Course Reader Rea.docx

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Course Reader: Reading #3
What is Design?
Excerpts from:
Adolph Appia, Lee Simon (from: “The Ideas of Adolphe
Appia”),
Robert Edmund Jones, Leonard Pronko,
and Gaston Bachelard
Intro to Theater: What is Design? Page #1

r;;e: The American
s: 145-155.
Harry N. Abrams
~
Chapter 3
Adolph Appia
ACTOR, SPACE, LIGHT,
PAINTING
T HE ART OF STAGE PRODUCTION is the art of projecting
into Space what the original author was only able to project in
Time. The temporal element is implicit within any text, with or
without music . . . The first factor in staging is the interpreter:
the
actor himself. The actor carries the action. Without him there
can
be no action and hence no drama ... The body is alive, mobile
and
plastic; it exists in three dimensions. Space and the objects used
by the body must most carefully take this fact into account. The
overall arrangement of the setting comes just after the actor in
importance; it is through it that the actor makes contact with
and
assumes reality within the scenic space.
Thus we already have two essential elements: the actor and
the spatial arrangement of the setting, which must conform to
his
plastic form and his three-dimensionality.

What else is there?
Light!
Light, just like the actor, must become active; and in order to
grant to it the status of a medium of dramatic expression it must
be placed in the service of ... the actor who is above it in the
production hierarchy, and in the service of the dramatic and
plastic
expression of the actor.
... Light has an almost miraculous flexibility . . . it can cre-
ate shadows, make them living, and spread the harmony of their
vibrations in space just as music does. In light we possess a
most
powerful means of expression through space, if this space is
placed
in the service of the actor.
29
ACTOR, SPACE, LIGHT, PAINTING
So here we have our nonnal established hierarchy: ,
the actor presenting the drama;
space in three dimensions, in the service of the actor's plastic
fonn;
liBht giving life to each.
But as you have inferred, there is a but what about painting?

What do we
understand about painting in terms of scenic art?
A collection of painted backcloths and flats arranged vertically
on the stage,
more or less parallel to one another, and extending upstage.
These are covered
with painted light, painted shadow, painted fonns, objects and
architecture; all of
it, of course, on a flat surface since that is the nature of painting
...
Our staging practice has reversed the hierarchical order: on the
pretext of
providing us with elements which are difficult or impossible to
realize in solid
form, it has developed painted decor to an absurd degree, and
disgracefully
subordinated the living body of the actor to it. Thus light
illuminates the back-
cloths (which have to be seen), without a care for the actor, who
endures the
ultimate humiliation of moving between painted flats, standing
on a horizontal
floor.
All modern attempts at scenic reform touch upon this essential
problem;
namely, on how to give to light its fullest power, and through it,
integral plastic
value to the actor and the scenic space.
Our stage directors have, for a long time, sacrificed the physical
and living
rll"F'<P''''P of the actor to the dead illusion of painting. Under
such a tyranny, it is

that the human body could never develop in any nonnal way its
means
of expression. This marvellous instrument, instead of sounding
in freedom, exists
only under severe constraints.
Everyone knows today that the return to the human body as an
expressive
element of the first rank is an idea that captures the mind,
stimulates the
imagination, and opens the way for experiments which may be
diverse and no
doubt of unequal value, but are all directed towards the same
reform ... Yet our
contemporary productions have forced us into such a despicably
passive state that
we conceal it carefully in the darkness of the house. But now,
with the current
attempt by the human body to rediscover itself, our feeling
almost leads to the
beginning of fraternal collaboration; we wish that we were
ourselves the body
that we observe: the social instinct awakens within us, though in
the past we
coldly suppressed it, and the division separating the stage and
the auditorium
becomes simply a distressing barbarism arising from our
selfishness.
We have arrived at the crucial point for dramatic reform ...
which must
be boldly announced: the dramatic author will never liberate his
vision so long
as he believes it yoked by necessity to a barrier separating the
action from the

spectator ... The inevitable conclusion is that the usual
arrangement of our
theatres must evolve gradually towards a more liberal
conception of dramatic
art ...
-e sb.all anil
cathedral of the fut
the most Yaried c:x
place for dramatic
Source
Appia, A. (1919, It
on Theatre, a
Adolph Appia (IS
Swiss designer and
art form, where ligh
more so, than the ~
menting with, the tl
profound influence o'
(The Ring of the Nit
which were summar
in 1883. He wrote t
of Wagnerian Ora,
numerous articles.
Appia's work

blocks of shadow al
grandson, revive hi
profound and dama
the Second World'
Dalcroze at Heller"
movement and seer
Euridice (1913).2
This essay rei
on principles of sta
Compare this arti
Copeau - a later al
Craig - similar con
Foreman, Wilson a
Meyerhold a con'
30
• • •

to,
What do we
. on the stage,
e are covered
itecture; all of
the pretext of
ealize in solid
I disgracefully
ates the back-
o endures the
[1 a horizontal
!Itial problem;
integral plastic
iieal and living
II. tyranny, it is
way its means
reedom, exists
i an expressive
stimulates the
Dverse and no
m ... Yet our
ISSive state that
ith the current
1St leads to the
elves the body
in the past we
the auditorium
5'5.
• 0 which must

vision so long
dion from the
~ment of our
00 of dramatic
ADOLPH APPIA
We shall arrive, eventually, at what will simply be called the
House: a sort of
cathedral of the future, which in a vast, open and changeable
space will welcome
the most varied expressions of our social and artistic life, and
""ill be the ideal
place for dramatic art to flourish, with or without spectators.
Source
Appia, A. (1919, 1954, 1993) 'Actor, Space, Light, Painting',
Adolphe Appia: Texts
on Theatre, ed. R.C. Beacham, London: Routledge: 114-115.1
Adolph Appia (1862-1928)
Swiss designer and philosopher of theatre; the first to write
about theatre as a visual
art form, where light and shadow, form and space, are as
important, if not sometimes
more so, than the physical performer. Apia's life was spent
writing about, and experi-
menting with, the technical properties of light and shadow,
primarily because of the
profound influence of Richard Wagner's cycle of music dramas,
Der Ring Des Nibelungen
(The Ring of the Nibelung), for which he prepared detailed
scenic and lighting scenarios

