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48-472: Eugène Brieux ( French: [øʒɛn bʁijø] ; 19 January 1858 – 6 December 1932) was a French dramatist . Brieux grew up as the son of a carpenter in modest circumstances in the Temple District of Paris (3rd Arrondissement). His schooling was limited to attending the "École communale" and "École primaire supérieure" ("École Turgot"), which he completed at the age of 13. Nonetheless, he

96-475: A murder mystery play which is the longest-running West End show , it has by far the longest run of any play in the world, with its 29,500th performance having taken place as of February 2024. Contemporary playwrights in the United States are affected by recent declines in theatre attendance. No longer the only outlet for serious drama or entertaining comedies, theatrical productions must use ticket sales as

144-531: A Parisian shop-girl. Later plays are La Couvée (1903, acted privately at Rouen in 1893), Maternité (1904), La Déserteuse (1904), in collaboration with M. Jean Sigaux , and Les Hannetons , a comedy in three acts (1906). Brieux wrote four more plays in the ensuing decade. The first was La Foi, for which Camille Saint-Saëns wrote incidental music in 1909. It was presented in Monte Carlo on 10 April, and at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, on 20 September. This

192-614: A few years as a reporter in Dieppe, he became editor-in-chief of Le Nouvelliste in Rouen . In Rouen he also staged some less important plays without losing sight of a career in Paris. He found encouragement when his play Ménage des Artistes was performed at the Théâtre Libre in 1890. But it was only two years later that he finally made his breakthrough with the play Blanchette , which was performed over

240-507: A form of playwright. Outside of the Western world there is Indian classical drama , with one of the oldest known playwrights being Śudraka , whose attributed plays can be dated to the second century BC. The Nāṭya Shāstra , a text on the performing arts from between 500BC-500AD, categorizes playwrights as being among the members of a theatre company, although playwrights were generally the highest in social status, with some being kings. In

288-459: A hundred times by the theater manager and actor André Antoine and also toured the provinces. On that basis Brieux returned to Paris, where he wrote articles for Patrie, Gaulois and Le Figaro . Between 1893 and 1899 he also worked as a theater and music critic for La Vie Contemporaine . Above all, however, he now wrote play after play. At first his works emphasized the comic, but his so-called 'Sturm und Drang [‘Storm and Stress’] period' began with

336-419: A normal part of rehearsals with actors. Antoine believed each play had its unique mood or atmosphere and he hardly ever reused sets and settings. He also literally believed in the notion of removing the fourth wall. With some plays he would rehearse in the space with four walls around the action, natural set and actors and then decide which fourth wall to remove and thus deciding which side or perspective to place

384-553: A pejorative sense by Ben Jonson to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson uses the word in his Epigram 49, which is thought to refer to John Marston or Thomas Dekker : Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and so were regarded as the province of poets. This view was held as late as the early 19th century. The term "playwright" later again lost this negative connotation. The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are

432-635: A playwright, winning awards for his play The Phoenix at both the New York International Fringe Festival in 1999 and the Route 66 American Playwriting Competition in 2000. Today, theatre companies have new play development programs meant to develop new American voices in playwriting. Many regional theatres have hired dramaturges and literary managers in an effort to showcase various festivals for new work, or bring in playwrights for residencies. Funding through national organizations, such as

480-525: A source of income, which has caused many of them to reduce the number of new works being produced. For example, Playwrights Horizons produced only six plays in the 2002–03 seasons, compared with thirty-one in 1973–74. Playwrights commonly encounter difficulties in getting their shows produced and often cannot earn a living through their plays alone, leading them to take up other jobs to supplement their incomes. Many playwrights are also film makers . For instance, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock began his career as

528-558: A stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, which was to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities , of action, place, and time. This meant that the playwright had to construct the play so that its "virtual" time would not exceed 24 hours, that it would be restricted to a single setting, and that there would be no subplots. Other terms, such as verisimilitude and decorum, circumscribed

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576-615: Is Hans Sachs (1494–1576) who wrote 198 dramatic works. In England, The Second Shepherds' Play of the Wakefield Cycle is the best known early farce. However, farce did not appear independently in England until the 16th century with the work of John Heywood (1497–1580). Playwright William Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Most playwrights of

