The dramatic imagination pdf

Course Reader: Reading #3

What is Design?

Excerpts from:

Adolph Appia, Lee Simon (from: “The Ideas of Adolphe Appia”),

Robert Edmund Jones, Leonard Pronko,

and Gaston Bachelard

Intro to Theater: What is Design? Page #1

Intro to Theater: What is Design? Page #1

r;;e: The American

s: 145-155. Harry N. Abrams

~ Chapter 3

Adolph Appia

ACTOR, SPACE, LIGHT,

PAINTING

T HE ART OF STAGE PRODUCTION is the art of projecting into Space what the original author was only able to project in Time. The temporal element is implicit within any text, with or without music . . . The first factor in staging is the interpreter: the actor himself. The actor carries the action. Without him there can be no action and hence no drama ... The body is alive, mobile and plastic; it exists in three dimensions. Space and the objects used by the body must most carefully take this fact into account. The overall arrangement of the setting comes just after the actor in importance; it is through it that the actor makes contact with and assumes reality within the scenic space.

Thus we already have two essential elements: the actor and the spatial arrangement of the setting, which must conform to his plastic form and his three-dimensionality.

What else is there? Light! Light, just like the actor, must become active; and in order to

grant to it the status of a medium of dramatic expression it must be placed in the service of ... the actor who is above it in the production hierarchy, and in the service of the dramatic and plastic expression of the actor.

... Light has an almost miraculous flexibility . . . it can cre­ ate shadows, make them living, and spread the harmony of their vibrations in space just as music does. In light we possess a most powerful means of expression through space, if this space is placed in the service of the actor.

29

Intro to Theater: What is Design? Page #2

Intro to Theater: What is Design? Page #2

ACTOR, SPACE, LIGHT, PAINTING

So here we have our nonnal established hierarchy: ,

the actor presenting the drama; space in three dimensions, in the service of the actor's plastic fonn; liBht giving life to each.

But as you have inferred, there is a but what about painting? What do we understand about painting in terms of scenic art?

A collection of painted backcloths and flats arranged vertically on the stage, more or less parallel to one another, and extending upstage. These are covered with painted light, painted shadow, painted fonns, objects and architecture; all of it, of course, on a flat surface since that is the nature of painting ...

Our staging practice has reversed the hierarchical order: on the pretext of providing us with elements which are difficult or impossible to realize in solid form, it has developed painted decor to an absurd degree, and disgracefully subordinated the living body of the actor to it. Thus light illuminates the back­ cloths (which have to be seen), without a care for the actor, who endures the ultimate humiliation of moving between painted flats, standing on a horizontal floor.

All modern attempts at scenic reform touch upon this essential problem; namely, on how to give to light its fullest power, and through it, integral plastic value to the actor and the scenic space.

Our stage directors have, for a long time, sacrificed the physical and living rll"F'<P''''P of the actor to the dead illusion of painting. Under such a tyranny, it is

that the human body could never develop in any nonnal way its means of expression. This marvellous instrument, instead of sounding in freedom, exists only under severe constraints.

Everyone knows today that the return to the human body as an expressive element of the first rank is an idea that captures the mind, stimulates the imagination, and opens the way for experiments which may be diverse and no doubt of unequal value, but are all directed towards the same reform ... Yet our contemporary productions have forced us into such a despicably passive state that we conceal it carefully in the darkness of the house. But now, with the current attempt by the human body to rediscover itself, our feeling almost leads to the beginning of fraternal collaboration; we wish that we were ourselves the body that we observe: the social instinct awakens within us, though in the past we coldly suppressed it, and the division separating the stage and the auditorium becomes simply a distressing barbarism arising from our selfishness.

We have arrived at the crucial point for dramatic reform ... which must be boldly announced: the dramatic author will never liberate his vision so long as he believes it yoked by necessity to a barrier separating the action from the spectator ... The inevitable conclusion is that the usual arrangement of our theatres must evolve gradually towards a more liberal conception of dramatic art ...