which were summarily rejected by Wagner's family after the
death of the composer
in 1883. He wrote three books on theatre Music and the Stage
(1897), The Staging
of Wagnerian Drama (1895), and The Work of Living Art
(1921) as well as
numerous articles.
Appia's work has had a profound influence on modern stage
design, and his stark
blocks of shadow and light were instrumental in helping
Wieland Wagner, Wagner's
grandson, revive his grandfather's work at the theatre in
Bayreuth following the
profound and damaging embarrassments of the Nazi
canonisation of the composer in
the Second World War. Appia's collaboration with the Swiss
choreographer Jaques-
Dalcroze at Hellerau in the 1910s produced and initiated a
whole new approach to
movement and scenography, culminating in his production of
Gluck's Orpheus and
Euridice (1913).2
This essay represents a good summary of his thinking,
concentrating as it does
on principles of staging that emphasise the actor within the
stage space.
Compare this article with writings by the following authors in
this reader
Copeau - a later admirer who also worked with Dalcroze
Craig - similar concerns and explorations in England and Russia
Foreman, Wilson and Lepage late twentieth-century examples of
visual theatre

Meyerhold - a concern to see the actor within a scenic frame
31
ACTOR, SPACE, LIGHT, PAINTING
Piscator - contemporary European view on the aesthetics of
staging
Schlemmer - theatre spatial experiments at the Bauhaus
Further reading
Beacham, R.C. (1987) Adolphe Appia, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Brockett, O.G. and Findlay, R.R. (1973) Century of Innovation,
Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Volbach, W. (1968) Adolph Appia, Middletown, Conn.:
Wesleyan University Press.
Notes
1 Beacham (1993: 239): 'This is excerpted from an untitled
manuscript Appia
prepared for presentation on 3 April 1919 at the Olympic
Institute in Lausanne,
accompanied by slides illustrating his designs. The conference
was entitled "the
future of drama and stage production"; the title "Actor, space,

light, painting"
was given to an abbreviated version of Appia's essay after his
death.'
2 David Thomas, at Warwick University in 1991, produced
a reconstruction of
Appia's work.
32
Chapter 4
Al1ta
W
E HAVE UJ
theatre rest
puppets, thereby 1
one understands wi
masses go to the c
gratification whose
Our. sensibili1
theatre that wakes
The damage'
Racine, has renden
theatre must have.
filtered and projed
ibility, and for ten
an intellectual s1:UJl
In the anguis
urgent need for d

arouses deep echoe
period.
Our longstaI
forget the slightest
conceptions, inspiI
reacting on us afte
Everything tl
a concept of this d
Infused with
first and foremost
THE THEORY OF THE MODERN STAGE
analysis of French culture, shows how German music can
arouse the religious nature of French musicians, how the
French artist's sensitiveness to essential form can wean
Germans from their instinctive dependence on realism. At
Bayreuth, in an international poet's Elysium, the two
nations are to conduct jointly a presumably endless cycle of
music-dramas which will carry Wagner's original inspira-
tion to the expressionistic heights implicit in his music.
At the same time Appia shows a thoroughly Gallic capa-
city for objective analysis, which he uses to explain the
aesthetic problems of the scene-designer and the technical
means available for solving them. Here with amazing
directness and clarity he dissects the plastic elements of the

stage picture. In doing so he anticipates in detail the present
technical basis of stage lighting and outlines precisely the way
it has since been used. not onlv ~s.~.!1;'" ispensable means
of unifying ood and atmos-
phere, but F • ng the dramatic
values of a g our emotional
response to t pia's volume are
nothing less stage-craft that
~
gave it both _ ~ . its problems and
a new solutil y.;.' ~
2. THE PLASTIC ELEMENTS
The aesthetic problem ofscenic design, as Appia made plain,
is a plastic one. The designer'S task is to relate forms in space,
some of which are static, some of which are mobile. The
stage itself is an enclosed space. Organization must be
actually three-dimensional. Therefore the canons of pictorial
art are valueless. The painted illusion of the third dimension,
valid in the painted picture where it can evoke both space
and mass, is immediately negated when it is set on a stage
where the third dimension is real.
The plastic elements involved in scenic design, as Appia
analysed them, are four: perpendicular painted scenery, the
horizontal floor, the moving actor, and the lighted space in
30
THE IDEAS OF ADOLPHE APPIA
which they are confined. The aesthetic problem, as he
pointed out, is a single one: How are these four elements to
be combined so as to produce an indubitable unity? For,

like the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, he was aware that the
plastic elements of a production remained irretrievably at
odds if left to themselves. Looking at the stages about him
he saw that the scene-painter of his day merely snipped his
original picture into so many pieces which he stood about
the stage, and then expected the actor to find his way among
them as best he could. The painted back-drop was the only
part of an ensemble of painted scenery that was not a
ludicrous compromise. Naturally the scene-painter was in-
terested, being a painter, in presenting as many stretches of
unbroken canvas as possible. Their centre of interest was
about midway between the top of the stage and the stage
floor at a point where, according to the line of sight of most
of the audience, they attained their maximum pictorial
effect. But the actor works on the stage floor at a point
where painted decorations are least effective as painting. So
long as the emphasis of stage setting is on painted decora-
tion, the inanimate picture is no more than a coloured
illustration into which the text, animated by the actor, is
brought. The two collide, they never meet nor establish any
interaction of the slightest dramatic value, whereas, in
Appia's phrase, they should be fused.
I Living feet tread these boards and their every step makes
us aware of how meaningless and inadequate our settings
are.' The better the scenery is as painting, the worse it is
as a stage setting; the more completely it creates an illusion
of the third dimension by the pictorial conventions of
painting, the more completely an actually three-dimensional
actor destroys that illusion by every movement he makes.
'For no movement on the actor's part can be brought into
vital relation with objects painted on a piece of canvas.'
Painteq decorations are not only at odds with the actor but
also with the light that illuminates them. 'Light and vertical
painted surfaces nullify rather than reinforce each other....
There is an irreconcilable conflict between these two scenic

