Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1983 - 13

mous success on both sides of the Atlantic: The Greeks (1980), Nicholas
Nickleby (1980), and the musical Cars
(1981 ).
What allracted apier to theatre
a\\'ay from fine arts was a need to \\'ork
\\'ith other people, and to experience a
more substantial degree of reality than
he would \\'hile \vorking in isolation with
"abstract forms" or "idiosyncratic
ideas," as he put it. i\luch like Herbert,
he does not see himself a a pictorial or
decorati\'e artist, nor is he interested in
myth or mystery. Instead, he seeks a
credible depiction of human centered action, something in which he can believe.
thus reflecting, as he sees it, the more
general mO\'ement in recent art to\\ard
the human figure: "I don't care if it's
not naturalistic but I can't belie\'e in artificiality. I want to be con\inced."
These basic allitudes ha\'e led him to
seek \'ery close, intense cooperati\'e
work on productions rather than doing
\\'ork on order after some initial discussion \\'ith a director. Symptomatic of
this is his progressively longer \\ork on
fe\\'er and more elaborate productions;
he has a\'eraged lillie more than t\\'O
product ions each year since 1977.
Still another basic dri\'e of apier is
his \\'ish for fuller audience il1\'olvement
\\'ith a production: "I \\'ant to wrap, in\'oh'C people in the experience that's going on." This ha, led him to alter the interiors of theatres to facilitate the intermingling of acting space \\'ith audience
space. At Stratford-upon-Avon, for the
1976 season, he extended the upper seating galleries onto the sides and rear of
the stage. For Equus (NT 1973), part of
the audience sat in a semicircle at the
back and sides of the proscenium stage,
as \\'CII as in the usual seats in the auditorium, \\hile for Nicholas NicklebF and
Cars, ramps and bridges joined the audience and acting areas in a \'ariety of
\\'ays.
His background and special interests
ha\'C resulted in t\\'O quite distinct types
of scenography. One reflects the spare,
carefully \\Tought side of his sculpture
training and his affiliation \\'ith the
Royal Court, as is e\'ident in most of the
Shakespeare he has done recently for the
RSC-A ,\Iidsul/ll/ler Nighr's Dreall/
(1977), rls You Like Ir (1977), and
TlI'eUr!l Nighr (1978), as \\'CII as
Chekho\"s Three Sisrers (1978), and
The Greef.s In all these productions,
relati\'ely fe\\' scenic clements \\'Cre

carefully composed within a large space.
On the other hand, productions like A
COII/edy of Errors (1976), Nicholas
Nickleby, and Cars had their roots in a
more extravagant side of his nature, in
a desire to fill the stage with objects and
structures, some found, some hammered out of raw materials-echoes perhaps of pop-art assemblages and environmental art of the I960s-all of which
reflects another facet of his sculptural
feel for space and maller, as well as his
allraction to tangible reality, no matter
how bizarrely organized. This tendency
evolved still further in a recent production of Shakespeare's Hem)' I V, which
opened the new RSC theatre at the Barbican in London in May 1982. It was as
if the structures and props of Nicholas
Nickleby \\'ere organized into four
to\\'ers on wheels: wood, metal, leather,
armor, \veapons, and other random artifacts of the fifteenth century become a
form of mobile sculpture as they transform the stage into the streets of London, army camps, castles, or battlefields. A \\'hole age is e\oked \vith great
\'itality, while the dramatic action is enhanced with highly functional, metaphorically suggestive instruments.

~I~
~ ~ WOllo
I lam 0 u dl ey
William Dudley's career echoes certain aspects of Gunter's and apier's
but al 0 re\'eals an e\'en more explicit
desire to practice a theatrical, romantic
scenography \\'ithout abandoning
smaller scale, humanly centered work.
Born in 1947, and trained at two schools
of art, specializing in landscape painting

at the first (St. Martin's) and stage
design at the second (Slade), he concurrently gained a lot of backstage and early design experience in a fringe amateur
group, the Tower Theatre in London.
On the basis of a final school exhibit of
designs, he received his first professional
assign ment in 1970, a prod uct ion of
Hall/ler at ottingham. Thereafter he
\\'orked for five years at the Royal
Court, was an assistant to Jocelyn
Herbert part of that time, and designed
over thirteen plays. In the mid 1970s he
also began to work at the RSC, but from
1978 most of his productions have been
at the National Theatre. Peripherally he
has done several large scale operas,
notable Britten's Billy Budd at the Met
(1976), as well as a great deal of st reet
theatre-not the guerilla, agitprop type,
but traditional English folk plays in
which he performs as an actor and musician, thus achieving what he calls "a
leveling down of 'high' an." It is
precisely in the extreme range from
street theatre to grand opera that
Dudley's special flexibility is most
evident:
I've tried to avoid pigeonholes.
I'm not a stylish designer or one
with a "handwriting." I try to
move around and do the widest
range of things, from fringe shows
to grand opera. \Vagner and
street theatre-the nature of the
idea, the poetry and artistry can
be of equal order.
Never denying the value of its
unostentatious, honed down approach,
Dudley was nOl entirely happy with the
Royal Court tradition: "Something in

II'i{{ia/ll D"drev's /IIoderIor The Tales of Hoffmann, /980.

SITT /Spring/ 1983/Theatre Design & Technology

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