1. Naturalism
A movement in late 19th-century drama that aimed to replace the artificial romantic style with
accurate depictions of ordinary people in plausible situations. In attempting to create a perfect
illusion of reality, playwrights and directors rejected dramatic conventions that had existed
since the beginnings of drama. Naturalistic role play is used within theatrical performances to
demonstrate to the audience or show the audience how this would appear in real life. No still
images are used as this does not show the full quality of the piece of drama.
Naturalism was first advocated explicitly by Émile Zola in his 1880 essay entitled Naturalism
on the Stage.
Stanislavski
Born in 1863 in Moscow, Russia, Constantin Stanislavski started working in theatre
as a teen, going on to become an acclaimed thespian and director of stage
productions. He co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre in 1897 and developed a
performance process known as method acting, allowing actors to use their personal
histories to express authentic emotion and create rich characters.
He was frustrated by what he considered to be ‘mechanical acting (a performance
learnt by the actor and then performed night after night.). He thought actors needed
to ‘become’ the characters in order to keep their performance spontaneous and
fresh. Therefore he created “The system” a method of training for his actors to
follow in order to fully become their role. Some of his techniques are still used in
acting today.
Conventions
 Stage time equals real time – eg. three hours in the theatre equals
three hours for the characters in the world of the play
 Costumes, sets and props are historically accurate and very
detailed, attempting to offer a photographic reproduction of reality
(‘slice of life’)
 The action of the play takes place in a single location over
the time frame of a single day
 Jumps in time and/or place between acts or scenes is not allowed
 Naturalism explores the concept of scientific determinism (spawning from
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution) – characters in the play are shaped by
their circumstances and controlled by external forces such as hereditary or their
social and economic environment
 Often characters in naturalistic plays are considered victims of their own
circumstance and this is why they behave in certain ways (they are seen as
helpless products of their environment)
 Characters are often working class/lower class (as opposed to the mostly middle class
characters of realistic dramas)
 Naturalistic plays regularly explore sordid subject matter previously considered taboo on
the stage in any serious manner (eg suicide, poverty, prostitution)
.
Plays of Naturalism
• A Bitter Fate (1859)
• A Doll's House; Henrik Ibsen (1879)
• The Power of Darkness (1886)
• The Father (1887)
• Miss Julie; August Strindberg (1888)
• Creditors; August Strindberg (1889)