31
•
Larry
Line
Larry
Line
~,",,"!: 1~,;~'" ',- :::;:;0":' ~) i~ ~~
elements. For the perpendicular, painted flat in order to be
seen, needs to be set so as to catch a maximum amount of
light.' The more brilliantly it is lighted, the more apparent
the lack of unity between it and the actor becomes. 'If the
setting is so placed as to refract some of the light thrown on
it its importance as a painted picture is diminished to that
extent.'
For Appia there was no possibility of compromise by
keeping actors away from perspective back-drops where
doors reached only to their elbows, or by warning them not
to lean on flimsy canvas cut-outs down stage. He denied
painted simulation of the third dimension a place in the
theatre with a finality that gave his analysis the air of a
revolutionary manifesto. He was the first to banish the

scenic painter and his painted architecture from the modern
stage. To Appia the actor was massgebend - the unit of
measurement. Unity could be created only by relating every
part of a setting to him. He was three-dimensional, therefore
the entire setting would have to be made consistently three-
dimensional. The stage setting could have no true aesthetic
!:l organization unless it was coherently plastic throughout.
Appia's importance as a theorist is due to the consistency
and the practicability of the methods he outlined for
achieving this result.
One began to set a stage not in mid-air on hanging back-
drops, but on the stage floor where the actor moved and
worked. It should be broken up into levels, hummocks,
slopes, and planes that supported and enhanced his move-
ments. And these were again not to be isolated - a wooden
platform draped with canvas here, a block or rock there,
planted on a bare board floor, a 'chaise-longue made of
grass mats'. The. stage floor was to be a completely fused,
plastic unit. Appia in this connexion thinks in terms of
sculpture. In order to make a model of a stage floor as he
described it one would have to use clay. He considered the
entire space occupied by a stage setting as a sculpturesque
unit. The solidity achieved by setting wings at right
angles to each other to imitate the corner of a building
~. "~ _. .1. ., ~. :r-"'rr--!' ~I ~ !~ -~ ~ ~
seemed.to him feebly mechanical. He conceived much freer
stage compositions where the entire area could be modelled
as a balance of asymmetrical, spatial forms, a composition
in three dimensions, that merged imperceptibly with the
confining planes that bounded the setting as a whole.

Appia expressed in dogmatic form much of what the
Duke of Saxe-Meiningen had demonstrated pragmatically.
But in promulgating his theory of a stage setting he com-
pleted its unification by insisting on the plasticity of light
itself, which no one before him had conceived. He demon-
strated in detail, both as a theorist and as a draftsman, how
stage lighting could be used and controlled so as to establish
a completely unified three-dimensional world on the stage.
Appia distinguishes carefully between light that is empty,
diffuse radiance, a medium in which things become visible,
as fish do in a bowl of water, and concentrated light striking
an object in a way that defines its essential form. Diffused
light produces blank visibility, in which we recognize objects
without emotion. But the light that is blocked by an object
and casts shadows has a sculpturesque quality that by the
vehemence of its definition, by the balance of light and
shade, can carve an object before our eyes. It is capable of
arousing us emotionally because it can so emphasize and
accent forms as to give them new force and meaning. In
Appia's theories, as well as in his drawings, the light which
in paintings had already been called dramatic was for the
first time brought into the theatre, where its dramatic
values could be utilized. Chiaroscuro, so controlled as to
reveal essential or significant form, with which painters had
been preoccupied for three centuries, became, as Appia
described it, an expressive medium for the scene-designer.
The light that is important in the theatre, Appia declares, is
the light that casts shadows. It alone defines and reveals.
The unifying power of light creates the desired fusion that
can rpake stage floor, scenery, and actor one.
Light is the most important plastic medium on the stage. . ••
Without its unifying power our eyes would be able to perceive
what
objects were but not what they expressed ••.• What can give us

http:seemed.to
this sublime unity which is capable of uplifting us? Light! ..•
Light and light alone, quite apart from its subsidiary importance
in
illuminating a dark stage, has the greatest plastic power, for it
is
subject to a minimum of conventions and so is able to reveal
vividly in its most expressive form the eternally fluctuating
appear-
ance of a phenomenal world.
The light and shade of Rembrandt, Piranesi, Daumier, and
Meryon was finally brought into the theatre as an interpre-
tative medium, not splashed on a back-drop, as romantic
scene-painters had used it, but as an ambient medium
actually filling space and possessing actual volume; it was
an impalpable bond which fused the actor, wherever and
however he moved, with everything around him. The plastic
unity of the stage picture was made continuous.
Ifone looks at reproductions of stage settings before Appia
_ and the history of stage setting might almost be divided by
B.A. as history in general is divided by B.C. - they are filled
with even radiance; everything is of equal importance. The
stage is like a photograph of a toy theatre; the actors might
be cardboard dolls. In Appia's drawings for the first time the
stage is a microcosm of the world. It seems to move from

