Great Minds on Theatre
K S Sivakumaran
]Theatre is one of the performing arts, this we know. But theatre
also means the place a drama is staged. Or even a film is screened.
Drama means basically a play by great dramatists. Many students may not
be aware of such distinctions. Just as much the drama or play is
important the performances and the direction of such plays are also
important.
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Modern drama is the drama of the bourgeoisie |
Some of the great producers or directors of western theatre had
influenced theatre in other countries as well, including our own people
of Sinhala and Tamil theatre.
If the young among our readers are not familiar with these artists,
we shall mention the names of some of them:
Adoldphe Appia, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, E Gordon Craig, Lugi
Pirandello, Bernard Shaw, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Richard Wagner, W B
Yeats and Emile Zola.
In the last quarter of the last century and in the first decade of
the present century few more considerably important directors have come
to the scene, knowledgeable critics say. Eric Bentley is a fine critic.
To know about the Theory of Modern Stage, the young and uninitiated are
encouraged to read his book that was first published in 1968 and
reprinted in 1970 by Penguin.
Among the interesting essays included in this book is one by George
Lukacs.
His theory would be of great help to understand the Sociology of
Modern Drama. Lukacs was a Hungarian and he wrote in his own language,
Hungarian.
One of the finest publications in English The Tulane Drama Review.
His essay was translated into English and published somewhere in the
middle of 1960s. Perhaps the TDR may be available in the American Centre
library in Colombo or Kandy.
Let me quote just a few sentences from the essay of Lukacs I recorded
in my notebook some four decades ago for your notice:
“Modern drama is the drama of the bourgeoisie; modern drama is
bourgeois drama.” |