\\-e sb.all anil cathedral of the fut the most Yaried c:x place for dramatic

Source

Appia, A. (1919, It

on Theatre, a

Adolph Appia (IS

Swiss designer and art form, where ligh

more so, than the ~

menting with, the tl

profound influence o' (The Ring of the Nit

which were summar

in 1883. He wrote t of Wagnerian Ora, numerous articles.

Appia's work

blocks of shadow al grandson, revive hi

profound and dama

the Second World'

Dalcroze at Heller" movement and seer Euridice (1913).2

This essay rei

on principles of sta

Compare this arti

Copeau - a later al

Craig - similar con

Foreman, Wilson a

Meyerhold a con'

30

Intro to Theater: What is Design? Page #3

Intro to Theater: What is Design? Page #3

• • •

to,

What do we

. on the stage, e are covered itecture; all of

the pretext of ealize in solid I disgracefully ates the back­ o endures the [1 a horizontal

!Itial problem; integral plastic

iieal and living II. tyranny, it is way its means reedom, exists

i an expressive stimulates the Dverse and no m ... Yet our ISSive state that ith the current 1St leads to the elves the body in the past we the auditorium 5'5.

• 0 which must vision so long

dion from the ~ment of our 00 of dramatic

ADOLPH APPIA

We shall arrive, eventually, at what will simply be called the House: a sort of cathedral of the future, which in a vast, open and changeable space will welcome the most varied expressions of our social and artistic life, and ""ill be the ideal place for dramatic art to flourish, with or without spectators.

Source

Appia, A. (1919, 1954, 1993) 'Actor, Space, Light, Painting', Adolphe Appia: Texts on Theatre, ed. R.C. Beacham, London: Routledge: 114-115.1

Adolph Appia (1862-1928)

Swiss designer and philosopher of theatre; the first to write about theatre as a visual art form, where light and shadow, form and space, are as important, if not sometimes more so, than the physical performer. Apia's life was spent writing about, and experi­ menting with, the technical properties of light and shadow, primarily because of the profound influence of Richard Wagner's cycle of music dramas, Der Ring Des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), for which he prepared detailed scenic and lighting scenarios which were summarily rejected by Wagner's family after the death of the composer in 1883. He wrote three books on theatre Music and the Stage (1897), The Staging of Wagnerian Drama (1895), and The Work of Living Art (1921) as well as numerous articles.

Appia's work has had a profound influence on modern stage design, and his stark blocks of shadow and light were instrumental in helping Wieland Wagner, Wagner's grandson, revive his grandfather's work at the theatre in Bayreuth following the profound and damaging embarrassments of the Nazi canonisation of the composer in the Second World War. Appia's collaboration with the Swiss choreographer Jaques­ Dalcroze at Hellerau in the 1910s produced and initiated a whole new approach to movement and scenography, culminating in his production of Gluck's Orpheus and Euridice (1913).2

This essay represents a good summary of his thinking, concentrating as it does on principles of staging that emphasise the actor within the stage space.

Compare this article with writings by the following authors in this reader

Copeau - a later admirer who also worked with Dalcroze Craig - similar concerns and explorations in England and Russia Foreman, Wilson and Lepage late twentieth-century examples of visual theatre Meyerhold - a concern to see the actor within a scenic frame

31

Intro to Theater: What is Design? Page #4

Intro to Theater: What is Design? Page #4

ACTOR, SPACE, LIGHT, PAINTING

Piscator - contemporary European view on the aesthetics of staging Schlemmer - theatre spatial experiments at the Bauhaus

Further reading

Beacham, R.C. (1987) Adolphe Appia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brockett, O.G. and Findlay, R.R. (1973) Century of Innovation, Englewood Cliffs,

N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Volbach, W. (1968) Adolph Appia, Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press.

Notes

1 Beacham (1993: 239): 'This is excerpted from an untitled manuscript Appia prepared for presentation on 3 April 1919 at the Olympic Institute in Lausanne, accompanied by slides illustrating his designs. The conference was entitled "the future of drama and stage production"; the title "Actor, space, light, painting" was given to an abbreviated version of Appia's essay after his death.'

