Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Chapter
8
The Modern
Theatre
© Carol Rosegg Photography
MODERN DRAMA CAN BE SAID to date back to
about 1875. Its roots lie deep in the social and political
upheavals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
a time characterized by revolution. Revolutions in the
United States and Europe, along with the more global
shift to industrial economic systems, deeply changed
the political, social, and economic structures of the
Western world. In the wake of these developments
came an explosion of public communication and transportation;
a tremendous expansion of literacy, democracy,
and public and private wealth; and a universal
shift from countryside to city. These forces combined
to create mass urban populations hungering for social
communion and stimulation: a fertile ground for artistic
growth.
Simultaneously, an intellectual revolution—in philosophy,
science, social understanding, and religion—
altered fundamental ideas of our place in the world.
The accepted wisdom of the previous eras became
riddled with doubt: Was there really a divine power?
Are we even in control of our own destinies? Is there
even such thing as destiny, or is life simply random?
The certainty of the Royal Era, when the divine right
to rule was unquestioned, appeared ludicrous in an age
governed by scientific investigation and skepticism.
The clear-sightedness of a playwright such as Molière
seemed simplistic in an age of soul-searching and selfdoubting
philosophies. The intellectual revolution was
an exceedingly complex phenomenon that occurred in
many spheres of thought and was to gain momentum
with each passing decade. It continues to this day.
The Copernican theory had already made clear that
human beings do not stand at the geographic center
of the universe but rather that our world, indeed our
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