Spanish Theater: Early 20th Century Trends and Authors

Spanish Theater in the Early 20th Century

The Second Decade: Noucentisme

During the second decade, the theater exhibited Noucentista characteristics: rationalism, anti-romanticism, a preference for classical and intellectualized expression of emotions, a defense of pure art, and works directed towards a knowledgeable, sophisticated audience. There was extreme concern for the design, structure, and language of the work.

Leading Authors of the Second Decade

• Ramon del Valle-Inclán: In his primitive stage, he wrote works like Romance of Wolves and Eagle Crest. Their common features are violence, cruelty, brutality, destruction, passion, myths, and superstitions. There are plenty of marginal and strange beings. During his time of artificial distancing, he wrote plays in verse, including April Story and The Bewitched. They are inspired by classical theatrical tradition and atmosphere for topical reasons.
• Ramón Gómez de la Serna: In his youth, he tried to participate in the renewal of a stagnant Spanish theater. He included his famous greguerías, humorous lyrical images that establish unusual and illogical relationships between two concepts. The topics are very diverse: philosophical, lyrical, humorous, and childlike ingenuity. His most important work is The Media Loved, which was not understood at the time.

The Third Decade: Avant-garde Influence

During the third decade, the theater was heavily influenced by the Avant-garde, especially Surrealism, with an interest in the subconscious and feelings, and Expressionism, where art should reveal the inner reality by distorting its features. All this was combined with forms, rhythms, and the style of neopopularism.

Leading Authors of the Third Decade

• Ramon del Valle-Inclán: He developed the Esperpentos stage, defined as a mixture of the serious and comical, the sublime and vulgar, the coexistence of refined and vulgar language, characters as puppets or cartoons, the systematic distortion of reality, and a tone of farce and satire. His most important work is Luces de Bohemia, the first grotesque work. It offers a distorted view of human life and society through its star, Max Estrella, a blind poet who is impoverished and marginalized as a writer.
• Federico García Lorca: He wrote avant-garde works such as The Public, which deals with the theme of homosexual love and the problem of conventional theater, and Comedy Untitled, which raises the need for a revolutionary theater. He also wrote more aesthetically conventional works like Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba, whose common theme is the social marginalization of women.