:if 'mom to noon, from noon to dewy eve,' and on through all
the watches of the night. And the actors in it seem living
beings who move as we do from sunlight or moonlight into
shadow. Beneath their feet there is not a floor but the surface
of the earth, over their heads not a back-drop but the
heavens as we see them, enveloping and remote. There is
depth here that seems hewn and distance that recedes in-
finitely farther than the painted lines converging at a mathe-
matical vanishing point. In attacking the conventions of
scene-painting Appia created an ultimate convention. For
the transparent trickery of painted illusions of form he sub-
stituted the illusion of space built up by the transfiguration
that light, directed and controlled, can give to the transient
structures of the stage-carpenter. The third dimension,
incessant preoccupation of the Occidental mind for four
centuries, defined by metaphysicians, explored by scientists,
simulated by painters, was re-created in terms of the theatre,
34
made actual. The stage more completely than ever before
became a world that we could vicariously inhabit; stage
settings acquired a new reality. The light in Appia's first
drawings, if one compares them to the designs that had
preceded his, seems the night and morning of a First
Day.
3. LIGHT AS THE SCENE-PAINTER
Light was to Appia the supreme scene-painter. 'The poet-
musician,' he declared, 'paints his picture with light.'
Although at one moment Appia announces that his book is
dedicated to the service of the goddess of music, at another
he says:' It is precisely the misuse of stage lighting with all

its far-reaching consequences which has been the chief
reason for writing this book in the first place ..•• '
Only light and music can express' the inner nature of all appear-
ance'. Even if their relative importance in music-drama is not
always the same, their effect is very similar. Both require an
object
to whose purely superficial aspect they can give creative form.
The
poet provides the object for music, the actor, in the stage
setting,
that for light.
In the manipulations of light Appia found the same free-
dom that, in his eyes, music gave the poet. Light controlled
and directed was the counterpart of a musical score; its
flexibility, fluidity, and shifting emphasis provided the same
opportunity for evoking the emotional values of a perfor-
mance rather than the factual ones. As music released the
mood of a scene, projecting the deepest emotional meaning
of an event as well as its apparent action, so the fluctuating
intensities of light could transfigure an object and clothe it
with all its emotional implications.
Light with its infinite capacity for varying nuances was
valuable to Appia for its power of suggestion, which has
become for us the distinguishing mark of everything
artistic. He points out how in Das Rheingold one can give the
impression of water through the sensation of depth by
35

~J ~
~
,~~.~~~~~.~. ;:c:::::J
keeping the stage dim, filling the scene with 'a vague ob-
scurity' where contours are not defined. For Die Walkiire
the open air will be felt only if the summit of a mountain
detaches itself clearly against misty distances. The flames of
the Feuerzauber are not to be continued an instant beyond
the time allotted to them in the score. Their intensity will be
emphasized by contrasting them with' a limpid night sky
vaguely pierced by stars'. The light in Alberich's cavern,
which is illuminated by his forge, is to have an entirely
different quality: 'The general feeling given will be one of
oppression and a la<:k of light. The proportions of the
setting will contribute to this sense of oppressive weight.
Reflections of spurts of flame will intermittently illuminate
now this detail of the setting, now that one; and the setting
itself, in blocking the source of light, will cast shadows that
produce an ensemble chaotic in effect of which, it goes with-
out saying, the personages in the scene will be a part.' The
Waldweben in Siegfried is to be accompanied by a wavering
play of fluttering sunlight and leaf shadows. The forest is to
be made with the barest indication of a few tree trunks and
branches. Siegfried will seem to be in a forest because he is
tinged in the vaguely green suffusion of light filtering
through leaves and bespattered with an occasional sun-spot.
The audience will then see a wood even though it does not
see all the trees.

The flexibility of stage lighting, as Appia envisaged it,
relates it fundamentally to every movement that an actor
makes; the whole setting by fluctuations of light and shade
moves with him and follows the shifting dramatic emphasis
of a particular scene or sequence of scenes. Appia shows how,
in the first act of Siegfried, Hunding and Siegfried are to be
alternately in light and shadow as their respective roles
become more or less important. And he points out also that
any portion of a setting - a building, a tree, the background
of a room - can actually be brought forth or wiped out as its
dramatic importance in the scene increases or diminishes.
36
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4. LIGHT AS INTERPRETER
Light in Appia's hands became a guiding principle for the
designer, enabling him to give to a setting as the audience
sees it the same reality that it is supposed to have for the
actors in it. In an appendix to Music and Stage-Setting he
shows in detail how the control of stage lighting makes this
possible for a production of Tristan and Isolde.
Act II: As Isolde enters she sees only two things: the burning
torch set as a signal for Tristan and enveloping darkness. She
does
not see the castle park, the luminous distance of the night For
her
it is only horrible emptiness that separates her from Tristan.
Only
the torch remains irrefutably just what it is: a signal separating
her
from ,the man she loves. Finally she extinguishes it. Time

stands
still. Time, space, the echoes of the natural world, the
threatening
torch - everything is wiped out. Nothing exists, for Tristan is in
her
arms.
How is this to be scenically realized so that the spectator, with-
out resorting to logical reasoning, without conscious mental
effort,
identifies himself unreservedly with the inner meaning of these
events?
At the rise of the curtain a large torch, stage centre. The stage is
bright enough so that one can recognize the actors clearly but
not
bright enough to dim the torch's Bare. The forms that bound the
stage are barely visible. A few barely perceptible lines indicate
trees.
By degrees the eye grows accustomed to the scene. Gradually it
becomes aware of the more or less distinct mass of a building
ad·
joining the terrace. During the entire first scene Isolde and
Brangane remain on this terrace, and between them and the
fore·
ground one senses a declivity but one cannot determine its
precis<
character. When Isolde extinguishes the torch the setting i
shrouded in a half-light in which the eye loses itself.
Isolde is submerged in this whispering darkness as she rushes
14
Tristan. During the first ecstasy of their meeting they remain 0]
the terrace. At its climax they approach [the audience].
Byalmoo

