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# System prepended metadata

title: Pathways to Realism
tags: [DramaSix]

---

---
tags: DramaSix
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# Pathways to Realism

### Arc of the class
We move from idealist orientation towards theater making and its allied technique of pictoralism to the beginnings of realism and its allied technique of illusionism.

### Questions to Consider
_Question_
How did the approach to acting change during the late 18th and 19th centuries as theaters grew larger? How did it change again as attention shifted from pictorialism to realism?

_Possible Answers_
As theaters grew larger, and the distance between audience members and performers increased, so too did the scale of acting. Pictoral acting had been in existence since at least the time of David Garrick. Large physical gestures, tableau, and more bombastic acting became more common. Examples of this actings style include [François Joseph Talma](/CHv8BRNcQlSLWN9GStcOuQ#Joseph-Talma-1763-1826), [Ludwig Devrient](/CHv8BRNcQlSLWN9GStcOuQ#Ludwig-Devrient-1784-1832), and [Edmund Kean](/CHv8BRNcQlSLWN9GStcOuQ#Edmund-Kean-1789-1833).

_Question_
How did technological and scenographic innovations contribute to a shift from scenic pictorialism to scenic realism?

_Question_
In what ways did the historicistmise-en-scène of antiquarians like Charles Kean represent the apotheosis of stage pictorialism and in what ways did it point the way toward stage realism?

_Question_
How did the dramaturgy of the “well-made” plays of Scribe differ those that preceded it? What was the motor of the “well-made” play?
