Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1975 - 22

heard saying - "I don't want a designer who knows too
much -" or "a designer should stick to his blueprints." A
director once asked me, when I laid out the floor plan for
his rehearsal on stage, to move all props and furniture left
of the center line - puzzled and not quite ready to oblige,
I asked, "Why? - His unforgettable and totally serious
response was, "Because I'm left handed." All this
probably because of his progressive schooling. But the
ultimate decision must rest with the director because he is
the highest authority - regardless - and is responsible for
the finished production.
To make pretty pictures and models is not enough.
They ohen look better than the stage set itself. And to be
proud of meticulously executed working drawings is also
not enough even though they may impress the producer,
his wife or the press agent's girl friend. Some of the great
designers of the past were often not able to draw a good
picture or devise an intricate lightling plot but had an
enormous influence on the development of the theatre,
for they were the real movers and shakers.
A designer can and should rely on nothing - no
mannerism, no self-glorifying style. Knowledge about the
transitoriness of his art and the gift of "How to Forget"
are his supports, as are his self-renewing imagination and
fantasy. H is creativity is manifold - his work conditioned
only by the work at hand. What he has to do is to help
interpret the poet, writer, composer or choreographer to
the best possible result and translate this into terms of
space, lights, distances, colors. And this can be a
tremendous task. He should take from the old and the
new. Theatre lives from all the arts - past and present.
The designer should be humble, learning from all, listening
to all, including his students or helpers, changing
sometimes, rejecting or accepting other times. Then
masters become pupils and pupils learn as masters. He
shouldn't substitute gimmicks for essence. It leads
unsuccessfully only to cover up inability.
When a set - as Brecht called it, "stage construction"
- shows more evidence of great thinking than the play then it's bad. A brilliant set never helped a bad play but
even a good play can be ruined by a self-serving "brilliant"
set. "A piece of wall and a stool are already very much"as Brecht sa id. The challenge is in their placement on
stage. Scenery Iives only for the two hours on stage. It
functions only when it's part of the performance. In New
York, scenery goes up in flames on the dumps in
Secaucus, New Jersey after the show closes, Iike a
discarded Christmas tree.
Learn from history, but at the right moment be able to
forget it. Make the audience believe because you believe.
Don't put the spectator into the "mood." He too, must
experience the joy of discovery, and when audiences will
hopefully come to understand that the function of a set is
not to be a pretty picture by itself, but an integral part of
the performance like the actor, then, perhaps the designer
will be spared that most irritating experience of hearing a
burst of appluase when the curtain opens and before a
single word has been spoken or sung.
The designer should be a theatre person first and a
designer second and I mean not a specialist or an expert,
nor should he be type-cast. If the following experiences
were not so sad, they would be very funny. Early in my
Broadway career a producer, whom I had never met asked
me to design a play for him. During the course of our
conversation he told me that he had seen a set I had
designed which had a chimney on a cabin roof in the
Ozark mountains. His play needed just such a chimney.

That was his "fool-proof" reason for choosing me. I didn't
do it. Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, which I designed in
1952, and which was seen allover the world for four
years, was the reason for my being offered other
commissions to design Black Musicals. I had become a
specialist in Black Musicals. The same Porgy and Bess led
another producer to ask me to design the set for a musical
called Portotino. I asked him why he chose me to design
the play. "I saw your production of Porgy and Bess, and
the stage was full of window-shutters -"I also need
window-shutters for my production," he answered. My
response, that window-shutters in South Carolina worked
differently and were of other colors than at the Italian
Riviera, didn't deter him. I was the window-shutter expert
and couldn't make enough shutters. Even that didn't save
the production. This effort to "Play it Safe" by type
casting me continued. Aher I had designed Shaw's
Androcles and the Lion for Margaret Webster (in which by
the way I wanted to play the lion in my own set) I was
the acknowledged expert in classic Roman columns and
because of my training at Piscator's theatre in Germany I
was considered a specialist in steel-constructions. Did all
this make me a multi-specialist? These experts have often
hurt us so much. It would also be good for stage builders
to be performers once in a while - then they might be
better able to understand the problems of the performers,
and it's a marvelous and exciting experience to live in
your own set. This is something I discovered when I
played the waiter in my production of La Boheme, and a
clown in my own creation of The Littlest Circus. There
was once a review in a Swiss newspaper about a play for
which I designed the set and also appeared in a small
acting role. "Wolfgang Roth was admirable in his role and
also shows talent as a stage designer."
It would also be good for the performer or director to
know about design and techn ical problems. When I
worked with Jean Louis Barrault in 1952, I remember him
not only playing Scapin in the Louis Jouvet production,
but also shifting scenery and adjusting lights during
intermission. And talking about Jouv~t, reminds me of the
time we set up his production of L'Ecole des Femmes in
Canada. Prior to its New York presentation, a lighting
expert was brought in from New York to assist Jouvet. Le
Patron as Jouvet was referred to by his company, watched
the expert in action and asked me what the man was
doing. I sensed, by the tone of Jouvet's question, that he
felt interfered with. After all he had played this show
more than 750 times in many parts of the world. I told
him this man was a "lighting expert," who had been sent
to polish up the show for New York. Jouvet's response
was "Je ne pas besoin un lighting expert" adding if the
expert wouldn't get off the stage, "Je ne joue pas ce soir."
The equipment and expert left.
Thousands and thousands of performances have taken
place and are taking place on this space called a stage.
Thousands of never again repeated floor plans have found
their place here. Here is where the playwrights' and
composers' works come alive.
The beginning of a new production is always an
exciting event. The hour of birth is the beginnlllg of give
and take, of accept and reject. Doodling and playing
around makes everything easier. One discards, goes away
from the scene, talks about thousands of other things,
tells jokes, a necdotes, makes love or goes to sleep - And
yet one thinks constantly about the work. Often
someth ing ostensibly having no relationship to the work
brings a sudden solution. A dream, empty wine or beer

USITT

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

FALL,1975

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1975