I imperceptible degrees· they leave the terrace and by a
barel
visible Bight of steps reach a sort of platform near the
foregrounc
Theri, as their desire appeases itself somewhat and only one ide
unites them, as we grow more and more aware of the Death (
37
Time, they finally reach the extreme foreground, where - we
notice it for the first time - a bench awaits them. The tone of the
whole secret, shadowy space surrounding them grows even more
uniform; the forms of the terrace and the castle are submerged,
even the different levels of the stage floor are hardly
perceptible.
Whether because of the contrast of deepened darkness induced
by extinguishing the torch, or perhaps because our eye has
followed
the path that Tristan and Isolde have just trod - however that
may be, in any case we feel how softly they are cradled by
every
object about them. During Brangane's song the light grows still
dimmer; the bodily forms of the people themselves no longer
have
a distinct outline. Then (page 162, firstif, of the orchestra)
sudden·

ly a pale glimmer of light stl:ikes the right side of stage rear:
King
Mark and his men-at-arms break in. Slowly the cold colourless
light of day increases. The eye begins to recognize the main
outlines
ofthe stage setting and its colour begins to reg ister in all its
harshness.
Then as Tristan with the greatest effort at self-mastery realizes
that
he is after all among the living, he challenges Melot to a duel.
in the setting, cold in colour, hard as bone, only one spot is
shaded from the daWJling day and remains soft and shadowy,
the
bench at the foot of the terrace.
This was written in 1899 1 ~
I know of no single document in the theatre's history that
reveals more completely the role that creative imagination
plays in staging a play nor one that demonstrates better how
inevitably the imagination of a creative artist is specific and
concrete. The passage, as well as its continuation and the
similar analyses that follow it for the production of the Ring
of the Nibelung, are the measure of Appia's genius. In
comparison Craig's dark hints and his windy pretensions
show him, more than ever, to be an inflated talent. Appia
can himself be windy in prognosticating the future of
German and French music. But once he focuses upon the
theatre he is the master and the master craftsman, com-
pletely aware of his methods and materials, certain of how
they can be organized, certain too of their effect to the last
detaiL The semi-obscurity of this second act of Tristan is
dictated by a vision where, as in the words of the stage-
manager of Mons, all is clarity and light.

38
The chiaroscuro of Appia's drawings is shadowy like
Craig's; its misty envelopments, its dissolving silhouettes and
vaporous distances, are characteristically romantic. But this
picturesque atmosphere is made an integral part of stage
pictures that, instead of dwarfing the actor, are directly
related to him as a human being. Despite the shadowy
shapes around him the actor remains the centre of our
interest, the focus of dramatic emphasis. Appia's stage
pictures are not conceived as effects into which the actor is
put; they spring from the actor and are complete expressions
of his assumed personality and passions. Appia, designing
for the opera, evolved a type of stage setting so compact, so
directly related to the emotional flux of drama, that he anti-
cipated the development of scenic design in the theatre.
Craig, designing for the theatre of the future, made settings
so emptily grandiose that they have no future place except
in grand opera. Appia staged even fewer productions than
Craig did. His contacts with the actual theatre were less
frequent. But his sense of the theatre was so concrete, so
technically true, that his drawings, like his stage-directions,
were capable of being translated to a stage as soon as he had
made them.
Light fluctuates in Appia's drawings as it does on the stage
of a theatre; it fluctuates on stage settings today as it did in
Appia's drawings, and gives to canvas forms just such simpli-
fications of mass and outline as Appia indicated. At one
moment or another the lighting of any modern production,
whether Jones's Richard III or Geddes's Hamlet, Reinhardes
Danton's Death orJessner's Othello (and I could add the names
of a hundred others that I have seen as well as my own),

are dramatized with light and shadow in ways that repeat,
however much they may amplity, Appia's original methods
and effects - the same use of shadows. to dignify and to
envelop form, to translate emotion into atmospheric moods,
to d.efine by suggesting. The modern stage is filled with the
light that was always to be seen on land and Sea but never
in the theatre until Appia brought it there. Craig'S belated
attempt to emphasize the actor with light against an
39
- ~ '~ -~-,-
ambiguous neutral screen, the declaration ofArthur Kahane,
Reinhardt's assistant, in 1919, 'Lighting is the real source of
decoration, its single aim being only to bring the important
into)ight and leave the unimportant in shadow,' do nothing
more than paraphrase the ideas and the doctrines of
Adolphe Appia.
Appia's light-plot is now an accepted part ofevery modern
production. It parallels the plot of a play and is a visual
comment upon it as continuous as a musical score. It is
separately rehearsed, memorized by the stage-electrician,
and is part of the stage-manager's prompt-book. The
fewest of its changes are dictated by actual stage-directions,
such as the extinguishing' of a torch; the vast majority are an
accompaniment to action and aim to emphasize the atmos-
pheric qualities of a stage setting in a way that can project

variations of dramatic mood and thereby intensify the
emotional reaction of an audience.
Appia's supreme intuition was his recognition that light
can playas directly upon our emotions as music does. We
are more immediately affected by our sensitiveness to
~ variations of light in the theatre. than we are by our sensa-
tions of colour, shape, or sound. Our emotional reaction to
light is more rapid than to any other theatrical means of
expression, possibly because no other sensory stimulus moves
with the speed of light, possibly because, our earliest in-
herited fear being a fear of the dark, we inherit with it a
primitive worship of the sun. The association between light
and joy, between sorrow and darkness, is deeply rooted and
tinges the imagery of almost every literature and every
religion. I t shows itself in such common couplings as ' merry
and bright', 'sad and gloomy'. How much less lonely we
feel walking along a country road in a pitch-black night
when .the distant yellow patch of a farm-house window
punctures the darkness! The flare of a camp-fire in a black
pine forest at night cheers us even though we are not near
enough to warm our hands at it. The warmth of the sun or
of a flame does of course playa large share in provoking the
feeling of elation that light gives us. But the quality of light
THE IDEAS 01" AlJVLorn", ..... ~ ~ ~._
itself can suggest this warmth effectively enough to arouse
almost the same mood of comfort and release, as when, after
a dingy day of rain and mist, sunlight strikes our window-
curtains and dapples the floor of our room.
Between these two extremes of flaming sun and darkness
an immense range of emotion fluctuates almost instantly in
response to variations in the intensity of light. The key of our

emotions can be set, the quality of our response dictated,
almost at the rise of the curtain by the degree and quality
of light that pervades a scene. It requires many more
moments for the words of the players or their actions to ac-
cumulate momentum and to gather enough import for
them to awaken as intense and direct an emotional response.
And as the action progresses our emotions can be similarly
played upon. It was the singular limitation of Appia's
temperament that he could find no basis for the interpre-
tation of drama except that dictated by the tempo and
timbre of a musical score. His imagination could be stimu-
lated in no other way. But in indicating both theoretically
and graphically the complete mobility of stage lighting he
has made it possible for any play to be accompanied by a
light-score that is almost as directly expressive as a musical
accompaniment and can be made as integrally a part of
drama as music was in Wagner's music-dramas.
~ D
The amaZing~ vision is again
made appare ted the present
technical set- l. With nothing
more to guide items of his day
he understood :d light-sources
on the stagei . general light,
which merely __ --o~ •• ~~. ",u even radiance,
ca,lled flood-lighting today, and focused, mobile light,
now known as spot-lighting. It was this almost neglected
source of light which Appia pointed to as the important
one.

