Spanish Theatre After 1936: Postwar Trends, Key Authors and Works

Tatro after 1936

After the war, the dramatic situation was shaped by the time constraints of the era, the "please the public" demands of the market, and strict censorship (the censura). The Tatro of this period can be classified as follows:

1) Immediate postwar theatre (1940s)

a) The triumphant commercial theatre

The commercial theatre of the decade followed these trends:

• High comedy of the Benavente style. Its works share some traits: a lack of depth in the treatment of its themes, a focus on plot over ideas, and a triumphalist, conformist outlook.
• Authors of this trend include Edgar Neville, Alfonso Paso and others.
• Theatre of humour or comic theatre, whose most important authors are Jardiel Poncela and Miguel Mihura. Their works distinguish themselves through disconnected situations and absurd, implausible scenarios. Some of their works, such as Eloísa está debajo de un almendro (1940), Tres sombreros de copa (1932) and Maribel y la extraña familia (1959), are among the most representative of the genre.

Miguel Mihura began his career in the theatre world and founded the magazine La Codorniz (1941), a reference publication of humour. He also collaborated as a screenwriter.

This theatre is a absurd parody of social conventions and of the topical issues in which it developed. Its dramatic trajectory is marked by Tres sombreros de copa (written in 1932 and premiered in 1952), a work that was not well received by the public and was forced to wait decades before reaching the stage. Other important commercial works include Sublime decisión and Melocotón en almíbar.

b) Committed theatre

In 1949, with the premiere of Historia de una escalera by Antonio Buero Vallejo, the first postwar production of significant influence in Spanish theatre appeared. Buero Vallejo is considered the leading intellectual playwright of committed theatre, and his use of techniques that immerse the spectator in the drama made him one of the most important figures of his time.

His production can be divided into the following moments:

1. An existential focus, observed in his early works, together with a realist technique. Example: Historia de una escalera (1949).
2. A predominantly social focus. To avoid censorship, Buero Vallejo developed historical drama. Some examples are Las meninas and Llegada de los dioses. Those years were also marked by the effects of the Civil War on the characters and by the evolution of dramatic technique, including the use of multiple spaces and immersion techniques.
3. A focus on technical experimentation, reflecting the Spanish concern of the era.

Literature and important works

The foundation of committed theatre is credited to Alfonso Sastre, born in Madrid in 1926 into a Catholic family with a conservative background. He began his theatrical career in 1953 with La mordaza and Escuadra hacia la muerte. Buero Vallejo remained at the centre of controversy over the ability of theatre to change society, or its inability to do so.

As a playwright, Sastre sought new dramatic formulas to serve his concerns. From the 1960s he wrote tragedias complejas, in which the spectator is meant to identify with the work. He used irony, extra-verbal elements, fragmentation of the scenes and the intervention of the narrator. Notable works include La batalla and La taberna fantástica.

1.2) Structuralist generation (1950s)

This generation includes a series of authors who undertook the task of renewing theatre in the 1950s. Their themes address injusticias sociales (the life of the proletariat, hypocrisy and related topics). Their language is violent and defiant, without euphemism. These attitudes prevented the staging of several works, among them those by Laurel, Elena and Carlos Muñiz.