Realism

REALISM

 The movement towards realism in the theater occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century.

 Realism began as a reaction to the excessively contrived, sentimental, and didactic melodramas that dominated drama in nineteenth-century Europe and America.

 Realism began in Europe with playwrights like Ibsen, Strindberg, and Shaw, reaching America a few years later where it found its fullest American expression in Eugene O’Neill.

 Realists take a mimetic approach to theater, striving to create the illusion of everyday life on stage, with the audience’s eavesdropping on a slice of life.

 Realists tend to depict the middle, lower, and lower-middle classes : their work, family life, language, dress, and problems.

 They prefer contemporary settings.

 In a direct response to melodrama, realists strive to create complex characters, to make internal conflict as dramatic as external conflict.

 They prefer the open ending, which does not resolve all the play’s questions and sometimes leaves in doubt the future of the protagonist. The resolution or denouement is generally short in realistic dramas and virtually non-existent sometimes.