Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2004 - 33

Set design for Act IV, The Seagull by Anton Chekhov; directed by John Hirsch; Habima Theatre, Tel Aviv, 1970; collection of Jane Norman.

For the first two acts of The Seagull, set in exteriors, Annals used the conventions of 19th-century romantic
stage design. His interior plans for the last two acts demonstrate what Santo Loquasto has called Annals's ability
"to find the core of the rooms, the way the walls wrap around, the way the stairs are implied, and the way the
traffic lays out in a very particular way." According to Loquasto, Annals "really knew how to hold the corners of
a room together."
For Howard Bay, the scene designer who had been on the faculty at Yale while Annals was teaching there,
Annals's drawings themselves demonstrated exemplary watercolor rendering technique. Bay reproduced the
drawings in his book Stage Design (New York, Drama Book Specialists, 1974)."There is a reason for the
persistent popularity of the translucent water color," he wrote."Its luminosity and airiness captures the quality of
the finished setting under stage lights. No opaque medium approximates the shimmering illusion of
incandescent bulbs.Water color is a difficult and elusive instrument to master, but there is no decent substitute."
Bay also included Annals's rough sketches for Royal Hunt of the Sun in his discussion of research.
Bay's book is a kind of textbook, but it is also a highly personal statement about design, its philosophy,
history, and practice, by a Broadway professional who was also a master teacher. Sceptical of "the Young Turks
[who] resolutely turn their back on pictorial scenography," he skewered them for ignoring "beauty, stylistic unity,
period and geographic fidelity" in favor of "the startling image hatching a new thought" and all the "doodads
[that] turn up in the New Theatre." Presumably he admired not only Annals's watercolor technique but counted
him as a designer who was "unencumbered by aesthetic preconceptions" and "did his bit as a talented citizen-a
disciplined visionary committed to helping to figure out the workings of human activity."

A Proper Designer
In his last years Annals believed his type of design had lost favor.
He considered himself a "proper designer," one whose work was
firmly rooted in the observation of reality. The artist, he told Yale
students, observes deeply and by his skill-which Annals called
"showmanship"-transforms his observation into a form the audience can understand.
But the artist does not merely illustrate the surface of reality.
He believed the audience wants to see the world the unique way
an artist saw it, through his understanding and feelings. He
liked to quote Stravinsky: "I heard and wrote what I heard."
In contrast to "proper design," a more abstract stage de32

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sign was gathering force in Britain that would supplant the romantic pictorialism associated with Leslie Hurry and Cecil
Beaton. The 1956 London appearance of Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble was its impetus. The visual style of Brecht's
foremost designer, Caspar Neher-spare, astringent, monochromatic-had great impact on subsequent British design.
Brechtian theory prompted a new fashion for high concept design. The designer Bruce Macadie, Annals's colleague,
has described it this way: "The curtain goes up, and you know
it's going to end with a suicide because there's a big noose
hanging over the entire stage." Annals referred to the German
influence as "design by Lufthansa" and bemoaned that design-
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2004