624-438: Is an archaic English term for a craftsperson or builder (as in a wheelwright or cartwright ). The words combine to indicate a person who has "wrought" words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form—a play. (The homophone with "write" is coincidental.) The first recorded use of the term "playwright" is from 1605, 73 years before the first written record of the term "dramatist". It appears to have been first used in

672-608: Is commonly seen as an extension to this where an attempt is made to create a perfect illusion of reality. Naturalism is often said to be driven by Darwinism and its view of humans as behavioral creatures shaped by heredity and environment. Antoine believed that our environment determines our character and he would often start rehearsals by creating the set, settings or environment which would then allow his actors to explore their characters and their behaviors with greater authenticity. Often he would only hire untrained actors (a practice still common with young film makers) since he believed that

720-534: Is still useful to playwrights today is the " French scene ", which is a scene in a play where the beginning and end are marked by a change in the makeup of the group of characters onstage rather than by the lights going up or down or the set being changed. Notable playwrights: Greek theater was alive and flourishing on the island of Crete. During the Cretan Renaissance two notable Greek playwrights Georgios Chortatzis and Vitsentzos Kornaros were present in

768-462: The Ancient Greeks . These early plays were for annual Athenian competitions among play writers held around the 5th century BC. Such notables as Aeschylus , Sophocles , Euripides , and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides . The origins of Athenian tragedy remain obscure, though by

816-521: The French Riviera . Dramatist The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks . William Shakespeare is amongst the most famous playwrights in literature, both in England and across the world. The word "play" is from Middle English pleye , from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word wright

864-793: The Independent Theatre Society in London and the Freie Bühne in Germany. Antoine opposed the traditional teachings of the Paris Conservatory , and focused on a more naturalistic style of acting and staging. In particular, Théâtre Libre productions were inspired by the Meiningen Ensemble of Germany. They performed works by Zola, Becque , Brieux , and plays by contemporary German, Scandinavian, and Russian naturalists. In 1894, Antoine

912-600: The National Endowment for the Arts and the Theatre Communications Group , encouraged the partnerships of professional theatre companies and emerging playwrights. Playwrights will often have a cold reading of a script in an informal sitdown setting, which allows them to evaluate their own plays and the actors performing them. Cold reading means that the actors haven't rehearsed the work, or may be seeing it for

960-665: The Théâtre Libre in Paris in 1887. This was a théâtre d'essai , a workshop theatre, where plays were produced whether they would perform at the box office or not. It was also a stage for new writing whose subject matter or form had been rejected in other theatres. Over a seven-year period, until 1894, the Théâtre Libre staged some 111 plays. His work had enormous influence on the French stage, as well as on similar companies elsewhere in Europe, such as

1008-622: The cinema . Meanwhile, he stayed a short period in Istanbul in order to found The Istanbul City Theater. Once World War I started he returned to Paris. Between 1915 and 1922, he directed several films under auspices of the Société cinématographique des auteurs et gens de lettres ("Film Society of Authors and Men of Letters") of Pierre Decourcelle , adapting literary or dramatic works, such as La Terre ("Earth"), Les Frères corses ("The Corsican Brothers") and Quatre-vingt-treize ("Ninety-three"). He applied

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1056-449: The 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics , in which he analyzed the principle of action or praxis as the basis for tragedy. He then considered elements of drama: plot ( μύθος mythos ), character ( ἔθος ethos ), thought ( dianoia ), diction ( lexis ), music ( melodia ), and spectacle ( opsis ). Since the myths on which Greek tragedy were based were widely known, plot had to do with

1104-536: The 5th century it was institutionalised in competitions ( agon ) held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysos (the god of wine and fertility ). As contestants in the City Dionysia's competition (the most prestigious of the festivals to stage drama), playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play. For

1152-550: The Middle Ages, the earliest of which is The Play of the Greenwood by Adam de la Halle in 1276. It contains satirical scenes and folk material such as faeries and other supernatural occurrences. Farces also rose dramatically in popularity after the 13th century. The majority of these plays come from France and Germany and are similar in tone and form, emphasizing sex and bodily excretions. The best known playwright of farces

1200-605: The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson. This period saw the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn . As a reaction to the decadence of Charles II era productions, sentimental comedy grew in popularity. Playwrights like Colley Cibber and Richard Steele believed that humans were inherently good but capable of being led astray. The Italian Renaissance brought about

