The Father (Swedish : Fadren) is a naturalistic tragedy by Swedish playwright August Strindberg, written in 1887. It is about the struggle between parents over the future of their child; resulting in the mother, using her cunning manipulative skills, subduing and finally destroying the father.
Captain Adolph, an officer of the cavalry, and his wife, Laura, have a disagreement regarding the education of their daughter Bertha. Laura wants her to stay at home and become an artist, while Adolph wants Bertha to move into town and study to be a teacher. Adolph says that his decision is final, and that the law supports him, because, he points out, the woman sells her rights when she agrees to be married. The argument grows and becomes fierce.
Laura, cunning & manipulative, suggests that Adolph may in fact have no rights in the matter. Laura lies to the family doctor that Adolph may be mad, because, as an amateur scientist, he thinks he has discovered life on another planet by looking through a microscope. Adolph in fact has discovered signs of organic life by studying meteorites through a spectroscope. Laura also reveals to the doctor that she has obtained a letter that Adolph once wrote confessing that he himself feared he might go mad.
Trapped in Laura's web of manipulation, Adolph becomes frustrated and responds with violence — he throws a burning lamp in the direction of his wife as she exits. The moment he does that, he is sunk. He realizes that Laura has cunningly provoked him to commit this irrational act, which then becomes the pretext for having him committed. While waiting for the straitjacket to arrive, the pastor tells Laura she is incredibly strong. "Let me see your hand! Not one incriminating spot of blood to give you away!" he says, "One little innocent murder that the law can't touch; an unconscious crime!" [1] In a scene of intense emotional pathos, it is Margaret, the captain's old nurse, who cajoles the captain, who indeed has now been driven mad, into a straitjacket. Laura is presented as having a stronger will than her husband, who says to her: "You could hypnotize me when I was wide awake, so that I neither saw nor heard, only obeyed." As the captain suffers a stroke and dies, Bertha rushes to her mother, who exclaims, "My child! My own child!" as the pastor says, "Amen". [2] [3]
This play expresses a recurrent theme in some Strindberg Naturalism: Laws and culture may influence the dynamics of men and women within their various social contracts. The play uncovers the inevitable struggle for legacy and power between the human sexes. [4] At the time the play was written, Strindberg's marriage was deteriorating with his wife Siri von Essen, and situations in the play could have very loosely resembled situations occurring in his failing marriage. Different religions, Methodist, Baptist, and an occult spiritualism, exist in the household and vie for Bertha's acceptance. [5] There are also references in the play to Greek Mythology and Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and Hamlet .
Strindberg was aware of the literary discussions regarding what constituted naturalism in drama, and particularly the theory of Emile Zola, who was naturalism's chief proponent. Zola felt that the naturalistic playwright should observe life very carefully, and render it in a documentary fashion. In creating character the playwright should be scientific and show that character is determined by heredity and environment. And the playwright should apply understanding of psychology and physiology. Sets and costumes should be realistic, and the long expositions and complicated intrigues of romances and the "well-made play" should be avoided. Zola felt that the French drama had not achieved true naturalism, and Strindberg felt challenged to succeed where others had not. [6] Because of blasphemous comments, Strindberg found it hard for his work to be published and produced in Sweden. This play was the first Strindberg play to be produced outside of Scandinavia, in Berlin in 1890. The Father marked a turning point for Strindberg, as he went to a style of writing he deemed "artistic-psychological writing".
In an essay "Psychic Murder", written just after "The Father" was completed, Strindberg discusses Henrik Ibsen’s play Rosmersholm , and suggests how Ibsen might have handled Rebecca West’s "psychic murder" of Mrs. Rosmer, which Ibsen doesn't describe. It might be affected, according to Strindberg, by planting jealousy in Mrs. Rosmer's mind, the way Iago did to Othello . He then goes on to describe the very same methods that Laura uses against the Captain in The Father. The use of psychological elements in Strindberg's play move it closer to Naturalism than Ibsen's play. [7] There is almost a Darwinian struggle between the two principals, and Darwin's theory is referenced in the play.
