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

Theatre 223
what they are not—can quickly lose their vitality and
turn into mere critiques of art rather than art itself.
Within months of the symbolist advances, therefore,
symbolism as a movement was deserted by founders and
followers alike. Where did they go? Off to found newer
movements: futurism, dadaism, idealism, impressionism,
expressionism, constructivism, surrealism, and perhaps a
hundred other ism-labeled movements now lost to time.
The first third of the twentieth century, indeed, was
an era of theatrical isms, rich with continued experimentation
by movements self-consciously seeking
to redefine theatrical art. Ism theatres sprang up like
mushrooms, each with its own manifesto, each promising
a better art—if not a better world. It was a vibrant
era for the theatre, for out of this explosion of isms the
aesthetics of dramatic art took on a new social and political
significance in the cultural capitals of Europe and
America. A successful play was not merely a play but
rather the forum for a cause, and behind that cause was
a body of zealous supporters and adherents who shared
a deep commitment.
Nothing quite like that ism spirit exists today, for we
have lost the social involvement that can turn an aesthetic
movement into a profound collective belief. In
fact, one of the most prominent theatre movements in
recent history, postmodernism, might be thought of as
promoting “the death of isms” rather than a specific
“ism” itself. Rather than create a singular event or
communicate a unified point of view, postmodernism
believes nothing is truly original. Instead, everything
we see or hear onstage is just “quoted,” much as a college
essay quotes its sources. As such, while postmodernism
intensifies key antirealist ideas—most notably
a failure of communication, a break from recognizable
reality, and an awareness of its status as theatre—it also
abandons any attempt to ask the profound questions that
characterized movements such as symbolism. A recent
production of Hamlet by The Wooster Group exemplifies
the postmodern style: the company performed
Shakespeare’s tragedy in front of a projection of a 1964
film version of the same play—and the film was, in
turn, spliced together from recordings of three live performances
of a Broadway production starring Richard
Burton. Similarly, the postmodern director and playwright
Richard Foreman’s Idiot Savant, in 2009, begins
with a disembodied voice reciting a list of comically
diverse objects that will appear during the performance:
two rowboats, a bloody towel, a spider, a golf ball, and
a snake. Both of these productions arrange disparate
elements without any connection—in fact, the lack of
any connection is the point.
Willem Dafoe as the idiot and a friendly “Duck” tease the audience in
Richard Foreman’s postmodernist Idiot Savant, presented by Foreman’s
Ontological-Hysteric Company performing at the New York Public
Theatre in 2009. © Sara Krulwich/The New York Times/Redux
Isms have not completely vanished, however. They
may have new names and be directed to new aims, but
today’s theatre movements retain the fundamental spirit
of the artistic exploration of the isms. The experiments
and discoveries of those early days of the twentieth
century and the nonrealistic spirit of symbolism itself
survive under a variety of formats such as ritual theatre,
poetic theatre, holy theatre, theatre of cruelty, existentialist
theatre, art theatre, avant-garde theatre, theatre
of the absurd, theatre of alienation, dance theatre, and
immersive theatre. These present-day groupings, unlike
the early isms, are critic-defined rather than artistdefined.
Most theatre artists today reject any “grouping”
nomenclature whatever. However difficult it may
be to pin down their specific characteristics, though,
the thriving and diverse artists that continue to move
beyond realism can all trace their origins back to the
drive in the late nineteenth century to rebel against convention,
challenge traditional theatrical representation,
and expand the potential of theatrical language. And
that expansion has come in a variety of contemporary
anti-realistic stylizations.