Miss Julie is a naturalistic play written in 1888 by August Strindberg. It is set on Midsummer's Eve and the following morning, which is Midsummer and the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist. The setting is an estate of a count in Sweden. Miss Julie is drawn to a senior servant, a valet named Jean, who is well-traveled and well-read. The action takes place in the kitchen of Miss Julie's father's manor, where Jean's fiancée, a servant named Christine, cooks and sometimes sleeps while Jean and Miss Julie talk.
First Miss Julie production, November 1906, The People's Theatre, Stockholm. Sacha Sjöström (left) as Kristin, Manda Björling as Miss Julie and August Falck as Jean
First Miss Julie production, November 1906, The People's Theatre, Stockholm. Manda Björling as Miss Julie (left), Sacha Sjöström as Kristin, and August Falck as Jean.
Angelique Rockas as Miss Julie and Garry Cooper as Jean, Internationalist Theatre 1984
Naturalism is a movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It refers to theatre that attempts to create an illusion of reality through a range of dramatic and theatrical strategies. Interest in naturalism especially flourished with the French playwrights of the time, but the most successful example is Strindberg's play Miss Julie, which was written with the intention to abide by both his own particular version of naturalism, and also the version described by the French novelist and literary theoretician, Emile Zola.
Photograph of the first production in Stockholm of August Strindberg's 1888 naturalistic play Miss Julie in November 1906, at The People's Theatre