Opinions on surrealism

[LilBwayLady]

Posted: 5/19/08 at 2:46pm

In your own opinion what would you guys say the most popular and most controversal play/musical in the surrealism era was?
This is for a paper im writing for school and I have some ideas but I would really appriciate others input as well.

Posted: 5/19/08 at 2:48pm

Lightbulb, fish school bus. Doormat, under garments, night light.

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 5/19/08 at 2:50pm

No Exit by Sartre.

Act Without Words I & II by Beckett.

[LilBwayLady]

Posted: 5/19/08 at 2:51pm

Thank you! This is really going to help me out! : )

[kyleorlando]

Posted: 5/19/08 at 4:57pm

Here is an excerpt from the NYT that might help you out:
NYTIMES

[The Distinctive Baritone]

Posted: 5/19/08 at 7:44pm

I'm no theatre history expert, but I think the term "surrealism" refers more to painting (i.e. Salvador Dali) than to theatre. In the theatre we have the genre of "absurdism," a.k.a. Theatre of the Absurd. There are lots of variations on non-realistic theatre that can fall under this category, ranging from Samuel Beckett to "Theatre of Cruelty," "Theatre of the Oppressed" (look those up), and certain modern playwrights like Sarah Kane. It's a pretty big topic! But trying to find stuff under the genre of Theatre of the Absurd or absurdist theatre will get you farther in your research than "surrealism" probably. Good luck!

EDIT: After skimming through that link above, it looks like there really was a genre of theatre called surrealism, but it looks like it was really more of a French thing. Perhaps Theatre of the Absurd was the American version of that, resulting from the first performances of Samuel Beckett in America. Something you might want to look up too! Maybe you can talk about how the French (including Beckett, who lived in Paris and wrote his plays in French initially even though he was of Irish decent) influenced American absurdist theatre. Also look into "avant guarde" theatre, which I think is basically the same thing as aburdist theatre, although there are probably some differences.
Updated On: 5/19/08 at 07:44 PM

[professor]

Posted: 5/19/08 at 8:34pm

I'm not sure what you mean by "popular" and "controversial" in the original post, but some of the more important/influential surrealist playwrights (all Europeans who also overlapped with the symbolist and expressionist movements) were:

Maurice Maeterlinck
August Strindberg
Alfred Jarry
Guillaume Apollinaire
Federico Garcia Lorca
Antonin Artuad

Surrealism was not the same thing as the Theatre of the Absurd-- in fact the surrealist movement predated Absurdism by 30-40 years.

[The Distinctive Baritone]

Posted: 5/19/08 at 10:22pm

Well, shows how much I know

[son_of_a_gunn_25]

Posted: 5/19/08 at 10:27pm

You should also look into Dada as well. Surrealism is very much an outgrowth of Dada.

Updated On: 5/19/08 at 10:27 PM

[A Director]

Posted: 5/19/08 at 10:41pm

If you want to focus on one play, I suggest Ubu roi by Alfred Jarry. On opening night in 1896, a riot broke out in the theatre.

The term Theatre of the Absurd had nothing to do with Beckett's plays being done in this country. It is the title of Martin Esslin's 1961 book. Waiting For Godot was first done in the U.S. in 1956. By the way, many playwrights included in Esslin's book said their plays were not absurd.

Theatre of the Oppressed is a dramatic theory and performance technique "created" by Brazilian Augusto Boal.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/19/08 at 11:41pm

I all begins and ends with Polish playwright Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz.