Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1998 - 46

water or the concentric motifs created by Craig
in the portrait of Duncan in Figure 9. In this
drawings. all the lines create concentric
circles around Duncan's face.
Only a fe\\' of the sketchbooks dralrings
\rere used for the final publication of the
Isadora .lIappe. Why these dra\\-ings \rere not
further developed and used for the last publishing of the .IIappe is unclear. However.
Craig's son offers tltis explanation: "The first
design in the [Isadora .lIappe] series, hmrever, shows a stationary figure; this was the design for Elenora Duse's costume as
Clytemnestra. Isadora loved it so that it be-

canle the format on which the other five designs were based. The Insel Verlag [the publishing company of the .lfappe 1 \rere not at all
keen about the publication. but pressure was
brought to bear by Kessler, who had interests
in the firm'" (E. A. Craig 209)
The Isadora .lIappe \ras published in
1905 \rith only st.\; prints of Duncan and a
poem by Craig about Duncan's dancing. What
remains in Craig's 1905 sketchbook is his tireless exploration of movement through countless sketches. As Craig's son noted, Craig had
not preriously explored this element of movement; however his father's work in the portfo-

lio 'when finished, ... all seemed very dirorced from any of his other work, and
showed how totally under Isadora's speU he
\ras at the time'" (E. A. Craig 20-)
Perhaps one of the most striking ObSel",ations of Craig's renaissance was made by
Eyant-Confino in Beyond The .lfask. She stated
that "the turning point [for Craig] had actually
been 1905: designs made during this year included three-dimensional bodies like colossal
columns, high arcades. endless stairs-resembling the monolithic works of the ancient
Egyptians. From 1906 on, the designs show
'cubes' sometimes grollnded, sometimes suspended-the kinetic stage'" (I 12) These two
observations and the evidence uncovered in
his sketchbook indicate that Craig discovered
the element of movement in the human body in
1905. By 1906, he had transferred this idea of
movement to the physical properties of the
stage. The often overlooked evidence recorded
in his 1905 sketchbook suggests that Craig
learned the idea through the inspired movement of Duncan's dancing.
Implications of the Designs
It \rould appear that Craig indeed learned the

concept of movement from Duncan and then
transported these concepts to his own theories
and designs for the theatre. The transference
of the abstract idea of movement to the physical properties of the stage was the subject of
Eyant-Confino's Beyond The Mask, in which
Confino gives considerable attention to Craig's
formation of his movement "beliefs" which she
argues he obtained mainly from the mysticism
of the ancients and the occult beliefs of the renaissance artists. Craig then formally incorporated these "beliefs" into ltis theories of
design. Confino offers that Craig perhaps obtained the idea through Duncan and her study
of the ancients but that he, in turn, becanle fascinated with the mystic elements and symbols.
Thus, she states the true influence of movement canle from Craig's s\lldy of mysticism.
Confino dedicates a chapter of her book to the
exploration of the use of squares and the
circles in Craig's drawings completed in 1905
and 1906. She believes that Craig was consciously exploring the square and the circle as
universal symbols in his designs, based on an
intense study of mystic belief of the ancients
(129). She wrote: ,·It is interesting to observe
the recurrence of the geometrical symbols in
Craig's designs from the period under review,
that is from 1905-1907. The square-and
44

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TD&T

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1998