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USED 112
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DRAMA TIc IMAGINA TION
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:DRiMATIC
IMAGINA.TION··
REfl;ECTJ:ONS AND SPJ:i,CULATIONS
.ON
THE ART Of lHB THliAtRJi
ROBERTEDMONDlONES
Theatre Arts Books
COPYRIGHT •. I94: I • r96g,BY
ROBERT EDMOND JONES
All rigMs reserved, ......11l.ding.
'he riglll 10 reprod..ce lhi~ book
Dr portiotos lhorecf in any form.
To My WIFE
EIghteenth Printing, 1990
ISBN o-87830'5g8-o
Grateful acknowledgment is made
to the editors of the Yale Review,

Theatre Arts, and the Encyclopaedia
Britannica for permission to reprint
parts of this book.
Theatre Arts Books
29 West 35 Street, New York, NY 10001
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION by John Mason Brown 5
I. A NEW KIND OF DRAMA 15
II. ART IN THE THEATRE 23
III. THE THEATRE AUT WAS AND AS IT IS 45
IV. TO A YOUNG STAGE DESIGNER 69
V. SOME THOUGHTS ON STAGE COSTUME 87
VI. LIGHT AND SHADOW IN THEATRE I II
VII. TOWARD A NEW STAGE 13 1
VIII. BEHIND THE SCENES 151

II
ART IN THE THEATRE
Art • • • teaches to convey a larger sense by sim-
pler symbols. .
-EMERSON
hERE seems to be a wide divergence of opin-
ion today as to what the theatre really is. Some
people say it is a temple, .some say it is a brothel,
some say it is a laboratory, or a workshop, or it
may be an art, or a plaything, or a corporation.
But whatever it is, one thing is true about it.
There is not enough fine workmanship in it.
There is too much incompetence in it. The thea-
tre demands of its craftsmen that they know their
jobs. The theatre is a school. We shall never have
done with studying and learning. In the theatre,
as in life, we try first of all to free ourselves, as
far as we can, from our own limitations. Then we
can begin to practice "this noble and magicall
art." Then we may begin to dream.
When the curtain rises, it is the scenery that
sets the key of the play. A stage setting is not a
23

25 24 TIlE DRAMATIC IMAGlNA nON
background; it is an environment. Players act in
a setting, not against it. We say, in the audience,
when we look at what the designer has made, be-
fore anyone on the stage has time to move or
speak, "Aha, I seel It's going to he like that I
Aha!" This is. true no matter whether we ~re
looking at a realistic representation of Eliza croSg.;.
ing the ice or at the setting for· one of Yeats'
Plays fot Dancers, carried to the limit of abstract
symbolism. When Igo to the theatre, I want to
get an eyefuL Why not? I· do not want to have
to look at one of the so-called "suggestive" set.:
tings, in whiCh a single Gothic column is made
to do duty for a cathedral; it makes me feel as if
I had been invited to some important ceremony
and had been given a pOor seat behind a post. I
do not want to see any more "skeleton stages"
in which a few· architectural elements are com-
bined and re<ombined . for the various scenes of
a play, for after the first haH hour I invariably
discover that I have lost· the thread of the drama.
In spite of myself, I have become fascinated,

wondering whether the. castle door I have seen
in the first act is going to· tum into a refectory
table in the second act or a hope-chest in the
last act. No, I don't like these dever, falselyeco-
ART IN TIlE'TIJEATRE
nomical contraptions. And '. I, do not want to look
at a . setting th~t is merely smar~ or novel or chic.
a setting that teUs me that it ,is'. the latest fashion.
as .dlough itSd,esigner. had take!la'~yiI1g p-ip like
a spring buyer and brought back a trtmk full of
the.1atcst ~tyles in scenery. ',' .....,
I want my imagination tobestitnulatedby
wh~tlsee on thesta~. But the mo~entI get a
senseofingenuity,a. ~se .of effort, my imagina-
tion is not stimulated; .it is! starved, That play is
finished· as far as Iamcon£<ii~ed, ForI.have com~
to the theatre .to see a play. not to see the work
done on a play.
A good scene shouldb~1 ·nq~ a picture, but an
image. Scene-designing i~ not what m()~t. people
imagi~e it. is-a branch' of interior decorating.
There
,.

is no more reason for a room on . a stage to
be .a .I:'eproduccion of an actuaLroomthan for an
actor who plays the part ofNapoleon to .be Na-
poleon or for all actor who. plays' Death. in the old
mora~ity play to he dead. Everything that. is ac-
tual must undergo a strange metamorphosis. a
kind of sea-change, before.it can become truth in
the theatre. ,There is a curious mystety in this.
You will remember the quotation from Hamlet:
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26 THE DRAMATIC IMAGINATION
My fatherl-methinks I see my father.
o where, my lord?
In my mind's eye. Horatio.
Stage..designing should be addressed to this eye
of the mind. There is an outer eye that observes,
~"" .. ~ ........... -
and there is an inner eye that sees. A setting
~~"----..,~' "'" ~--~

