Spanish Theatre Post-Civil War Developments

1. The Theatre After the Civil War

After the Civil War, the picture of the theatre in Spain was not encouraging. The most innovative figures, Valle-Inclán and García Lorca, were dead. Others had been exiled. Arniches, Benavente, and Marquina continued to write for a few years. Thus, in the war years, the dominant theatre was one for an audience that understood the scene as an escape. This theatre was well built, within a bourgeois dramatic conception. However, its works were little innovative and offered little social or historical criticism. The topics were not committed: infidelity in marriage, the rebelliousness of children, etc. This kind of bourgeois theatre was dominant until 1949, when Buero Vallejo premiered Historia de una escalera. Even then, censorship did not permit much more.

In line with this theatre, but living together since the 50s with other more critical and novel voices, we find Joaquín Calvo Sotelo, Jaime Salom, José María Pemán, and Juan Ignacio Luca de Tena. Before the war, Enrique Jardiel Poncela and Miguel Mihura were the best representatives of humour.

2. The Theatre in Exile

After the Civil War, authors such as Max Aub, Jacinto Grau, and Rafael Alberti were exiled. In Argentina, Alejandro Casona wrote much of his work. It has often been affirmed that the best Spanish theatre of the first postwar decade was written outside Spain.

3. The Theatre Critic

The premiere of works by Antonio Buero Vallejo marked a change and a profound renewal in the Spanish theatre. It broke new ground and offered new possibilities. In the 50s and 60s, the so-called realistic generation implemented a critical theatre, looking for a social commitment to the individual and reality. These authors understood the scene as a means of agitating and transforming Spanish society. They showed their dissent in a room full of intent, made more realistic, or through a shift towards avant-garde theatre dyes. Not all of these playwrights could openly express themselves, and some failed to fulfill their intended social function.

Key Playwrights:

• Alfonso Sastre
• Buero Vallejo
• Laura Olmo

4. Hacia Un Nuevo Theatre (Towards a New Theatre)

In the mid-60s, new names tried to overcome social realism through an avant-garde and experimental theatre. These include: Antonio Gala, Fernando Arrabal, and Francisco Nieva.

5. The Independent Theatre

By the mid-60s, as an alternative to commercial theatre, various groups of so-called emerging theatre emerged.

These groups sought new techniques and formulas that contributed to the renovation of the theatre and spectatorship. They consisted of people who made theatre their life, who understood it as a joint effort to act in different places and for different audiences. The components of the group engaged in all aspects of assembly and representation. They functioned as a collective enterprise. In this conception of theatre and show, the text became less relevant.