Covering a period roughly from the 1880s to the 1930s, modernist theatre is an umbrella term that can be applied to the work of playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg in the last decades of the nineteenth century, as well as to the work of the formally experimental historical avant-garde in the early decades of the twentieth century. Modernist theatre and performance experimented with the form and function of theatre and performance as well as with content. Early modernists promoted naturalism and symbolism, borrowing from science and Darwinism in the case of naturalism, and mysticism in the case of symbolism. Historical avant-garde modernist theatre and performance often operated on the basis of anti-logic, dream imagery, nonsense or guttural language and a disregard for the linearity of narrative. Modernist theatre and performance might include works considered, for example, as naturalist, symbolist, surrealist, futurist, Dadaist or expressionist. Whilst these might all be radically different from one another, they all exist under the same umbrella term.
Image: Odin Teatret Archives. Performance: The Gospel According to Oxyrhyncus. Director: Eugenio Barba. Photo © Tony D’Urso