Modernism in South Asia
In South Asia, a certain haziness regarding modernism and modernity derives not only from the manner in which they can be elided with each other,…
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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…
Dudley, Jane (1912–2001)
Jane Dudley, a key figure in the radical dance movement of the 1930s, was a choreographer who developed her own distinctive voice within the modern…
Selvon, Samuel (1923–1994)
Samuel Selvon was a Trinidadian writer whose vivid portraits of daily life in both the Caribbean and post-Second World War England garnered international acclaim. Selvon’s…
Drachmann, Holger Henrik Herholdt (1846–1908)
Holger Drachmann was a Danish writer and painter, active in the period of the Modern Breakthrough in Scandinavia (1870s–1890s). He was influenced by Georg Brandes…
Rolland, Romain (1866–1944)
Writer, professor, musicologist, biographer, essayist, novelist, playwright, great letter writer and diarist, mystic in search of a pacified world and of a heroic heart, Romain…
Kubo, Sakae (1900–1958)
Kubo Sakae was a leading shingeki playwright prior to World War II, and a shingeki socialist hero afterward. His greatest dramatic work is the epic…
Workers’ Theater Movement
The Workers’ Theatre Movement (WTM) was an international project, largely promoted by the Workers International Relief, to conjoin left militant radical theaters during the period…
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…
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…
Teatro del Murciélago [Theatre of the Bat]
Teatro del Murciélago (Theatre of the Bat) was a group that gave what appears to have been its only public performance at the Teatro Olimpia…
Teatro Prometeo
Teatro Prometeo (Prometheus Theater) was founded in Cuba by actor and director Francisco Morín (1918– ) in 1948. Prometeo began as a fundraising project for the…