i see as a distinct movement with speciffic purpose which uses realistic theare conventions and styles.Â
Naturalism was started by a man Emila Zola who due to the scientiffic, political, medical, sciological, economic break throughs during the late 19th century and the advent of the scietiffic method wanted to use litreature and the stage as a place to experiment on society and hopefully cure it of any ills. He believed that this could be done if theatre was produced in a way that seemed so real as if nature so that people would understand the problems with society and act on them. Zola not really reaching his own mark (he notes this is his book Naturalism in the Theatre (1881)) but he left the movement open for playwrights such as Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg and Shaw to take the movement further and create the style we know as naturalism. Directers such as Antoine and Stanislavsky were particuliary important in advancing the production style and acting methods assocaited with naturalism respectivly. The issues explored in many of these texts were extremely provocative and sensitive issues for the day and i can see myself why some were censored but i can also why the playwrights wrote about the thems and issues they did. The idealogical issues that began arrising at the end of the 19th century needed to eb addressed and what better way then to reahc the people then by the theatre, a strong medium of the day.