Warner Oland's 1912 Broadway production of The Father was the first performance of a Strindberg play in the United States. [8] Oland (who would later become famous for his portrayals of Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan in Hollywood films) translated, produced, and starred in the production, which met with mixed reviews and closed after 31 performances. [9] Raymond Massey directed and starred in a 1949 Broadway production, which also featured Grace Kelly in the role of Bertha. [10]
The play has been translated by Peter Watts (1958), Michael Meyer (1964), Harry G. Carlson (1981), Michael Robinson (1998), Gregory Motton (2000) and Laurie Slade (2012). The role of the Captain has been played in the West End by Michael Redgrave (1948), Wilfrid Lawson (1953) and Trevor Howard (1964). [11] The play was adapted by John Osborne in 1989 a production at the Royal National Theatre. Osborne described himself as "Strindberg's Man in England" who was determined to be "the keeper of that unpredictable flame". [12]
In 2016, Theatre for a New Audience produced David Greig's version of the play in rep with Thornton Wilder's adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House . Both plays were directed by Arin Arbus and starred John Douglas Thompson and Maggie Lacey. [13]
In 2019 a thirty-five-year-old theater group of Calcutta, Ushneek, produced an adaptation of this Strindberg play in Bengali as "Babai". The adaptation of the play and its stage-direction has been done by Ishita Mukhopadhyay. The Captain which has been trans-created as a college teacher doing research in astrophysics is played by Debshankar Halder. The wife's role is played by Srijata Bhattacharjee while the Doctor is played by Subhashis Mukhopadhyay.
A Hindi film based on the play, Pita was made in India in 1991. The film was directed by acclaimed Indian filmmaker Govind Nihalani.
A Doll's House is a three-act play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month. The play is set in a Norwegian town circa 1879.
Henrik Johan Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his time. His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, When We Dead Awaken, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder. Ibsen is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and A Doll's House was the world's most performed play in 2006.
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg wrote more than sixty plays and more than thirty works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics during his career, which spanned four decades. A bold experimenter and iconoclast throughout, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods and purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama, and history plays, to his anticipations of expressionist and surrealist dramatic techniques. From his earliest work, Strindberg developed innovative forms of dramatic action, language, and visual composition. He is considered the "father" of modern Swedish literature and his The Red Room (1879) has frequently been described as the first modern Swedish novel. In Sweden, Strindberg is known as an essayist, painter, poet, and especially as a novelist and playwright, but in other countries he is known mostly as a playwright.
Hedda Gabler is a play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The world premiere was staged on 31 January 1891 at the Residenztheater in Munich. Ibsen himself was in attendance, although he remained back-stage. The play has been canonized as a masterpiece within the genres of literary realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama. Ibsen mainly wrote realistic plays until his forays into modern drama. Hedda Gabler dramatizes the experiences of the title character, Hedda, the daughter of a general, who is trapped in a marriage and a house that she does not want. Overall, the title character for Hedda Gabler is considered one of the great dramatic roles in theater. The year following its publication, the play received negative feedback and reviews. Hedda Gabler has been described as a female variation of Hamlet.
Ghosts is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was written in 1881 and first staged in 1882 in Chicago, Illinois, in a production by a Danish company on tour. Like many of Ibsen's plays, Ghosts is a scathing commentary on 19th-century morality. Because of its subject matter, which includes religion, venereal disease, incest, and euthanasia, it immediately generated strong controversy and negative criticism. Since then the play has fared better, and is considered a “great play” that historically holds a position of “immense importance”. Theater critic Maurice Valency wrote in 1963, "From the standpoint of modern tragedy Ghosts strikes off in a new direction.... Regular tragedy dealt mainly with the unhappy consequences of breaking the moral code. Ghosts, on the contrary, deals with the consequences of not breaking it."
Leon Kobrin (18731–1946) was a playwright in Yiddish theater, writer of short stories and novels, and a translator. As a playwright he is generally seen as a disciple of Jacob Gordin, but his mature work was more character-driven, more open and realistic in its presentation of human sexual desire, and less polemical than Gordin's. Many of his plays were "ghetto dramas" dealing with issues of tradition and assimilation and with generational issues between Jewish immigrants to America and the first generation of American-born Jews.
