ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three generations of modernist theatre, which succeeded each other at roughly 30-year intervals: 1880-1910, 1910-1940, and 1940-1970. In the first period, Ibsen, Chekhov, and a few other playwrights worked within the conventions of realism to question the realist theatre’s ability to represent the many dimensions of real experience. The high modernists of the 1910-1940 period, which included W. B. Yeats and Luigi Pirandello, mostly abandoned realism to constitute separate aesthetic realms through which they could transcend the problems of modern life. The last generation of modernists in the West, under pressure to accommodate the reality effects of film and radio, infused modernism with new modes of theatricality that were grounded in a modified realism. Between 1940 and 1970, modernist directors worked with such dramatists as Jean Anouilh and Harold Pinter to craft productions that continued to embrace many of the aesthetic views of the high modernists. Post-war modernism also had a significant impact on theatrical criticism and theory. A final section of this chapter examines early Japanese modernism, which was heavily influenced by the dramas of Ibsen and Chekhov. As this overview suggests, Chapter 9 will focus primarily
on significant playwrights and their plays. Although we can discuss only a few of them, we have chosen dramas that were widely influential between 1880 and 1970.
