Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1983 - 12

Chalk Circle, for the RSC. Since then
his work has been roughly split between
the two genres. His work in theatre has
been primarily with the RSC, although
he has also done some important productions with the ational Theatre since
the late 1960s. Concurrently, from 1965
to 1973, he was head of the theatre design program at the Central School, and
thus had a direct hand in the development of many young designers, including John apier and Maria Bjornson. Actually, almost half of the awardwinning British designers represented at
the 1979 Prague Quadriennale had some
or all of their training under Koltai.
Some of Koltai's work resembles abstract sculpture that one might find in an
art gallery. Tannhiiuser (Australia 1973)
had a smooth raked floor unmarred
except for two graceful segments that
peeled up from its surface. Wagner's
Ring (English ational Opera 1970-73)
blended the shimmering and splintery
materials of fiberglass and plastics with
metallic, boulder-like spheres to create
fantasy landscapes. The Jew of Malta
(RSC 1964) and The Merchant of Venice (RSC 1965) used various configurations of heavily textured, corroded, mobile rectangular blocks with metallic
(MV) or masonry (lM) surfaces. The
settings for Ibsen's Brand ( T 1978)
and Ted Tally's Terra ova (Denmark
1981) represented landscapes of snow
and ice; for Brand, Koltai used white
plywood surfaces, jagged sections of
which could be tilted up to suggest a
cracking icefield. In 1erra Nova the surface material was stainless steel on a
stable, gently curved base, which was
echoed by a steel grill arching over part
of the floor.
Koltai's sculptural scenography often blends with other techniques, however. In Brecht's Baal (RSC 1979), a
three dimensional rear wall was filled
with partially protruding objects that
eventually took part in the action. For
scene shifts, however, projections were
cast on the relief wall, thereby wiping
out the objects. For Shaw's Man and
Superman ( T 1981), a curving rear
wall was mirrored in its upper section so
as to reflect objects and people located
under it in the upstage part of the scene.
More complex use of mirrors occurred
in Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle
(Saddler's Wells 1972) and of projections in Ian Hamilton's operatic version
of Alina Karenina (English National
10

Ralph Koltai's set jar Man and Superman, 1981: a curved mirror arching over the deep upstagejloor.
Photo Ralph Koltai.

Ralph Koltai's projected scenery jar Anna Karenina, 1981: rear projection on upstage transtucefll jolio,
jrofllal projection on downstage scrim. Photo Christina Burton courtesy English ationat Opera.

Opera 1981). In the latter, Koltai used a
combination of a frontal scrim and
translucent folio screening upstage, with
two sets of projections (front and rear)
to create various images of the locales of
the action.
When the occasion demands, Koltai
is able to be documentarily realistic,
although that is not his natural bent.
For Solzhenitsyn's The Love Girl and
Ihe Innocent (RSC 1981) he constructed
a barbed wire freight yard complete with
tracks, gantries, and cars because that is
what seemed appropriate to the actuali-

Theatre Design & Technology/ SITT/Fall 1983

ties of existence in the Stalinist concentration camp where the action is situated. In any production challenge, according to Koltai, "the thing that matters is the concept for the staging of the
work. This is the governing factor ...
design is simply the execution of a concept. I'd hate it ifit were merely interior
decoration.'"
Characteristic of Koltai's scenography at its most expressive is a command
of technical elements that is markedly
more advanced than his fundamentally
simpler sculptural scenography would

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1983