Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1986 - 26

BOOK REVIEWS

style as realized on stage. For today's
designers, scenographers, and technicians, Bensons' work will help to
rekindle the imagination and possibly generate more productions in the
Expressionist style. In the absence of
Expressionist prompt books, lost in
the azi proscription of 1933, Benson's work is welcome. Thomas f. Taylor
Purdue University

Recent Books on European
Scenography

The past several years have seen the
appearance of numerous carefully
prepared studies of central and eastern European stage design. Prepared
by native scholars, the volumes help
remind us of the outstanding scenographic work that has been a hallmark of staging in these lands.
A cluster of volumes dealing with
scenography in Czechoslovakia
range from Vera Ptackova's survey,
Ceskd Scenografie XX Stoleti
(Czech Scenography of the Twentieth Century), Prague: Odeon,
1982, to monographs on single artists. Ptackova's survey, in addition
to the exceptional quality of its
glossy illustrations and their generously spaced layout, has the advantage of an English summary of its informative and critically perceptive
text. She provides not only the
Czech but the international context
for the work of such leading artists
as Svoboda, Vychodil, and their leading forerunners such as E. F. Burian
and F. Troster. Another advantage is
that she cites extensively the
observations of the scenographers
themselves and other eyewi messes
of the original productions.
Ptackova's briefer, more compact
study losef Svoboda, Prague: Divadelnf Ustav, 1984, is limited to a
brief German summary but has a
very extensive international bibliography of works by and about
Svoboda. The text and illustrations
span Svoboda's career from the late
forties to the early eighties. Offsetting the many virtues of the softbound book is the lack of an index of
productions or of illustrations,
which are examined in an essentially chronological order.

TD&T . FALL 1986

Svoboda's leading contemporary
is discussed and amply illustrated in
Ladislav Lajcha's Slovak work,
Ladislav Vychodil, Bratislava: Tatran, 1980, with summaries in English as well as French, German, and
Russian. Lajcha's earlier survey,
Sllcasnd Slovenskd Scenografia
(Contemporary Slovak Scenography), Bratislava: Pallas, 1977, presented the work of more than thirty
designers from the eastern half of
Czechoslovakia, with a brief summary in several languages including
English.
A significant mentor of both
Svoboda and Vychodil is the subject
of Lajcha's, Tid Hilmera's, and Ales
Zach's Frantisek Troster, Bratislava:
Tatran, 1983, which also contains
multilingual summaries including
one in English. Troster, whose work
spanned the period from the 1930s to
the 1960s, was the first of several
Czechs to win international recognition at the Sao Paolo Biennale,
achieving the gold medal for scenography in 1959
Inquiries concerning these scenographic studies from Czechoslovakia may be addressed to a central distributor: Arria; Ve Smeckach 30;
Prague I; CSSR.
A work corresponding in scope to
Ptackova's survey of twentieth-century Czech scenography is Xenobiusz Strzelecki's latest work treating staging in Poland, Wspolczesna
Scenografia Polska (Contemporary
Polish Scenographyl, Warsaw:
Arkady, 1983. It is issued in two
volumes, the first almost exclusively pictorial, the second almost exclusively textual. Of particular note is the lengthy translation into English of virtually all of
Strzelecki's de.tailed and insightful
text, which places the work of some
seventy designers into their European and Polish context. The volume
is also notable for its heavy proportion of production photographs as
distinct from renderings, though the
latter are not slighted. Inquiries may
be addressed to Arkady Publishing;
Ul. Sienkiewicza 14; Warsaw I; Poland.
The state of scenographic art in
Hungary is presented in 16zsef
Boegl's and Lajos lanosa's Scenographica Hungarica 1970-1980,
Budapest: Corvina Kiado, 1983. The
book provides a relatively brief bur

very informative survey of the most
recent work of leading Hungarian
stage and costume designers. A useful introduction establishes a background for the present study,
rentinding us that the art of scenography in Hungary languished
somewhat behind the work done in
Czechoslovakia and Poland after
World War II. It is clear, however,
that major strides have been taken in
the past fifteen or twenty years. Both
the introductory and biographical
and production information relating
to some forty designers are competey translated into English, and
each designer is represented by one
to five creations in the form of either
renderings or production photographs. Inquiries may be addressed
to the Hungarian Theatre Institute;
Krisztina Korut 57.1016; Budapest I;
Hungary.
At the risk of repetition it is worth
stressing that for students of scenography the problem of foreign texts is
more than offset by the richness of
illustrations, many in color, in all of
these books. larka M. Burian
State University of NY, Albany

Philadelphia Theatres, A-Z:
A Comprehensive,
Descriptive Record of 813
Theatres Constructed
Since 1724

by Irvin R. Glazer.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
Inc., 1986 ISBN 0-313-24054-X,
277 pp., ill., $45.00 cloth.

Philadelphia Theatres, A-Z was
written by an accountant who is a
theatre historian by avocation; it is
both more and less than a history of
theatres in Philadelphia. On the one
hand, it provides an interesting,
anecdote-filled account of the development of playhouses, concen halls,
vaudeville houses, and especially
movie palaces in that city. It
describes how, when, and why they
were built, who built them, and often the stars, performances, or films
that were most closely associated
with them, as well as a variety of
other information. On the other
hand, the book omits or makes it dif-

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1986