Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1983 - 17

thrust-stage format, the beginning of the
Act III, scene I duel in which Romeo
slays Tybalt was overlaid with projections of Romeo and Juliet being wed in
Friar Laurence's cell. "While Mercutio
and Benvolio accused one another of
pugnacity, and while Tybalt and his
henchmen appeared on the horizon setting the conditions for the fatal duels,
the screens showed pictures of Romeo
and Juliet kneeling before the Friar in
the wedding ceremony and then standing in the marriage embrace.'" The
combination is ironic and increases the
sense of doom overhanging the
marriage.

The Lasl Ones, by M. Gorki. DireCfed by
A. Radok. Designed by Josej Svoboda. Tyt
Theatre, Prague, C~echostovakia. Photo by
Dr. Jarolllir Svoboda.

counterpoint to the live action. They
may reveal a character's inner thoughts
which are at variance with his external
actions or speeches, as in the Canadian
Opera Company's production of Carl
Orff's opera Die Kluge (The King and
the Clever Girl). In the "riddle" scene
the projected images showed the audience the king's true lecherous desires
toward the peasant's daughter, while the
character onstage maintained a pompous righteous attitude. 9 At other times
projections may express ideas, events, or
aspects of reality and life which disagree
with those being communicated by the
actors. In a recent production of Cabaret at the University of Georgia, projected images of Nazi violence and
atrocity were seen on multiple screens
during the song "Cabaret." While Sally sang "Life is a cabaret, old chum,"
onstage, scenes of concentration camps,
cadaverous prisoners, ovens, and
stacked corpses appeared above and behind her-counterpointing the lyrics and
vividly rein forcing the socio-political
myopia which kept pre-World War II
Germans frantically "dancing on the lip
of the volcano" and which serves as the
underlying theme of the musical.
In the techniques already mentioned,
the images tend to serve primarily as
commentary or supplemental stimuli; in
il1lercutting, however, the live actors
recognize and interact with the projected
images. In such instances the projections
become direct stimuli or even actual
characters. The first major example of
this technique was Laterna Magika,

Josef Svoboda and Alfred Radok's inventive answer to the language problem
at the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels.
The combination of filmed and live actors provided opportunities for a live
master of ceremonies to converse in
multiple languages with her filmed images, and a single pianist could become
a full orchestra when he was multiplied
by filmed images of himself playing
other instruments. 10 In commenting on
Laterna Magika, Svoboda said, "The
play of the actors cannot exist without
the film, and vice-versa-they become
one thing. One is not the background
for the other; instead you have a
simultaneity, a synthesis and fusion of
actors and projections." II
The difficulty of creating this sort of
interaction has somewhat limited its use
in theatrical productions, although instances have occurred. During one scene
in Die Kluge three tramps reacted to images of themselves on "Wanted" posters
flashed onto different screens. 12 The
Sarah Caldwell production of Lulu provided an unusual combination of actors
with projections. After Lulu has been
convicted and thrown into prison for
killing her husband, she is infected with
cholera. In Caldwell's production,
Countess Geschwitz, watching Lulu's
conviction and incarceration, is appalled. "She exits and reappears, holding a circular screen, like a lollipop, on
which were projected films of cholera
germs. She carries the germs up the
stairs, and waves them on Lulu's head.
Lulu clutches her throat and falls to the

A production of Gorki's The Last
Ones designed by Josef Svoboda-one
of the foremost practitioners of multiple
imagery-achieved a repetitive and cumulative effect through superimposition. As Svoboda explains, "\\ e stacked
things, people, scene behind each other;
for example, action around the wheelchair downstage, above that a girl in a
tub being stroked by twigs, 'in front' of
her a boy being flogged on the screen;
then, suddenly, a drape covering pan of
the screen opens, and we see a small live
orchestra playing a waltz, with pompan image of the regime. A space collage
using a triptych principle, truly a dramatic poem.'"
In contrast to the technique of superimposition where live and projected images reinforce one another is contradiction wherein the projections serve as

Cabarel, by,\lasteroj!' Ebb, and Kander. Directed by August Staub. Designed by IV Joseph Stell.
University oj Georgia Theatre.
USITT Fall 1983 Theatre Design &

Technolog~

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