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Wednesday, June 11, 2014

The Research Continues

Adrienne Kennedy:

“After I read and saw Blood Wedding I changed my ideas about what a play was. Ibsen, Chekhov, O’Neill, and even Williams fell away. Never again would I try to set a play in ‘living room,’ never again would I be afraid to have my characters talk in a nonrealistic way, and would abandon the realistic set for a greater dream setting. It was a turning point.”

In other words, what is known in the theater as "naturalism."

2 comments:

Vance Maverick said...

There were other anti-naturalistic models available -- one question, possibly not answerable, would be what gave Lorca's plays their impact.

Jonathan said...

For her, it was probably just good timing. We can easily see that there is Pirandellian metatheater, Beckettian absurdism, Brechtian distancing, Artaud's theater of cruelty, expressionism, Yeats' poetic theater, etc... Bodas de sangre happened to be the play that made her renounce naturalism, rather than a play in any other category. I think I can explain why based on other patterns of influence with Lorca, for example, his influence on other black writers.