Monodrama encyclopedia topics

Monodrama in spoken drama

Richard Anton Meerheimb, Samuel Beckett (Krapp's Last Tape), and Anton Chekhov (The Danger of Smoking), among others, have written monodramas. English Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "Maud" is also played as a monodrama. In Germany, an international theater festival for monodramas takes place regularly, the Thespis International Monodrama Festival Occasionally, a solo scene within a play might be described as a monodrama. Also, most pieces for pantomimes are designed as monodramas.

As developed by Russian Symbolist Nikolai Evreinov (1879-1953) and encapsulated in his book The Theatre in Life (1927), a drama acted or designed to be acted by a single person. The term may also refer to a dramatic representation of what passes in an individual mind, as well as to a musical drama for a solo performer. Everything one witnesses on stage is portrayed from the mental state of the given protagonist.

Monodrama in opera

In opera, a monodrama was originally a melodrama with one role such as Georg Benda's Pygmalion (1779). It is also applied to modern works with a single soloist, such as Schönberg's Die Glückliche Hand (1924), which besides the protagonist has two additional silent roles as well as a choral prologue and epilogue. Erwartung (1924) and La voix humaine (1959) closely follow the traditional definition, while in Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969) and Luzifers Traum (from 1981) the instrumentalists are brought out of the pit to participate in the action.