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Listento part of a lecture in a theatre class.
Lecturer: So last class, we talked about the realist movement in theatre history. Today, we will be talking about an offshoot of Realism, but first, let's review what we said about Realism. Katie.
Katie: Realism. Well it started around the late 1800s.These playwrights wanted to present the world as it really was, not idealized,so realist plays were generally about ordinary, everyday people and their lives, not like clear-cut heroes and villains.
Lecturer: Good. Now, the movement we're looking at today, Naturalism, took these ideas further to make plays even more true-to-life. One thing that set it apart was that Naturalist authors were influenced by scientific methods in their goal of achieving greater accuracy.They tried to be objective about their characters like a scientist observing aspecies under a microscope. And, rather than giving characters the conventional traits of a hero or villain, or presenting them as victims of fate, Naturalists created characters with more complex traits and motives and who were influenced only by the forces of heredity and environment.
The greatest representative of Naturalism was the French writer Emile Zola. Zola wrote some influential Naturalist novels, but he also proposed a theory of Naturalist theatre. He was greatly influenced by a science book that appeared in 1865. This book emphasized the importance of experimentation to scientific progress; in particular, the importance of scientific research in understanding the effects of environments on the human body. These ideas made an impression.
In 1881, Zola wrote an essay,"The Experimental Novel," in which he said the task of a writer was similar to that of a scientist or doctor; a writer should be objective like ascientist and design novels like well, like experiments, in that the charactersare put in a specially designed environment so the writer can record what happens as characters interact with their environment and each other. And, just as a doctor might look at a patient's environment to help find a cure for amedical problem, Zola saw the role of the writer as exposing the problems of society in order to find a cure for social ills.
Katie:Bu this essay was about novels. Did Zola think his ideas applied to plays too?
Lecturer: Yes, and he translated his ideas into theatre. He was critical of theatrical conventions of his day, for example: an almost formulaic development of plot where the story moves from conflict to crisis to resolution. Zola argued that real life doesn't obey such clear-cut storylines. It isn't a neatly packaged story; rather it’s an accumulation of haphazard events. Zola believed that, instead of telling a conventional story with a clearly defined beginning, middle, and conclusion, a play should present something more faithful to real experience.

Katie:Sounds like what you'd do with non-fiction, you know, like with a newspaper article ora documentary film.
Lecturer:It does, doesn't it? It's no surprise, really, for a movement growing out of Realism. Zola had a name for it: "slice of life” theatre. Ordinary,believable characters placed in real-life situations, who interact in a plausible manner. By advocating this approach, Zola wanted to promote a new kind of theatre, theatre that explored socially relevant issues and educates audiences rather than merely entertaining them. And, since life's often not rosy, it follows that these plays rarely ended happily, which is another feature of Naturalism: this darker, gloomier view of life.
A problem arose when Zola tried toput his principles into practice. When he turned one of his own novels into a play, the result was… well, not very successful. Since he compressed the entire plot of a lengthy novel to fit about two hours' performance time, Zola had to cut out so many details, and accelerated the pace of the story to the pointthat it seemed exaggerated, full of unbelievable coincidences. So, while Zola successfully created a realistic environment and characters, the play itself didn't live up to his Naturalist principals.
Katie:Did his other plays have more success?
Lecturer: Not really. They all contained the same problem. Kind of ironic, isn't it, that the preeminent Naturalist novelist couldn't produce a single successful play in that genre?
Katie:Wereany Naturalist plays successful?
Lecturer: Yes, but there's another irony: the most successful Naturalist plays, by "successful," I mean plays that captured what the Naturalist movement was about, they were written by a playwright who didn't even consider himself a Naturalist, Henry Becque.Becque's play, "The Vultures," captured many of Zola's ideas. It's the story of an average family that suffers a crisis for which there's no fore warning. There's no real heroes; there's no neat conclusion at the end, and the overall effect is pessimistic.