Theatre Design & Technology - Oct 1972 - 35

the care, or lack thereof, that a publisher and his editorial
staff spend on a particular volume.
As a student text for thirty-two dollars, the book is
overpriced. The publ isher however is advertising a professional discount of 20%, for a total of S25.60, and at that
price the volume is worth every penny. The tremendous
plus the book has is the most complete single volume
compilation of material on the planning and execution of
scenery for the stage. The color section on scene painting,
hopefully has set a trend for future volumes. The Appendix on strength of materials and the Bibliography of
sources and publications are also very useful additions.
The book, without question is the best available volume
on its topic, ignoring price, but has not adequately resolved whether it is to be a student text or a reference to
be used over and over again.
Robert Lewis Smith
Syracuse University

ART AND THE STAGE IN THE 20TH CENTURY
Edited by Henning Rischbieter
Documented by Wolfgang Storch
New York Graphic Society Ltd.
Although the work of the painter and the sculptor in
the theatre has been treated many times before, this almost exhaustive study has never been equaled in quality
of reproduction nor in comprehensiveness. The book itself
has a large format that allows for excellent and sufficiently large plates. Many of these are in color. This format also allows for several plates to be related on a single
page showing the necessary progression of a particular design. The type used in the text is very readable, although
the use of three columns on a page disturbs the continuity
at times. All in all, the layout and the design of the book
are excellent.
The artists treated range from Tou louse- Lautrec
through Victor Vasarely and Jim Dine. The work of many
of these men has never before been shown so extensively
in excellent reproductions. In addition, the works chosen
of the better known painters and sculptors selected have
seldom been used previously. This alone makes the book a
valuable addition to the rather small collection of works
on stage design.
From the period of the 1920's I was particularly impressed by the work of Willi Baumeister, Maholy-Nagy,
and Piet Mondrian. Although we see Baumeister's setting
for Giraudoux's Judith at Darmstadt reproduced in many
collections, we seldom see anything else. While the spatial
arrangement of these sharply conceived tents is masterfu I,
his handl ing of the stage in the designs shown here for Die
Wandlung and especially for his 1921 Macbeth reveal a
handling of theatre imagery that few other painters can
match. And again with Maholy-Nagy, the authors have
seen fit to show designs that have not been reproduced

~ THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

before in spite of the recent renewed interest in the
Bauhaus and the subsequent publishing of much unavailable material. The photographs of the Piscator production
of Der Kaufmann von Berlin are particularly valuable. Piet
Mondrian's construction for a text of Michel Seuphor I
found very intriguing, not so much because it would work
as a space for a moving actor as for its solving of the
difficult transfer of abstract forms to stage space. Obviously he has had an influence on today's stage design.
Among the more recent works, those of Ceroli,
Wotruba, and Max Bill seemed the most successfully
stage-oriented. In the drawings, models, and photographs
of actual productions of Wotruba's designs for Electra,
Antigone, and the Wagner Ring Series he shows a hyperawareness of the actor in space as well as being able to
express his highly personal style. The skillful handling of
the ground plan for Electra especially shows this. Ceroli's
wooden theatre for Richard III particularly appealed to
me. His use of wood and his handling of it in this large
space shows his love of this material. The richness and the
expressiveness of his statement is very apparent even in
the photographs. The ground plans shown reveal a knowledge of the manipulation and ordering of the stage space
and its articulation through the use of wood, his favorite
material. With Max Bill we see again the successful transfer of a personal style in one medium to that in another.
The designs shown in the book of his Zwischenfalle bei
einer Notlandung for the Hamburg Staatsoper reflect the
beauty of his furniture and industrial designs as well as his
sculpture, while at the same time he approaches the space
as an accommodation for the mobile actor. This is evident
in the four photographs but particularly so in the ground
plan from his Oedipus.
I could mention others as examples of successful stage
space handling, but because of limited length I feel some
space should be given to evaluating the place of the book
as a whole. After the work of Appia and Craig and their
followers, after the recent work of Martha Graham with
Arch Lauterer and Isamu Noguchi, which would be interesting to compare with Diaghilev and his work with his
contemporary painters, the theatre and the dance have
come back to recognizing the stage problem of space and
time. The space is a shell to contain a moving expressive
actor who can only be expressive in time. The particular
design then becomes a particular ordering of this shell to
contain the moving actor in time. When the painter or
sculptor, in the transfer of his expression from that of two
dimensional painting or three dimensional sculpture without a time element finds a solution to the space-time
problem of theatre and retains his personal expressiveness,
he succeeds in being a stage designer. When he does not,
and the book has many examples of this, he turns theatre
into a disunity by disregarding the actor and trying to
make an expression outside the theatre problem.
Some of the designs shown in the book are visually
beautiful but are not in the scope of theatre. Why are they

OCTOBER, 1972

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