Props Breaking Character: The Performance and Failure of Real Objects on the Naturalist Stage

Abstract

The term "naturalistic," after enjoying a brief period of avant-gardist novelty in late nineteenth-century Europe, quickly became a label for theatre considered reductive, crude, and uninspired. Even major realist figures such as Henrik Ibsen and Konstantin Stanislavsky distinguished their work from the Naturalist movement in Paris, envisioning an artistically refined representation of the real world in contrast to Émile Zola's "scientific" approach to playwriting and André Antoine's stages famously cluttered with tattered household items, lived-in furniture, and, in one case, bloody sides of beef. The Naturalists aimed to represent reality "as is" by relying on authentic furnishings and props to close the gap between theatrical representation and reality. However, as I argue, Zola and Antoine's methods for achieving this ideal contradict one another in important ways.