Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1980 - 20

design presentation emphasized "the genetic aspect," that is,
designs that gave insight into the working process. 7 In keeping with this intention, a number of designs were documented
extensively from inception through realization by drawings, arrangement sketches, models (always highly detailed and carefully executed), renderings, and production photographs.
This matter of documentation posed some problems for the
East Germans, just as it has for other organizers of design exhibitions. If a design, no matter how important or influential, is
not documented adequately, it will not be included in an exhibition. This was the case with an East German design for Heiner MOiler's Zement B. Because of the continued move away
from representational painted scenery, designers today frequently do not produce even conventional documentary material such as renderings, once the standard method of preserving a design for posterity. And because of the spatial and
experiential character of much contemporary design, photography is of little help in recording exactly how a design looked
in the theatre.
Related to this problem is the distaste many designers have
for conventional design exhibitions. How, they say, can a rendering, model, or photograph do justice to a stage design,
which by its very nature can only be understood when experienced in the context of a live performance? Sketches and
models are only the by-products of designing, tools useful in
creating the design, intended not for exhibition but for communicating with the shop, the director, and the actors. To display such things in a gallery, suggesting that they are in some
way "art" or that they are representative of the actual design
is plainly misleading. As a consequence of this attitude, some
countries are faced with exhibiting only the work of those designers who either care to document their work in the ways
mentioned, or work primarily in two-dimensional painted
forms, the kind of design most easily documented by a drawing or rendering. But such designers may not be representative of the leading or innovative forces in a particular country.

West Germany
Cognizant of these reservations on the part of designers-and exhibitors--the delegation from the Federal Republic of
Germany tried something radically different this year in
Prague. The approach they chose may have disturbed traditionalists, but it did manage to win the participation of nearly
all West Germany's top designers, and it seemed to fascinate
the Prague audiences as well. On several hot June days when
I walked through other exhibits without seeing a soul, there
were always curious visitors in the West German section.
The conception of the West German contribution was most
ambitious. According to Jan Fiebelkorn, chief organizer, they
wanted to do no less than "communicate the phenomenon of
theatre as a whole," despite the limited means at their disposal. 9 He described the installation in the accompanying
catalog, Konfigurationen:
The exhibition is organized as an ensemble of rooms,
figures, sounds, and film. The intention of these configurations is to draw the viewer into the different visions
and personalities of the scenic composers, whereby the
departure point in each case is the theatre itself, that is,
a specific production in the Federal Republic in the last
four years. The configurations are not just documentations of respective productions. They have been in part
modified, newly arranged, and further developed by the
artists so that new theatrical events, related to specific
productions, confront the exhibition visitor. 10

The scene design section consisted of nine such configurations, or rooms, each distinctly different. For example:
1) Karl Ernst Herrmann, "Room for an Automaton": A figure of a man with a white plaster head sits on a mound of dirt
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Theatre Design & Technology

in the middle of a white room. With a mechanized right arm he
writes incessantly on a black slate tablet. Over him hangs a
globe-shaped light bulb that slowly fades on and off. As the
robot moves his large pencil around the tablet, bamboo wings
affixed to his back slowly rise. Tacked to these wings are
scraps of paper notes, the fruits of his labor. As soon as the
wings are fully expanded, they collapse suddenly. Outside the
only window in the room, another light fades on and off, revealing a landscape of snow-capped mountains. On the right
and left walls are two tiny picture frames; in one is a picture of
a woman sitting in the woods, in the other, a lock of hair. In the
exhibition catalog, Herrmann quotes the following lines from
OdOn von Horvath's play, Kasimir und Karoline:
Karoline (to herself): One often has such a longing in
oneself-but then returns with broken wings, and life
goes on, as if one had never been there. '1

2) Ilona Freyer, "Iphigenia, Fall 1977": In the middle of a
black room, a conical lamp hangs over a round, black conference table. On the table are several dossiers containing copies of hate mail from citizens of Stuttgart to the director Claus
Peymann. Human teeth have been scattered about in the
middle of the table, directly under the lamp's light. On the
floor to one side are three buckets, one containing ashes, another, human hair, and a third, more teeth. (In the fall of 1977,
the West German industrialist Hans-Martin Schleyer was kidnapped and later murdered by West German terrorists, climaxing a wave of terrorist activity that shocked the public.
While Schleyer was being held hostage, Peymann, Intendant
of the Staatstheater Stuttgart, received a letter from an imprisoned terrorist's mother, asking for financial help so that her
daughter could get some necessary dental work performed.
Peymann tacked the letter on the company bulletin board, indicating that whoever was interested in donating should see
his secretary. When Peymann's ill-timed humanitarian act was
discovered by the nervous city fathers and citizenry, he was
branded a terrorist sympathizer and forced to resign, despite
his standing as one of the finest directors in Germany. During
this time, he was working on a production of Goethe's Iphigenie, designed by Ilona Freyer.)
3) Barbara Bilabel, "The Insignificant Women": The first
object you see as you enter Bilabel's series of rooms is a
naked mannequin hanging in the air. On the wall of a narrow
black corridor are photographs of more mannequins and highrise apartments. At the end of the corridor up on the right is a
window in which the figure of a woman is standing. Beyond
this corridor is a room containing a fully dressed dummy: a
woman, late middle age, wearing a silver and mauve dress
and carrying a lame handbag. Continuing on, you come into
the next compartment where another figure (the same woman)
stands amidst sand, cigarette butts, bottle caps, and other refuse. She is holding a bunch of roses. In the last compartment,
behind a third curtain, the woman lies dead, her head in a pool
of blood. She has apparently been raped. The sound of a jet
taking off fills this last room. Bilabel, a costume designer,
writes in the catalog that when she designs, she first uses various materials (cotton padding, latex, nylon) to alter the shape
of the actor's body, trying to emphasize the trivial and the
banal. Only after reworking the character's body does she begin to think about the costume. She says, "The story of
people is written on their bodies; the clothing is only there to
hide it. "'2
In another room, a film is shown of Klaus Michael GrOber's
production Winterreise (designed by Antonio Recalcati), performed on cold December nights in 1977 in the Berlin Olympic
Stadium (built by Hitler in the 1930's). [The production centered on performances by the Schaubuhne am Halleschen
Ufer of Holderlin's Hyperion, and staging it in the Olympic Stadium (with its political, fascist overtones) was intended to underline Holderlin's theme of the relation between the nation
USITT/Spring, 1980

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1980