Theatre that shaped the stage

A play fully exists only when performed, and these texts are the ones that companies have revived for centuries because they stand up in any setting at all. Greek theatre lays down the primary situations, a king investigating a crime who discovers too much, a mother who takes revenge through her children. Shakespeare and Molière add language, Ibsen and Chekhov ordinary conversation, Brecht the refusal of illusion, Beckett emptiness. Each age rereads these plays against the one before it.

works 13

• TheatreThe OresteiaὈρέστειαAeschylus · -458Three tragedies performed in Athens four years after a judicial reform, which lead family vengeance all the way to a court of judges.Literature
• TheatreMedeaΜήδειαEuripides · -431An Athenian tragedy of the fifth century BC in which a foreign woman repudiated by her husband obtains one day's respite before exile.Literature
• TheatreOedipus RexΟἰδίπους τύραννοςSophocles · -429An Athenian tragedy of the fifth century BCE in which a king, to save his city from the plague, investigates an ancient crime.Literature
• TheatreHamletWilliam Shakespeare · 1601A dead man in armour comes to demand vengeance from his son, setting one condition.Literature
• TheatreTartuffeLe TartuffeMolière · 1669A false devotee settles in the house of a bourgeois who takes him for a saint, and the family struggles to open his eyes.LiteraturePublic domain
• TheatreThe Servant of Two MastersIl servitore di due padroniCarlo Goldoni · 1753A Venetian comedy in which a servant serves two masters at once, at the cost of a cascade of misunderstandings.LiteraturePublic domain
• TheatreHedda GablerHenrik Ibsen · 1890A play in which a general's daughter, unhappily married and idle, meets again an old acquaintance who has become her husband's rival.Literature
• TheatreThe SeagullЧайкаAnton Chekhov · 1896A play in four acts first staged in 1896: on a country estate, a young author, an apprentice actress and a successful writer.LiteraturePublic domain
• TheatreThe Threepenny OperaDie DreigroschenoperBertolt Brecht · 1928A sung play of 1928, in which the beggars of London are organised into a commercial company and the most wanted man in the city dines with the chief of police.Literature
• TheatreBlood WeddingBodas de sangreFederico García Lorca · 1933On her wedding day, a bride runs away with the man she once loved, and the whole wedding party sets off in pursuit of them.Literature
• TheatreA Streetcar Named DesireTennessee Williams · 1947Directed by Elia Kazan, the play revealed Marlon Brando and a style of acting born of the actor's inner work, which the cinema would confirm four years later.Literature
• TheatreWaiting for GodotEn attendant GodotSamuel Beckett · 1952An endless wait on a country road, in the aftermath of the war.Literature
• CinemaOn the WaterfrontElia Kazan · 1954The film was shot in thirty-six days, in the middle of winter, almost entirely on the waterfront of Hoboken, with many dockers among the extras.Cinema