1248-479: The Théâtre Libre in 1890. His plays are essentially didactic, being aimed at some weakness or iniquity of the social system. Blanchette (1892) pointed out the civic results of the education of girls of the working classes; Monsieur de Réboval (1892) was directed against pharisaism ; L'Engrenage (1894) against corruption in politics; Les Bienfaiteurs (1896) against the frivolity of fashionable charity; and L'Évasion (1896) satirized an indiscriminate belief in

1296-420: The ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis , "the act of making". This is the source of the English word poet . Despite Chinese Theatre having performers dated back to the 6th century BC with You Meng , their perspective of theatre was such that plays had no other role than "performer" or "actor", but given that the performers were also the ones who invented their performances, they could be considered

1344-404: The arrangement and selection of existing material. Character was determined by choice and by action. Tragedy is mimesis —"the imitation of an action that is serious". He developed his notion of hamartia , or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist , which provides the basis for the "conflict-driven" play. There were also a number of secular performances staged in

1392-440: The audience on. Plays performed at the Théâtre Libre were often "thin on plot, dense in social and psychological implication" (Chothia, Andre Antoine). Productions rejected formal acting styles that were prevalent at the time and they built the " fourth wall ". Despite being proponents of naturalism, they still adhered to some ideas of "playing for the audience" – there is no evidence that Antoine ever set any chairs facing away from

1440-528: The audience, and the actors still had to make sure that their voices could be heard to the back of the house—so, in a way, their "naturalism" was really just a higher level of illusion than theatre had been up to that point. In 1894, Antoine gave up the direction of his own theatre, and became connected with the Gymnase, and two years later, with the Odéon theatres. Heavily indebted, he left the Odéon in 1914 and turned to

1488-672: The death of Henrik Ibsen there was no more important playwright west of Russia. For others he was "the Tolstoy of the Faubourg du Temple". After the First World War, however, interest in his plays, whose didactic impetus was no longer considered up-to-date, waned sharply. A one-act play, Bernard Palissy , written in collaboration with M. Gaston Salandri, was produced in 1879, but he had to wait eleven years before he obtained another hearing, his Ménage d'artistes being produced by André Antoine at

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1536-541: The decade and the greatest contribution of theater to the good of mankind. In particular, sex reform groups propagated the educational play, in Germany, for example, by the German Society for Combating Venereal Diseases. It was seen by an audience of millions between 1910 and 1920 in Germany alone. In the United States, Upton Sinclair wrote a novelized version of the play in 1913. In 1918, Jacob and Luise Fleck filmed

1584-543: The doctrine of heredity . Les trois filles de M. Dupont (1897) is a powerful, somewhat brutal, study of the miseries imposed on poor middle-class girls by the French system of dowry ; Le Résultat des courses (1898) shows the evil results of betting among the Parisian workmen; La Robe rouge (1900) was directed against the injustices of the law; Les Remplaçantes (1901) against the practice of putting children out to nurse. Les Avariés (1901), Damaged Lives in English,

1632-548: The first time, and usually, the technical requirements are minimal. The O'Neill Festival offers summer retreats for young playwrights to develop their work with directors and actors. Playwriting collectives like 13P and Orbiter 3 gather members together to produce, rather than develop, new works. The idea of the playwriting collective is in response to plays being stuck in the development process and never advancing to production. Andr%C3%A9 Antoine (actor) André Antoine (31 January 1858 – 23 October 1943)

1680-486: The latter part of the 16th century. The plays of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Friedrich Schiller , and other Sturm und Drang playwrights inspired a growing faith in feeling and instinct as guides to moral behavior and were part of the German romanticism movement. Aleksandr Ostrovsky was Russia's first professional playwright). Author and playwright Agatha Christie wrote The Moustrap ,

1728-448: The outbreak of World War I , Brieux had written over forty plays and reached the peak of his fame. His drama Les Avariés (1903), translated in German as Die Schiffbrüchigen [the “shipwrecked”] [and English as Damaged Goods ], which dealt with syphilis and its consequences and which was censored in various countries because of its medical details, was considered the most discussed play of

