Alfred Jarry And The Theater Of His Time

INSPIRED BY Mallarme's challenge that realism was "a banal sacrilege of the true meaning of art" the Symbolists during the turn of the century in France organized a reaction against realistic art and theater. Although he was not a Symbolist in the orthodox sense, Alfred Jarry became a participant in this campaign. Jarry devoted much of his energy to a critique of realistic theater which reached a climax in 1898 when with a defiant gesture he let Ubi Roi loose upon the Paris stage. This gesture ignited the biggest explosion in the French theater since the premiere of Victor Hugo's Hernani in 1830. Jarry's attack against realistic theater warrants study not for its vehemence, but for its significance in the evolution of the modern theater. Out of his reaction against realism and his search for a more viable alternative, Jarry developed the ideas and engaged in the experiments that made him a forerunner of both the Theater of Cruelty and the Theater of the Absurd.