Rising phoenix-like from the ashes of the crashing boho supernova called Dada, Surrealism was originally a term that playwright Guillaume Apollinaire invented in 1917 to explain his dream-like works, "The Breasts of Tiresias" and the ballet "Parade." Although Dada's expatriots fueled... [more]

Rising phoenix-like from the ashes of the crashing boho supernova called Dada, Surrealism was originally a term that playwright Guillaume Apollinaire invented in 1917 to explain his dream-like works, "The Breasts of Tiresias" and the ballet "Parade." Although Dada's expatriots fueled the new movement, Surrealism's theoretical emphasis shifted from shock tactics and external spectacle to the dream world of the melting watch, the human subconscious. Following the lead of artist Salvador Dali's aberrant, disjointed psyche-scapes, theatrical Surrealists declared the inner world of symbol the highest plane of truth. Their focus was in bringing to dramatic life the deepest workings of the dream state, boldly melding fantastic elements within recognizable situations. France, with theatrical artists such as Andre Breton and Jean Cocteau, led the world as the eye of the theatrical Surrealist hurricane, although the movement had rumblings all over the world. In the early 1930s, Federico Garcia Lorca, the filmmaker Luis Bunuel, and Dali adapted Surrealist techniques for a series of dramas for Spanish theater, including "Blood Wedding" (1933) and "The House of Bernarda Alba" (1936). Surrealists tried to break the bonds of familiar reality with the introduction of a theatrical form uninhibited by the restraints of the ego. In Poland, Stanstaw Ignacy Witkiewicz wrote the popular Surrealist dramas, "The Water Hen" (1921) and "The Cuttlefish" (1922). Ultimately, their creative journey to the center of the psyche was unexpectedly waylaid by the surfacing of a two-headed ideological monster: political and theoretical factionalism. [show less]