Theatrical Movements: Realism vs. Naturalism

Realism is a theatrical movement centered around creating works that accurately depict everyday life. Up until the mid-1800s, the performing arts were very melodramatic, saturated with over-the-top plays and lavish operas. As Western society as a whole moved toward widespread social and industrial change, certain playwrights and theater-makers began producing works that more accurately represented real life.

Features of realism

• Realistic dialogue: Characters speak like normal people, with no asides to the audience, lengthy soliloquies, or prose to be found. As the name implies, realistic dialogue (and sets, costumes, etc.) became an important part of the movement.
• Normal people: Rather than nobility or the ultra-rich, characters are usually blue-collar, everyman types.
• No supernatural elements: If it couldn’t possibly happen in real life, it won’t be featured in a realistic work.
• No promise of resolution: While realism isn’t necessarily all tragedy or drama, its commitment to accurately depicting real life means that it usually doesn’t have an ending that ties everything up in a neat, tidy bow.
• Interpersonal conflict: Realism tends to feature psychological or other interpersonal conflicts, rather than those created by external forces.

Realism playwrights

Many famous turn-of the-century playwrights would be considered realists, including:

• Henrik Ibsen (“Ghosts,” “A Doll’s House”)
• Anton Chekhov (“The Cherry Orchard,” “Uncle Vanya”)
• George Bernard Shaw (“Pygmalion,” “Saint Joan”)

Although the movement may have been the most popular from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries, you can still find plays and films that would fall under the realism umbrella being written today. In fact, most modern works have more in common with realism than the melodramas and farces of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Around the same time that realism was gaining popularity as a countermovement, naturalism also began to take shape. It took influence from the then-recent studies of evolution by Charles Darwin to depict the belief that humans are ultimately a part of nature and are therefore controlled more by evolutionary forces than by their own free will.

If you’re thinking that realism and naturalism sound pretty similar, you’re not wrong. The goal of both is to portray the world as it truly is, with no pretense, exaggeration, or rose-colored glasses. The difference between the two has less to do with the overall goal and more to do with the supposed forces at work: If realism hopes to portray the world honestly from the human perspective, naturalism takes things a step further and hopes to portray the world from an objective, scientific perspective.

Features of naturalism

• Unsentimental language: No purple prose here! Characters in naturalistic works speak authentically, with dialect, slang, and unfiltered language that reflects their social environment—think of how characters talk on “The Wire” or “Shameless.”
• A focus on struggling people: Characters typically experience poverty, disease, and other harrowing byproducts of their heredity and environment.
• Unflinching portrayals: Naturalistic works don’t shy away from depicting social taboos, pessimistic outcomes, and other aspects of life considered inappropriate in earlier theatrical traditions. They usually end in tragedy, with characters unable to escape their circumstances or biological imperatives.
• Emphasis on physical detail: Sets, costumes, and stage directions depict the raw environmental details that influence and reflect the characters’ conditions. 

Naturalism playwrights

With a few exceptions such as the following, naturalism was more popular in literature than in the theater:

• August Strindberg (“Miss Julie,” “The Father”)
• Gerhart Hauptmann (“The Weavers,” “Drayman Henschel”)

While it is important to understand naturalism as a concept, its more rigid definition and cynical worldview meant that it had a shorter period of popularity and considerably less staying power than realism—in short, because it’s extremely limited (make something ultra-true-to-life and it can become so mundane that it’s no longer particularly interesting to watch!). That said, naturalism still shapes the theatrical landscape today: Founding father of modern acting Konstantin Stanislavsky was heavily influenced by both the realism and naturalism movements.

If you’re stuck fretting over the subtle disparities between realism and naturalism, we have good news for you: Although being able to differentiate between the two schools of thought may get you an A on your theater history exam, it won’t make a big difference on how you’ll need to approach the material as an actor. Here are a few things to keep in mind, regardless of whether you’re in a modern realism play or hoping to stage naturalism’s triumphant comeback.

1. Brush up on your Stanislavsky.

If you’ve had any kind of formal acting training, you’ve likely spent some time studying Stanislavsky’s methods, whether or not you realize it. But if you really want to flex your acting muscles in a realistic play, it’s best to re-visit the methodology that was deliberately designed to be used with this material. Take a class, re-read “An Actor’s Work,” or check out our helpful guide here.

2. Remember that honesty is the best policy. 

At the end of the day, these styles are about portraying the world as honestly as possible—so make sure that you’re upholding your end of the bargain as an actor. Try to portray your character as sincerely as you can, and keep it pedestrian. There’s no need for broad gestures, unusual choices, or any other unearned embellishments; just pursue your character’s objectives, and the rest should fall into place.

3. Understand the space.

That said, just because you want the audience to believe they are watching scenes from real life, this is the theater we’re talking about; your choices still have to be legible for the audience. If you’re in a tiny 50-seat theater, you may be able to keep your acting choices as subtle as they would be in real life; but if you’re in a 2,000-seat Broadway house, literally behaving naturally onstage will only ensure that the audience won’t see or hear anything you’re doing. You may have to make some vocal and physical choices (such as projection or slightly larger gestures and postures) to ensure that the performance reads as natural from several feet away.

4. Make peace with no resolution.

One of the features of the slice-of-life approach is that some characters don’t get happy endings—or even any endings at all. For example, Shaw’s “Pygmalion” has very little character resolution (Eliza leaves Higgins, presumably for good). When the play was adapted to the musical “My Fair Lady,” book writer Alan Jay Lerner abandoned its roots by tying up the plot with a bow and giving it a (perhaps unearned) neater ending: Eliza leaves Higgins, Higgins realizes he has feelings for her, Eliza returns. Actors may be tempted to do the same, but it can ultimately be helpful to avoid getting shoehorned into a perfect ending. Either embrace the ambiguity or use it to envision the ending you believe this character might have.