2 David Thomas, at Warwick University in 1991, produced a reconstruction of Appia's work.

32

Chapter 4

Al1ta

W E HAVE UJ theatre rest puppets, thereby 1 one understands wi masses go to the c gratification whose

Our. sensibili1 theatre that wakes

The damage' Racine, has renden theatre must have. filtered and projed ibility, and for ten an intellectual s1:UJl

In the anguis urgent need for d arouses deep echoe period.

Our longstaI forget the slightest conceptions, inspiI reacting on us afte

Everything tl a concept of this d

Infused with first and foremost

Intro to Theater: What is Design? Page #5

Intro to Theater: What is Design? Page #5

THE THEORY OF THE MODERN STAGE

analysis of French culture, shows how German music can arouse the religious nature of French musicians, how the French artist's sensitiveness to essential form can wean Germans from their instinctive dependence on realism. At Bayreuth, in an international poet's Elysium, the two nations are to conduct jointly a presumably endless cycle of music-dramas which will carry Wagner's original inspira­ tion to the expressionistic heights implicit in his music.

At the same time Appia shows a thoroughly Gallic capa­ city for objective analysis, which he uses to explain the aesthetic problems of the scene-designer and the technical means available for solving them. Here with amazing directness and clarity he dissects the plastic elements of the stage picture. In doing so he anticipates in detail the present technical basis ofstage lighting and outlines precisely the way it has since been used. not onlv ~s.~.!1;'" ispensable means of unifying ood and atmos­ phere, but F •ng the dramatic values of a g our emotional response to t pia's volume are nothing less stage-craft that

~ gave it both \ _ ~ . its problems and a new solutil y.;.' ~

2. THE PLASTIC ELEMENTS

The aesthetic problem ofscenic design, as Appia made plain, is a plastic one. The designer'S task is to relate forms in space, some of which are static, some of which are mobile. The stage itself is an enclosed space. Organization must be actually three-dimensional. Therefore the canons ofpictorial art are valueless. The painted illusion ofthe third dimension, valid in the painted picture where it can evoke both space and mass, is immediately negated when it is set on a stage where the third dimension is real.

The plastic elements involved in scenic design, as Appia analysed them, are four: perpendicular painted scenery, the horizontal floor, the moving actor, and the lighted space in

30

THE IDEAS OF ADOLPHE APPIA

which they are confined. The aesthetic problem, as he pointed out, is a single one: How are these four elements to be combined so as to produce an indubitable unity? For, like the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, he was aware that the plastic elements of a production remained irretrievably at odds if left to themselves. Looking at the stages about him he saw that the scene-painter of his day merely snipped his original picture into so many pieces which he stood about the stage, and then expected the actor to find his way among them as best he could. The painted back-drop was the only part of an ensemble of painted scenery that was not a ludicrous compromise. Naturally the scene-painter was in­ terested, being a painter, in presenting as many stretches of unbroken canvas as possible. Their centre of interest was about midway between the top of the stage and the stage floor at a point where, according to the line of sight of most of the audience, they attained their maximum pictorial effect. But the actor works on the stage floor at a point where painted decorations are least effective as painting. So long as the emphasis of stage setting is on painted decora­ tion, the inanimate picture is no more than a coloured illustration into which the text, animated by the actor, is brought. The two collide, they never meet nor establish any interaction of the slightest dramatic value, whereas, in Appia's phrase, they should be fused.

I Living feet tread these boards and their every step makes us aware of how meaningless and inadequate our settings are.' The better the scenery is as painting, the worse it is as a stage setting; the more completely it creates an illusion of the third dimension by the pictorial conventions of painting, the more completely an actually three-dimensional actor destroys that illusion by every movement he makes. 'For no movement on the actor's part can be brought into vital relation with objects painted on a piece of canvas.' Painteq decorations are not only at odds with the actor but also with the light that illuminates them. 'Light and vertical painted surfaces nullify rather than reinforce each other.... There is an irreconcilable conflict between these two scenic