Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1989 - 30

Announcin the 2nd Year a

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then we may be disappointed, not through any lack of
desire within the Museum to attempt a thorough job, bllt
because it is clearly impossible. When costume designs
increase rapidly in value, then no full show can ever be
collected until after the designer's death. Collecting the
inexpensive earlier work of subsequently successful designers is a necessary skill in the gallery and museum
world. The Theatre Museum staff seem reasonably adept
at it, but they have severely limited funds for purchase,
and too few resources to make even what they have at
present freely available.
This again points to the need for a record to be made in
rehearsal/production. We suffer further in Bri tain from the
absence of the dramaturg. who carries Out cri tical archival
and research functions in the rest of Europe's theatres.
Again, lack of finance and often the lack of any real understanding of the need for such a person not only to record
bllt also represent the absent, or simply dead, playwright
will continue to keep them Out of most British theatres.
So, what else must be kept~ The script obviousl)\ in all
its versions, amended drafts, prompt, and published copies.
The wordprocessor threatens a new age of missing manuscripts to equal Elizabethan times, when the printer simply threw them away. This article has been written by
hand, and then on a typewriter. A wordprocessor would
have made it simple, bllt I would not then have the three
rough versions and fragments from which the final copy is
being made. Drafts of play scripts provide an insight into
the process of writing and production along with performance and perhaps subsequent edi ting. The ideas evident
in all this work can be as useful as the script itself in final
28

TD&T'

SPRING 1989

fom1. The designs, costumes and models, as proposed at
the stan of rehearsal, should be photographed. The working drawings, or copies of them, should be retained, along
with any record of changes or relevant discussions. All the
multi tude of communications, notes, lists, and plans that
are the lifelines and battlegrounds of rehearsal are crucial.
In the interest of space, they could perhaps be microfiched
and the less crucial originals weeded alit as time goes by.
The problem is that often only time can reveal what is
really important and what not.
The performance should at least be kept in video, which
is only a flat shadow of the real thing, but the best we are
likely to get for some time. It Calmot reveal the subtle
detail a photograph can, or the clear intention shown in a
costume drawing - and even that may have been subtly
altered by the time the production reaches performance.
Perhaps one could ask for a further sequence of still
photographs from a fixed or more distant point, regularly
and relevantly placed in the performance, such as those
that accompanied the kind of critical analysis produced by
Roland Barthes in 1957 when the Berliner Ensemble visited Paris 6 Then maybe the art we give our time to would
be truly regarded for the vibrant, muscular animal it is,
along with the other arts: a true measure of civilization
and the nature of society; rather than the philistine values
too often propagated in the name of national and international economic success.
Even the visual arts themselves could form a human
document, since to draw anything must be to try to truly
understand it. What better subject than the act of making
theatre 1 Anyone doubting this should simply turn to
Henry Moore's moving drawings of London's people sheltering in the underground during the last war: real human
docwllentation, like so much else by artists tbroughollt
history. Or look at Holbein's drawings of the court of
Henry VIII, a picture of society never surpassed in clarity
and understanding.
It seems appropriate to end with this thought, as it was
the History plays that began the path leading to this article. Let's hope that it is still possible to persuade the
companies, funding bodies, sponsors, local authorities, and
other involved groups that we should, and must, attend to
this ignificant lack in our work. We are known by the
works we carry Out. But we may be forgotten and fail to
make our proper mark on the development of theatre and
the people we serve tluough it if we simply neglect to
make a record that truly does our work justice. *
David Cockayne is a British theatre designer and educator. His article f]1St appeared in the April 1988 issue of
Sightline, The Quarterly ]oumal of Theatre Technology
and Design published by ABTT, the Association at" British
Theatre Technicians.
Notes
I Ralph Koltai, addres , RO.I·al Societl' oi Arts 10uJlJal. larch
19 71reprinred in ABTT Neil'S. February 19 I,
1 John Bur}; Sightline 11,1 119 71: 15,
3 lim Hiley, Theatre at \\~)[k: The Ston' oi the ,\'otionol Theatre's
Production oi Brecht's Galileo (London; Boston: Routledge /:;Kegan Paul, 19 II,
.. Arthur i\liller, Salesman in Beiiing 11 ew York: Viking Press,
1981),
5 err! Weber, address, 1967.
6 Roland Barthes, "Seven Photo lodcls oi 1\lother Courage," The
Drama Rel'iell' 11.6 11957).

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