Shelem Yankev Abramovitsh 1835–1917
Above, Shelem Yankev Abramovitsh (1835–1917), commonly known by his literary persona Mendele Moykher-Sforim (Mendele the Book Peddler), is considered to be the founding father of…
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Takarazuka Revue Company (1913--)
The popular Takarazuka Revue Company, based in Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture, is the oldest established musical theater company in Japan. The performers are unmarried women; if…
Itō, Michio (1893–1961)
Itō Michio’s creative endeavors spanned dance, theatre, and film, just as his career spanned the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, however, his life as a…
Jiyū-gekijō [Free Theater]
Jiyū-gekijō [Free Theater], founded in 1909 by the director Osanai Kaoru (1881–1928) and kabuki actor Ichikawa Sadanji II (1880–1940), was established to produce contemporary realist…
Shinpa
Shinpa, the shortened version of the Japanese word shinpageki, or new school drama, was an early Japanese attempt at reforming the theater along modernist lines.…
Synge, John Millington (1871–1909)
J. M. Synge (pronounced “Sing”) is best known for his plays, first staged at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, that vividly depicted rural life in Ireland. His…
Geijutsu-za
The first iteration of the Geijutsu-za (Art Theater) was founded in 1913 by the actors Shimamura Hōgetsu (1871–1918) and Matsui Sumako (1886–1919) after they were…
Kinugasa, Teinosuke (1896–1982)
Kinugasa Teinosuke (1 January 1896–26 February 1982) was a Japanese actor and film director, most famous for his experimental films of the 1920s and art-house…
Engeki Kairyō Kai
Engeki Kairyō Kai [Theater Reform Society] was a quasi-government agency and a forerunner of the modernist movement in Japanese theater. From its early days, the…
Mayama, Seika (1878–1948)
Mayama Seika was a novelist, historian, and one of the most prominent playwrights in Japan’s modernist theater movement.
Kishida, Kunio (1890–1954)
Kishida Kunio is considered to be one of the founders of Japanese shingeki drama and one of the most important modern Japanese dramatists. Through his…
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–1980)
Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, left-wing political activist, playwright, and novelist. One of the leading French public intellectuals of the twentieth century, he was…
Henrik Johan Ibsen (1828–1906)
Henrik Ibsen is Norway’s most important writer and one of the most influential dramatists of the second half of the nineteenth century. His dramatic production…
Chaplin, Charlie (1889–1977)
Charles Spenser Chaplin was born in London on April 16, 1889, and died on Christmas Day, 1977, at home in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland. He had been…
Little Magazines
In the history of modernism, little magazines were often the first venues to publish unknown authors who are now considered the leading lights of twentieth-century…
Darktown Follies (Lafayette Theatre, Harlem, 1913)
One of the earliest large-scale musical revues to be created and performed by an all-Black cast, Darktown Follies premiered in 1913 at the Lafayette Theatre…
Ball, Hugo (1886–1927)
Born in Pirmasens on February 22, 1886, the German writer Hugo Ball is best known as the co-founder, with Tristan Tzara, of the Cabaret Voltaire…
Katsureki-mono
“Living history” plays were historical kabuki plays produced during the Meiji period 10s and 20s (1868–1888) in an attempt to reform the practices associated with…
O’Casey, Sean (1880–1964)
Born into Dublin tenement life in 1880, Sean O’Casey (originally John O’Casey) went on to become one of Ireland’s most important playwrights, best known for…
O’Neill, Eugene (1888–1953)
Eugene O’Neill is regarded as the quintessential modernist among American playwrights, and many of his works show an affinity with the themes and methods of…
Performance Art in China
Performance art events began in China in the 1980s following Deng Xioping’s post-Mao economic reforms in 1979, which exposed Chinese socialist society to foreign investments…
Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne Martinius (1832–1910)
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson is one of the most important Scandinavian writers of the second half of the 19th century, a novelist and playwright as well as…
Kulish, Mykola Hurovych [КУЛІШ МИКОЛА ГУРОВИЧ] (1892–1937)
Mykola Hurovych Kulish was born on December 5, 1892 (Old Style; December 18 New Style) in Chaplinka, Tavricheskaia gubernia in the Russian Empire (today Ukraine’s…
Kinoshita, Junji (1914–2006)
Kinoshita Junji was one of Japan’s foremost modern playwrights. His work consists of several plays based on Japanese folk tales and history, and often interrogates…
Izumi, Kyōka (1873–1939)
Izumi Kyōka was a novelist and shinpa playwright whose plays provided the heart of the shinpa repertory and demonstrated a new model for dramatic literature.…