Naturalist Features of 'The Cherry Orchard'
Naturalism in drama refers to the belief that a play should try to represent reality as closely as possible. In naturalistic theater, stage time reflects real-time, costumes and settings portray as many details of the time as possible, the play takes place in a single location over the course of a day, and characters are normally from working or lower classes.
The actions of a play are also affected by the naturalistic theatrical philosophy as well. Dramatic naturalists believe that the characters of a play are heavily influenced by their social and economical environment, as well as by other determining factors such as heredity. In effect, a character's ability to change or evolve on his own over the course of a naturalistic play is severely hampered.
One criticism of naturalistic plays is that characters depicted in a naturalistic play are unable to change socially. This leads to naturalistic characters being expressed as victims of external forces over which they have no control. Some critics argue that this detracts from the overall complexity of life and makes the play unnatural rather than natural. This theatrical philosophy stemmed from the scientific findings of Charles Darwin who stated that an organism's environment has an enormous role in the evolution of the organism.
Cherry Orchard has some elements of Naturalism. The first writers to use this term was Zola and then Ibsen also based his writing on what he considered to be how humans act and so his writing was considered naturalist. This had obvious implications for theatre and now instead of the happy endings of melodrama there was greater emphasis on the influence of social conditions and environment and audiences were encouraged to have a detached attitude towards what happened on the stage. The portrayal of the characters was influenced by new discoveries in psychology . In 'The Cherry Orchard' there seems to be a lot of waiting around in the play and it gives the impression that the characters are not in control of their destiny but instead are controlled by economic forces of history. Looks like the cherry orchard will be sold whether or not the individuals wish for it to happen.
The audience would appear to be encouraged to take a matter of fact and impartial attitude - like it was inevitable and that the owners did nothing to stop it so it was a natural consequences. The characters too are realistic and complex as human beings are.
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