Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1977 - 23

played their contempt for ordinary society and proclaimed their freedom from it. 2
While the painter sought freedom from the middle
class in order to create according to his own vision, the
scenographer remained bound by the limitations of the
theatre. As Richard Gilman says,
... the theatre has for several centuries
been primarily a bourgeois art or enterprise and therefore a conservative one. 3
In other words, the scenographer has been obi iged to
cater to the very aud ience which the painter has rejected.
However, it is not enough to say today that painters
search for freedom, and the theatre has accepted the limitations of a bourgeoisie which is conservative. A recent
commentator, Daniel Bell, has pointed out that the middle class itself, by losing its religious faith and its related
work eth ic, has itself tu rned to a search for self expression and a desire to experience everything without limitations.
In the cry for the autonomy of the aesthetic,
there arose the idea that experience in and
of itself was the supreme value. 4
Bell continues by claiming that a tension has been created
because our cultural objectives of experience and release
are in conflict with our economic objectives of rationality
and efficiency.
There are several implications to these observations.
First, if the artist and society now share cultural aims,
the artist has lost a society to oppose, to push against.
He is thus disarmed and his work lacks force.
Also, if Bell is correct, we have reached a point where
the direction of either our cultural, economic, or political
worlds, or all three, will change to relieve the tension
that has developed. The shift to a more conservative taste
in painting may well be a signal that we have reached such
a turning point.
The theatre may also be at a turning point if it loses
even its middle class audience which now prefers experiences wh ich, because they rely on sensual perception
rather than intellectual comprehension, are liberating in a
more personal way.
Finally, the tension between an economy of regulations and a culture of independence is an analogue of the
tension that exists for the scenographer. In the past, the
artist working in a theatre that was a subsidized or commercial venture felt no pressure. But exactly as students
today attempt to choose careers in which they can "do
their own thing," theatre people have created a hierarchy of design jobs on the basis of how much control
they have over the finished product. Theatre design is at
the top of this hierarchy followed by film, TV, and
commercials.
George Jenkins, who has worked extensively in theatre and film, recently described to me, with some dismay,
how he had designed five complete proscenium archs to
establish five theatres in a major Hollywood film. Even
though they are skilled and practical artists, the director
and cameraman used closeups of the star in each of these
five scenes and never once showed the arches, whose total

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cost equalled the cost of an entire Broadway show.
Even that form which is least limiting, the theatre,
imposes tremendous limitations on the scenographer;
the scenographer must please a producer, a director,
and ultimately a public; he must work within a time
limit with a given budget and a given work force; he
must design for an existing space; and he must fit his
designs to the meaning and spirit of an author's play.
It seems to me that these limitations have very often
created pressures which mirror the difficulties in our
cultural life.
Given the limitations imposed on the designer from
without, I find it fascinating that designers have added
their own limitations and continue to preach the virtues of these self-imposed regulations. In 1941 Robert
Edmond Jones wrote,
The designer creates an invironment in which all
noble emotions are possible. Then he retires.
The actor enters. If the designer's work has been
good, it disappears from our consciousness at
that moment. We do not notice it any more. s
and in 1975, Oliver Smith said,
I do believe that there are certain cardinal rules or
guidelines which apply to all expert scene design.
In other words, I think the purpose of the designer
is to service the director and playwright and the
composer, and not to show off as an easel painter.
Therefore, I think the best sets are often the
simplest, least fussy, and least distracting. 6
I don't believe that Inigo Jones, or the Bibienas, or
Torelli, or thousands of other designers would agree
with these statements. Possibly only those designers
whose work spanned the years between Jones and Smith
would agree in practice. But from Josef Svaboda to the
designers of rock musicals, the greatest influences on
design today come from those who ignore these admonitions. Therefore, Jones' and Smith's statements represent
a historical phenomenon which does not hold true for
contemporary taste.
Jones designed for a literary theatre best represented
by Eugene O'Neill. For a variety of reasons, today's culture is not literary or rational. As Daniel Bell puts it, today's culture is,
... prodigal, promiscuous, dominated by an antirational anti-intellectual temper in which the self
is taken as the touchstone of cultu ral judgments,
and the effect on the self is the measure of the
aesthetic worth of experience. 7
If contemporary culture is sensate, the ascendency of
rock light shows and the decline of the well-made play
are easy to understand. One can see why opera, which is
more sensual than intellectual, has gained a wider audience. Tom O'Horgan and Ken Russell have bombarded
our senses while other directors mount classic Greek
tragedies in which the actors make sounds but utter no
words.
The scenographer is torn between contradictory tasks.
On the one hand, as a visual artist, he has always repre-

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THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

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SUMMER,1977

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