1776-407: The period typically collaborated with others at some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, mostly early and late in his career. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. In England, after the interregnum , and Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there was a move toward neoclassical dramaturgy. Between

1824-409: The play Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont in 1897. In plays such as Le Berceau (1898), La Robe Rouge (1900), Les Avariés (1901) and Maternité (1903), he critically examined social problems such as poverty, political corruption, divorce, venereal diseases, the death penalty and parenthood. Later dramas like Les Hannetons (1906) or Simone (1908), on the other hand, were again more optimistic. By

1872-493: The play under the title Die Geissel der Menschheit [ The Scourge of Humanity ]; Edgar G. Ulmer adapted it in 1933 under the title Damaged Lives ." Brieux increasingly withdrew to the countryside. His villa in Agay , near Cannes , became a local tourist attraction, prompting him to move to an even more remote region in the Loire department, where he spent his time fishing and farming. He

1920-468: The principles of naturalism to film, giving importance to the scenery, natural elements that actually determine the behavior of the protagonists, and by using non-professional actors who were not tied up in the old forms of theater. For Jean Tulard, his literary reputation and is involved in "giving the film its sense of nobility". Influencing film makers like Mercanton, Capellans Hervil and he is "the true father of neorealism". Antoine concluded his career as

1968-512: The professional actors of his time could not realistically portray real people. Antoine's Theatre Libre dedicated itself more specifically to the Quart d'heure or short, simple, free, episodic, one act play performances. he concentrated on script development but advocated naturalistic, behavioral acting dependent on the interaction of actors and helping actors to find their psychological motivations. Discussions on matters of interpretation and setting were

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2016-553: The subject matter significantly. For example, verisimilitude limits of the unities. Decorum fitted proper protocols for behavior and language on stage. In France, contained too many events and actions, thus, violating the 24-hour restriction of the unity of time. Neoclassicism never had as much traction in England, and Shakespeare 's plays are directly opposed to these models, while in Italy, improvised and bawdy commedia dell'arte and opera were more popular forms. One structural unit that

2064-568: Was a French actor , theatre manager , film director , author, and critic who is considered the father of modern mise en scène in France. André Antoine was a clerk at the Paris Gas Utility and worked in the Archer Theatre when he asked to produce a dramatization of a novel by Émile Zola . The amateur group refused it, so he decided to create his own theatre to realize his vision of the proper development of dramatic art. Antoine founded

2112-465: Was banned by the censor, due to its medical details of syphilis , was read privately by the author at the Théâtre Antoine . It tells how a young lawyer infected with syphilis declines his physician's advice to take a long course of mercurial treatment and postpone his marriage. It was dedicated to Jean Alfred Fournier , Europe's foremost expert on syphilis. Petite amie (1902) describes the life of

2160-536: Was followed by La Femme Seule (1913), Le Bourgeois aux champs (1914), and Les Américains chez nous (1920). He also wrote some travelogues: Voyages aux Indes et à Indo-Chine (1910) and Au Japon par Java, la Chine, la Corée (1914). He also wrote wartime pamphlets, paying special attention to the care of those blinded by their wounds. Eugène Brieux died in 1932 and was interred in the Cimetière du Grand Jas in Cannes on

2208-537: Was forced to relinquish the theater due to financial failure, but he went on to form Théâtre Antoine , which followed the traditions established by Théâtre Libre until its demise 10 years later. The work of the Theatre Libre was said to embrace both Realism and Naturalism. In theatre, Realism is generally thought to be a 19th-century movement which uses dramatic and stylistic conventions to bring authenticity and 'real life' to performances and drama texts while Naturalism

2256-537: Was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor and in 1908 campaigned for the Académie française , to succeed Ludovic Halévy . In 1909 his wish came true when he was admitted. He prevailed over Alfred Capus and Georges de Porto-Riche . Brieux was the best known and most popular French playwright of his time. George Bernard Shaw called him "incomparably the greatest writer France has produced since Molière" and maintained that after

2304-480: Was very interested in literature, read a lot and wrote his first play at the age of 15. For many years, in which he unsuccessfully offered his manuscripts to various theaters, he earned his living as a bank clerk. For the first time one of his plays, Bernard Palissy , was performed in 1879, at the theater in Cluny , but only once. On the basis of this limited success, Brieux first decided to try his hand at journalism. After

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