The Symbolists

Adophe Appia

Design for Act I of "Parsifal" by Richard Wagner. Many of Wagner's scenes take place in ancient forests. This image demonstrates Appia's vision of the sense of the sacred forest. Most significant here is the three-dimensionality of the treees which permits them to cast real shadows by means of a projected light source. Light blocked by an object produces a sculptural quality important to Appia.

These two designs are entitled "Rhythmic Spaces" by Adolphe Appia. As the illustrations show, the rhythmic space is based on platforms of varying heights, ramps, stairs, walls, and pillars, allowing the actor varied movement.

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Gordon Craig

Design for Act I, Scene Two of "Hamlet." Sketch by Gordon Craig. Craig, like Appia, was a symbolist who revolted against the surface orientation of naturalism. This illustration is heavy with suggestion and mystery. It is the scene where Hamlet first meets the Ghost on the battlements. The design suggests an atmosphere of fear and terror.

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A design by Gordon Craig from "Scene." Craig's aim in making this design was not to interpret a dramatic work by means of a set design, but to creat a single scene, or place, which was capable of infinite variation. This set was to consist of a single assembly of mobile forms and volumes. The stage floor was to be composed of totally mobile elements which, when combiend with light and shadows, would give the impression of fleeting movement caught in passing.

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The Surrealists

Dada -- a precursor to Surrealism -- had many manifestations in such major cities as Zurich, Berlin, Paris and New York. Begun by Tristan Tzara, Dada's plan of action was to destroy the deadness of conventional art and art appreciation. But unlike Futurism (see below), Dad was messianic in its hope for a new and more open and freer synthesis of life and art. One of the major early events of the Dada movement occured on February 5, 1916, at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. left to right on the podium in this illustration are Hugo Ball at the piano, Tristan Tzara wringing his hands, Jean Arp, Richard Huelsenbeck, and marcel Janco. Each of the "evenings" had its own theme, and centered around the reading of such poems, recitations, musical performances, and readings from such pre-Dada works as Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, among others. The basic attitude of early Dada was spontaneous performance rather than a didactic program.

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Hugo Ball reading the sound poem "Karavane," Cabaret Voltaire, 1916. As an example of the freedom of the word, the poet Hugo Ball, on June 23, 1916, created "verse without words" or "sound poems." The text of his poem was placed on music stands at the three sides of the stage, from which he read. His performance began "slowly and solemnly," but soon took on the chant-recitation characteristics of the Catholic liturgy. In his own words, with these sound poems he hoped to do away with "the language devastated and made impossible by journalism."

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George Grosz dressed as Dada Death. Berlin 1918. Grosz walked down the Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin dressed as Dada Death, perhaps as an image of the condition in which the Dadaists considered contemporary life to exist.

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Dada Festival, Salle Gaveau, Paris, May 26, 1920. The performance was a reaction against those Dadaists who promoted the standarization of Dada performances. Crowds were enticed to the May 26th performance by announcements that the Dadaists would have their heads shaved on stage though the event did not take place. Andre Breton, later to serve as the founder of the Surrealist movement, appeared with a gun tied to each temple, and the poet Paul Eluard presented himself in a tutu. This photograph shows the Dadaists in high funner-shaped hats.

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Scene from "The Gas Heart" by Tristan Tzara. Costumes designed by Sonia Delaunay, Theatre Michel, Paris, July 6-7, 1923. Tzara introduced the first performance as follows: "It is the only and greatest three-act hoax of the century. It will satisfy only industrialized imbeciles who believe in the existence of men of genius."

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Two characters from "Parade" by Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie. Decor and Costumes by Pablo Picasso, Paris, May 1917. Cocteau's and Satie's "Parade" anticipated Surrealism proper only by a few years. The term "surrealism" was coined by Apollinaire in the Preface to his earlier play, "The Breasts of Tiresias." "I have invented," wrote Apollinaire, "the adjective surrealist ... which defines fairly well a tendency in art" to free the arts and life from the strangulating logic of cause and effect. The photograph on the left indicates the First Manager, dressed in a ten-foot high cubist costume; the one on the right represents the American Manager, dressed as a skyscraper. Satie's music utilized "musical" instruments such as typewriters, sirens, and airplane propellers.

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Set for "The Wedding on the Eiffel Tower" by Jean Cocteau, Paris, 1921. Four years after "Parade," Cocteau presented an even more surrealistic piece under the title "The Wedding on the Eiffel Tower." Crowds were represented by a single person, the master of ceremonies introduced each sequence and explicated the action. Two characters dressed as Phonographs with horns for mouthpieces directed the mimed performances of the ballet dancers.

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Theater of the Absurd

Scene from "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett. Directed by Roger Blin. Theatre de Babylone, Paris, 1952.

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Scene from "The Bald Soprano" by Eugene Ionesco. Theatre de la Huchette, Paris, 1956. The work is a parody of the machine-like, puppet-like nature of the life of the petit bourgeois, whose reactions, thought patterns, and responses are cliches.

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Scene from "Rhinoceros" by Eugene Ionesco. Decor and Costumes by Jacques Noel, Directed by Jean-Louis Barrault, Odeon-Theatre de France. Paris, 1960. This play concerns a village whose inhabitants, one by one, turn into rhinoceroses. As in several others of his plays, Ionesco in Rhinoceros portryas the ovservable infectiousness of national ideologies on the insecure mind.

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Futurism

Futurism serves as the progenitor of the modern from of theater that has come to be known as the avant-garde. Perhaps a more descriptive term would be the a-rational art of performance. Futurism's aim was solely to shock by means of the most audacious activity. Specifically, it set out to attack the establishment values that the futurists felt were strangling the arts as well as life itself.

The following two images are the stage design and sketch of movements for the futurist ballet "Printing Press" by Giacomo Balla. Balla presented this piece in 1914, Balla presented, in a private performance for Diaghilev. All action took place in front of a backdrop on which only the wrod Tipografica was painted. The corps consisted of twelve people, each of whom represented a part of a machine. Six of them portrayed a piston, while the remaining six simulated the wheel being driven by the pistons. The aim of the exercise was to "represent the soul of the individual pieces of a rotary printing press." In addition, each performer was given a characteristic sound to accompany each movement.