Miss Julie is a naturalistic play written in 1888 by August Strindberg. It is set on Midsummer's Eve and the following morning, which is Midsummer and the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist. The setting is an estate of a count in Sweden. Miss Julie is drawn to a senior servant, a valet named Jean, who is well-traveled and well-read. The action takes place in the kitchen of Miss Julie's father's manor, where Jean's fiancée, a servant named Christine, cooks and sometimes sleeps while Jean and Miss Julie talk.
Nineteenth-century theatre describes a wide range of movements in the theatrical culture of Europe and the United States in the 19th century. In the West, they include Romanticism, melodrama, the well-made plays of Scribe and Sardou, the farces of Feydeau, the problem plays of Naturalism and Realism, Wagner's operatic Gesamtkunstwerk, Gilbert and Sullivan's plays and operas, Wilde's drawing-room comedies, Symbolism, and proto-Expressionism in the late works of August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen.
Rosmersholm is a play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen in Danish—the common written language of Denmark and Norway at the time—and originally published in 1886 in Copenhagen by the Danish publisher Gyldendal. Rosmersholm has been described as one of Ibsen's darkest, most complex, subtle, beautiful, mystical, multilayered and ambiguous plays. The play explores the tension between old and new, and between liberation and servitude. Rosmersholm and The Wild Duck are "often to be observed in the critics' estimates vying with each other as rivals for the top place among Ibsen's works."
The Théâtre Libre was a theatre company that operated from 1887 to 1896 in Paris, France.
The Dance of Death refers to two plays, The Dance of Death I, and The Dance of Death II, both written by August Strindberg in 1900. Part one was written in September, and then, after receiving a response to the play, part two was written in November. The two plays have much in common, and each is a full evening in the theatre. If they are joined together as one theatre-going experience, a couple of unexplained discrepancies between the two plays present difficulties. For example, in part one the Captain is desperately poor, and in part two he is well-to-do.
Literary realism is a literary genre, part of the broader realism in arts, that attempts to represent subject-matter truthfully, avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements. It originated with the realist art movement that began with mid-nineteenth-century French literature (Stendhal) and Russian literature. Literary realism attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to depict everyday and banal activities and experiences.
Realism in the theatre was a general movement that began in 19th-century theatre, around the 1870s, and remained present through much of the 20th century. It developed a set of dramatic and theatrical conventions with the aim of bringing a greater fidelity of real life to texts and performances. These conventions occur in the text, design, performance style, and narrative structure. They include recreating on stage a facsimile of real life except missing a fourth wall. Characters speak in naturalistic, authentic dialogue without verse or poetic stylings, and acting is meant to emulate human behaviour in real life. Narratives typically are psychologically driven, and include day-to-day, ordinary scenarios. Narrative action moves forward in time, and supernatural presences do not occur. Sound and music are diegetic only. Part of a broader artistic movement, it includes Naturalism and Socialist realism.
David Eldridge is a British dramatist and screenwriter, born in Romford, Greater London, United Kingdom. His plays have been produced in the West End and on Broadway. He has written for stage, screen and radio.
The Social Significance of the Modern Drama is a 1914 treatise by Emma Goldman on political implications of significant playwrights in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Per Egil Törnqvist was Professor Emeritus of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Amsterdam and an academic literary critic.
Naturalism is a movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It refers to theatre that attempts to create an illusion of reality through a range of dramatic and theatrical strategies. Interest in naturalism especially flourished with the French playwrights of the time, but the most successful example is Strindberg's play Miss Julie, which was written with the intention to abide by both his own particular version of naturalism, and also the version described by the French novelist and literary theoretician, Emile Zola.
Michael Leverson Meyer was an English translator, biographer, journalist and dramatist who specialised in Scandinavian literature.
Creditors is a naturalistic tragicomedy by the Swedish playwright August Strindberg. It was written in Swedish during August and September 1888 in Denmark. It was first published in Danish in February 1889 and appeared in Swedish in 1890. It premiered at the Dagmar Theatre in Copenhagen in March 1889. It is seen as one of Strindberg's most powerful plays. Strindberg himself, writing in 1892, described it as his "most mature work."
Pariah is a one-act play written by August Strindberg.
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