should not be atlimg'rolOoK at In Itself; It can,
of course, be made so' powerful, so expressive,' so
dramatic,thaa;. the actors have nothing to do after
the curtain rises but to embroider variations on
the theme the scene hasaiteady given away. The
designer must always be on his guard against be-
ing too explicit. A good scene, I repeat, is not· a
picture. It is something seen, but it is something
conveyed as well: a feeling, an evocation. Plato
says somewhere, "It is beauty I seek, not beautiful
things." This is what I mean. ~g is not
just a beautiful thing, a collection of beautiful
things. It.i:_:E~~d.!1l_~¥E1.~indJ~n-
I1i~£, the dr~ma to Hame:. It echoes, it enhances,
it ani;;ates:" Itls-an-~exp~ca;ancy, a foreboding, a
tension. It says nothing, but it gives everything.
Do not think for a moment that I am advising
the designer to do away with· actual objects on
the stage. There is no such thing as a symbolic
ART IN THE THEATRE 27
chair. A chair is a chair. It is in the arrangement
of the chairs that the magic lies. Moliere,Gordon
Craig said, knew how to place the chairs on his
stage so they almost seemed to speak. In the bal-
cony scene from Romeo and Juliet there must be
a balcony, and there must be moonlight. But it is
not so important that the' moon be the kind of
moon that shines down on Verona as that Juliet
may say of it:

O. swear not by the moon • .the inconstant moon' • •.
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
The point is this: it is not the knowledge 9£
the armosphericconditions prevailing in. north"':
ern Italy which counts, but the response to the
lyric, . soaring. quality of Shakespeare's. verse.
The ·d~i~~~::.:~_~~!i~~~.~.,,~~. w~~h
~ble ·eII?:~~or:~c::.."e.9.~~Je. 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 anymore. It has
apparently ceased to exist. The actor has taken
the stage; and the deSigner's only reward lies in
the praise bestowed on the actor.
Well, now the curtain is up and the play has
begun.
designer creates with inanimate materials: canvas,
wood. doth, light. The actor creates in his living
self. And just as the good designer retires in favor
of the actor, so does the good actor withdraw his
personal self in favor of the character he is play-
ing. He steps aside. The character lives in him.
You are to play Hamlet. let us say-·not narrate
Hamlet. but play Hamlet. Then y~ become his

host. You invite him into yourself.(You lend him
'..-- ~ ~-
your ~?dl'J"?2£..!.?l5=~2~. tl~ but itjs
1i.'amlet's voice that s eaks mlet's im Ises
~I1!loveyo~We may be grateful to Pirandello
for sh~ii1gus, in his Six Characters in Search of
an A uthor~ the strange reality of the creations of
the playwright's mind. Hamlet is as real as you
or I. To watch a character develop from the first
Rashes of COntact in the actor's mind to the final
moment when the character steps on the stage in
full possession of the actor. whose personal self
looks on from. somewhere in the background, is to
be present at a great mystery. No wonder the an-
cient dramas were initiation-ceremonies; all act-
ing is an initiation, if one can see it so, an initia-
tion into what Emerson calls "the empire of the
real. " To spend a lifetime in practicing and per-
fecting this art of speaking with tongues other
than one's own is to live as greatly as one can live.
But the curtain is up. and the play has begun.
We look into a scene that is filled with excite..;
ment. See. That man is playing the part of a beg-
gar.We know he is not a real beggar. Why not?
How do we know? We cannot say; But we know
he is not a beggar. When. we look at him we re-.
call. nOt any particular beggar we may happen to
have seen that day. but all beggars we have ever
seen or read about. And all our ideas of misery
and helplessness and loneliness rush up in ourim-
aginations to touch us and hun us. The man is

acting.
How is he dressed? (And. now I am speaking
as a costume-designer.) The man is in rags. Just
rags. But why do we look at him with such in-
terest? If he wore ordinary rags we wouldn't look
at him twice. He is dressed, not like a real beggar.
but like a painting of a beggar. No, that's not
quite it. But as he stands there or moves about
we are continually reminded of great paintings-
paintings like those of Manet. for instance. There
is a curious importance about this figure. We· shall
remember it. Why? We cannot tell. We are look-
ing at something theatrical. These rags have been
arranged-"composed" the painters call it-by
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the hand of an artist. We£eel, rather than see, an
indescribable difference. These tags have some-
how ceased to be rags. They have .been trans..
formed into moving sculpture.
. I am indebted to the .greatMadatne Fteisinger
for teaclling,me the value. of simplicity in the
theatre. I lea.rned from hernotto~rture materials
into mean~ngless folds, . but . to preserve the long
flowing . line, the noble sweep. ~'Let uskeep.this
production noble," she would say to me. thec~s..
tumecelesigner should isteer deat: .of fashionable~.
ness; That was the only fault. of . the admirable
production of Hamlet in modern dress. kwas .so
chic that it simpered. I remember that in. the
closet scene, .as the Queen .cried Out:
o Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart In twain.
and her son answered:
0.. throwaway the worser part of it:>
And live th~ purer with tbe other half:>
a voice near me whispered, "I wonder. if she got
that negligee at Bendel's?" And the program told

us all that' Queen Gertrude of Denmark did. in-
deed. get that negligee at Bendel's. And, further-
more, thatQueen Gertrude's shoes came from the:
firm of L Miller, Inc., and that her hats were
furnished.by Blank and her jewels by Dash, and
SOOfh Thinkofiit. Two worlds ,are meeting in
this play, in this scene-in the night, in Elsinon; .
And we are 'reminded of shoes and frCKksl
Many of the costumes I design are intention-
allysomevhatdndefiniteand ahstract.A colot,a
shimmer, a' richness, a sweerandtlle actor's
presened I often think of a'phrase Ioncefoun'd
in an old drama. that describes . the . first. entrance
o£ the heroine. kdoesnotsaYl "She wore a ~ety
petticoat or a point lace':'J:'Uff ora.£arthi~gale'~~:i~
says, '~.'She came in like starlight, hidih ·jewels~u
There she is inthatphr:ase;n.ot just .~. beau#£ul
girl dressed up in a beautiful dress, but a presence
--arresting, ready toact~ enfolded in light. It .
isn't just light, it is a stillness, an awareness, a
kindof breathlessness..Weought to look at the
actors and say, Whyl I never saw people like that
beforeI I didn't know people looked like. thatl
The subtlet;yof stage lighting,· the far~flung
magic of it! When a single 1ight~~ulb wrongly
placed may reveal, as Yeats said, the proud £ra.:..
gilit;yofdreamsl
Shakespeare knew mote than all of us. H9W he
uses sunlight, moonligh~, caJ1dlelight. torchlight,

