Modern Classics Theory of the Modern Stage: From Artaud To Zola An Introduction To Modern Theatre And Drama

by Eric Bentley (Editor)

In The Theory of the Modern Stage, leading drama critic, Eric Bentley, brings together landmark writings by dramatists, directors and thinkers who have had a profound effect on the theatre since the mid nineteenth century, from Adolphe Appia to Émile Zola.

Here, Antonin Artaud sets out a manifesto for a Theatre of Cruelty, Bertolt Brecht discusses the tension between entertainment and instruction in experimental drama and Bernard Shaw defends himself as a realist, while W. B. Yeats describes the creation of a People's Theatre. The ideas of theatre's great makers are revealed by their best expositors, as Eric Bentley writes about Stanislavsky belief in the importance of emotional memory when creating a dramatic role and Arthur Symons considers Richard Wagner and the relationship between genius, art and nature.

Genres: Theatre, Art, Theory, Nonfiction, Drama, Plays

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

He was a theater critic and translator.

Taught freshman English at UCLA for a year. And that is where he met the "German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who had recently immigrated to the United States after fleeing Nazi Germany and was unknown in this country. The two of them became close, and it was Bentley who translated a lot of Brecht's work into English and helped establish his career in America."

source - American Public Media

Reviews

[Daniel Gallimore · Rating 4 out of 5]

484 pages of modern dramatic theory (much of it translated material) may not be everyone's cup of tea, but the writing has an heroic quality as the dramaturgs battle against the dictates of fashion and sometimes difficult political circumstances, and in theory's original sense of contemplation ('theoria') Appia on stage lighting and so on become resoundingly poetic. Eric Bentley was a Brechtian (he first met Brecht in 1942 and died in 2020 at the age of 103), but for my money the figure who stands literally and spiritually at the heart of this book is Stanislavsky with his insistence that acting is not about lying convincingly but can actually reveal the actor's inner truth. Given the topic's complexity, Lukacs' argument that in the relativistic modern age drama is no longer able to achieve 'the great and spontaneous unity of ethics and aesthetics' that is taken for granted in the ancients and in Shakespeare is also helpful.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hhmm.. Welp, my copy is a hardback from 1972 - but this edition is close enuf. This has writings by Antonin Artaud, Bertold Brecht, & E. Gordon Craig - amongst many others - but these 3 are probably enuf to get across the idea of why I'm giving it a high rating. Craig, if I remember correctly, proposed a theater of all sets, lighting & motion - W/O actors. Now, I skimming thru his section of this bk & I see no reference to that & I don't know if Craig actually ever realized those ideas or even if I'm confused about the whole business. Nonetheless, it's largely b/c of my association of Craig w/ such things that I give this bk the rating I do. At any rate, this is probably the largest concentration of theater theory that I've ever read & it's important to me for that alone. I've gone thru the "plays" section of my library - picking out the ones I've read to list here on GoodReads. It's interesting to see the collection of plays that I have & to then see how few of them I've read. It reminds me that I don't like reading plays much. &, as w/ all my attempts to scratch the surface of what I've read, it makes me want to read MORE, MORE!

[Libby · Rating 3 out of 5]

have only read "Naturalism in the Theater"- Zola and "The Sociology of Modern Drama" -Lukacs

a good collection of criticism to have

[Wendy]

I know I read some of this, way back in my drama days, as some of it is underlined and circled. Ah drama classes, how I miss you!