engleski

Who will be the king or a directors' merciless fight for power against playwright in the European theater

Playwright was an undisputed king of the theatre until second half of the 20th century when a new theatre profession – theatre director - took over. From the end of the 19th century (and the Saxe Mainingen troupe) director was a person who organized a performance as a logical artistic unit. Soon he become interpreter of the play (Stanislavski) and with Appia and Craig creator of the performance. These two lines coexisted until the end of the first half of the 20th century when directors-creators took over the European theater. They become complete creators of the performances using all elements to express their own visions. Play became just an element of the performance and directors decided to cast it out. Actually, they expelled a playwright as the old king. The power positions of the theatre directors are easily verifiable – awards (all important European awards are given to directors), important positions in the theatre (most of the theater managers and arts directors are theatre directors) and public knowledge in general (most of the countries lived in the notion that they do not have playwrights at all). Directors developed certain strategies in the fight against playwrights - in language (play become pretext, libretto, scenario, idea, script), in theatre conventions (casting logical story and positive emotions out from the theatre), directing classic with new interpretations, finding some collaborators (dramaturges) who could replace the playwrights, and finally getting the playwrights in a completely submissive position – something as a dramaturge of his own text. In that fight the playwright’s allies were also attacked – directors who staged contemporary plays with respect and audience that always cried for the story and “good plays”. First were called invisible directors and were expelled from the big boys club of European theater directors (didn’t get important jobs, awards and so on) and audience was proclaimed stupid and in need of education and explanation. The dominant esthetic got the name – directors’ theatre (and later postdramatic theater) but it led European theatre into problems at the end of 20th century. Cold, visual, private, non communicative directors' visions with unrecognizable characters and no story at all were appreciated on the festivals and in the critics’ circles but audience had a problem with it and left theater. But directors had a solution! For a short time, everybody was searching for a new European drama. The search, led by directors, brought plays full of explicit violence and filthy language on the European stages, until everybody got fed up with new plays! The article discusses the possible reasons for such situation and reason for audience’s need of playwrights who are actually an inevitable element of a story and catharsis.

theater director, playwright, European theatre, 20 cen

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