Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1976 - 15

are placed in the profession it becomes increasingly
difficult to find places available.
Although it cannot be doubted that this major educational effort has considerably increased the standards of
design in the British theatre in the last ten years, it cannot
be denied that there are certain areas of concern. The
first is that as the courses are organized by the Education
Authorities without relation to the profession, there are
many students who complete three to four years at school
only to find they cannot make their way in the profession. Superfluity can pay a heavy toll in human terms.
Secondly, there are many who would prefer to see the
final stages of Theatre Design training taking place in the
same institution as those where actors and directors are
trained. The shared theatrical experience and its understanding can be lacking in specialized institutions.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Department of Stage Design of the Theatre Faculty in
Prague
The thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Theatre Faculty at the Academy of Creative Arts, and within
its framework the founding of the department of stage
design which thus received the status of a university level institution, provides a suitable impulse to reconsider
the development of education in this specialization and to
attempt a first assessment of the results ach ieved.
For almost 25 years the department of stage design was
headed by its founder, National Artist prof. Frantisek
Troster, a member of the pre-war avant-garde and a leading personality in Czech theatrical life. There is no doubt
about the fact that the fruits of his practical activities in
the theatre, as well as his teaching activities, which were
begun at the Academy of Industrial Design in Bratislava
and which he continued at the Prague Conservatory, were
transferred, logically developed and brought to their
peaks at the Prague Academy of Creative Arts. His first
inspiration found its source in the Bauhaus school and the
thoughts of Paul Klee, confirmed by the analytical stud ies
of Kandinski, concerning primary shapes, the square,
circle and triangle, whose axes, Klee and, after him, the
whole Bauhaus school, raised to the status of symbols
with an imminent content of their own when they are put
in motion to form sterometric bod ies whereby the d irection of their inner tension is defined. It is precisely in
this direction that Troster completed K lee's thoughts
on basic studies during the teaching process: the freed
expansive force of the axes unfolds a sterometric body
and calls forth its growth, enrichment and adequate elements into a series of clusters of primary stage design
shapes of a higher order, whose typical characteristic is
no longer a composition blueprint based on axes, gradation or contrast - laws which govern graphic and plastic
art in general - but by their gravitation, their endeavor
to express and concentrate thoughts. And if, in this process, Frantisek Troster placed stress upon organically
grown, self-supporting structures, which fully take into
account the nature of the material used, then his teaching
etudes must be designated as a synthesis of Klee's
thoughts, with the theoretical and practical experiments

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I

of Joseph Albers, developed on the basis of the generally
valid postulates of the Bauhaus. It is above all on their
basis that the requirement of functionality in theatrical
creations and stage designing become imperative; in their
re-assessment by Troster they have a dramatic function
and thus also give new meaning to plan projections of
lines of force, which only formally represent an analogy
to a plan layout as the basis for the elevation of shapes.
Frantisek Troster, for whom art was always a human
affair, added to this foundation, in the second half of
the curriculum, two other "non-Bauhaus", synthetic
problems, which at the time appeared to be most pressing - the problem of the actor as a human and the
problem of space-in-time, which is closely connected
with it.
In this manner the fundamental problems of stage
design and the problems derived from it gradually developed and formed the main axis of the teaching process
and thus logically led to a change in the curriculum.
What was originally only studio teaching - even if Troster
essentially never abandoned this type of teaching - was
supplemented by lectures on the history of stage design
on the theatre, on art, architecture, material culture,
stage and lighting technology - all subjects which although of a clearly auxilliary nature and quite independent of the main subject of study, by their sheer quantity
provoked the necessity of more differentiated courses.
Thus Frantisek Troster, only too well aware of the synthetic nature of a theatrical performance - since he himself proclaimed this requirement in his work as a whole
and was one of the first to advocate the transition of the
teaching of stage design from the Academy of Industrial
Design, where it has been taught for years to the Theatre
Faculty of Academy of Creative Arts on the basis of the
necessity of cooperation between future stage designers,
stage directors and actors on a school stage - was during
the sixties the initiator of three new, although never
completely realized, concepts whose aim was to d ifferentiate the main subject of teaching and to distribute the
curricul um accordingly.
The course of the winter term of the 1968/69 academic year, immediately following the sudden death of
National Artist prof. Frantisek Troster, proved above all
doubt, that he cannot be replaced by anyone else. Further
negative developments only confirmed the fact that a
personality of Troster's dimensions, which would so
uniquely combine creative and teaching talents, does
not yet exist. However, the objectively existing state
of theatrical and stage designing activity, which during
this time underwent rapid changes, cannot be overlooked. The need for integration on the one hand and a
greater specification on the other, became acute.
Such was, very briefly, the reaction to the above
mentioned facts, embodied into a new concept of work
of the department of stage design, as it was shaped during
the winter months of 1970: Teaching must be on a university level, the artistic aspect must be supplemented by
theory and methodology, because only in such a manner
can the teaching of the fundamental problems of the
subject be guaranteed, as well as a logical development

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

FALL.1976

15
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1976
