Stylization of Commedia dell’arte in Latvian and Foreign Modernist Drama and Theatre: Methods and Sources

Abstract

The chosen research subject – stylization of commedia dell’arte in Latvian and foreign Modernist drama and theatre – is a little studied theme in Latvian literary and theatre theory. Unrealistic representations (which are connected with theatricalization) are key features of modern drama which manifests each of the modernism movements in different ways. The most important of these that will be discussed are commedia dell’arte stylization in drama and theatre, theatricalization and the principle of theatre in theatre or play in play; balagan, life and art balaganization etc.

Commedia dell’arte stylization will be analyzed with examples from selected plays by Latvian authors who represent different types of drama – Ādolfs Alunāns, Rūdolfs Blaumanis, Elza Stērste, Austra Mētere-Ozoliņa and Valdemārs Dambergs. Theatricalization elements also are in Latvian authors’ plays that belong to different modernism movements – Rainis, Jānis Jaunsudrabinš, Mārtiņš Zīverts, Edvards Vulfs, Linards Laicens, Leons Paegle, Kārlis Dziļleja etc. Foreign authors in whose works one can analyze theatricalization include such dramatists as Luigi Pirandello, Frank Wedekind, August Strindberg, Morris Maeterlinck, Arthur Schnitzler, Federico Garcia Lorca, Alexander Block etc. One group of these foreign authors directly influenced Latvian dramatists, because their plays had been regularly staged in the Latvian theatres; while the second group influenced them partly because their aesthetics typologically coincide with the Latvian authors’ aesthetics and aims.