http:inthatphr:ase;n.ot
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starlight! Imagine Hamlet as he stands with
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on the fotestage of
the Globe . Theatre, under the open sky, looking
up at the stars, saying:
• • • this brave 0'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.
I have often wondered whether the Globe
Theatre and the Swan· Theatre were· not oriented
towards the east as ancient temples are, in order
to take advantage of the lighting' effects of na-
ture. Think of the playof Macbeth. It begins on
a foggy afternoon before sundown. The day goes.
The sun sets. Torches are brought in. We enter
deeper and deeper with the play into an extrava.
gant and lurid night of the soul. Or take the trial
scene from The Merchant of Venice. The scene
is played by torchlight. The auditorium is dark.
We see the sky overhead. The trial draws to an
end. Shylock is defeated. There is a gay little in-
terlude, the byplay with the rings. The stage
grows lighter. The torches are carried off. Now
the scene is finished. Portia, Nerissa, and Gra-

tiano go away.... The full moon rises over the
wall of the theatre and touches the stage with
silver. Lorenzo and Jessica enter, hand in hand..
ART IN THETHEATRB 37
. on such a night
Did T hisbe fearfullyo' ertrip. the dew.
The sole aim oithe arts of scene.-designing,
costuming, lighting, is, as I have already said, to
enhance the natural powers of the actor. It is for
the director to call forth these powers and urge
them into the pattern of the play. .
The director rilUst never make the· mistake of
imposing his own ideas upon the actors. Acting
is not an imitation of what a director thinks about
a character; it is.a gradual, half-conscious unfold-
ing and flowering of the self into a new person ...
ality. This process of growth should be sacred to
the director. He must be humble .before it. He
must nourish it, stimulate it,. foster it in a thou-
sand ways. Once the actors have been engaged,
he should address himself to their highest powers.
There is nothing they cannot accomplish. In this
mood, ignoring every limitation, he fuses them
into a white energy. The director energizes; he
animates. That is what Max Reinhardt under-
stands so well how to do. He is an animator. A
curious thing, the animating quality. Stanislav-
sky had it; Belasco had it; Arthur Hopkins has
it. One feels it instantly when one meets these

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IV
TO A YOUNG. STAGE DESIGNER

Beauty· is the purgation of superfluities.
-MICHELANGELO
Behind the words· and movements, imperturbable.
withdrawn, slumbered astl'ange smoldering p()wel'.
,---::-HENRY..8ROCKEN
A STAGE DESIGNER is, in 3 very real senSef 3
jac~~!:3.lhtta4es~ He can make blueprints and
murals and patterns and light-plots. He can de-
sign fireplaces and b()dices and bridges and wigs.
He understands architecture, but is not an archi-
tect: can paint a portrait, but is not a painter:
creates costum~sl but is not a couturier. Although
he is able to call upon any or all of these varied
gifts at will. he is not concerned with anyone of
them to the exclusion of the others. nor is he jn-,
. . -----.~,...-...-.-~'.-.-.
terestc:4_j!! anyone of them foritsown sake.
~fh;e talen~" a~~~~;;iy-ili~~'to~Tso{hi~tt;de:"His
real calling is something quite different. He is
lin Ilrtist of occasions.
69

Every play~r rather, every performance of a
play-is an occasion, and this occasion has its own
characteri~i~t::; ." quality, its own atmosphere, so to
sp~~k. It is the~tas.k "oLdle.s'.tagc..d~~ign~~~!O_~:
hancea~d i11:t~$jfy"thi~.~c;h~"~'~risJ:l<;~1J~E9'.. by:
every tn.~~~~)~ Iljs . .E9~(!~·. The mastery of this'
speCial art demands not onlY:1 mastery of frtany
diverse techniques hut a temperament that is
peculiarly sensitiv~ to the atmosphere:) of a given
occasion, Just as the temperament of.a musician
is peculiarly sensitive to the characteristic. quali~
ties of a musical composition. Stage: designers,
like musicians, are born and not made. One is
aware of atmospheres or one isn't, just as one has
a musical ear or one hasn't.
A .§_~ge.setting has no independent . life of its
own. Its emphasis is dire~~~.4.!<:'~~td,.~~p~~f()~.;.
ance. In the absenceo£ the actor it does not exist.
«~-. '''" . , .
Strange as it may seem, this simple and funda~
mental principle of stage design' still seems to be
widely misunderstood. How. often in critics' re~
views one comes upon the phra.se "the' settings
were gorgeous!" Such a statement, .of course, can
mean only one thing, that no one concetnedwith
. producing the drama has thought of it as atl:.c:l~-
ganic whole. I quote from a review recently pub-

TO A YOUNG STAGE .DESIGNER 71
fished in one .of O1,lr leading newspapers, "Of all
the sets of the >season, the only true scenic sur-
ptis.e Was . . ." The only true scenic surprise,
indeed.! 'Every ~tage designer worth his salt out-
grew the idea of scenic surpriSes years ago. If the .
cdticsonly . knew. how easy it is. to make a scenic
surprise in the .theatrel ,Take two turntaples,a'
great deal of~ Butl no. Why give awayili6
for~ula?,,!!__~:.,.9pL.5Urprise...that,~J$._}Y~~~~L~m
the' audience; .it· is de1ighte~ •~!!~.try/iti!lg.a'.c,<:pt:! ..
~~E~~"The1Utp~se'1iihe~~t~i~.a stage setting;is
only a.part Q£the greater surprise inherent in the
event itself. .
Arid yet a stage setting holds ,a curious kind of
suspense.. Go, for instance, into <n ordinary empty
drawing-room as it' exists . ri:orm~l1y. There" is. no
particular suspense about this room. It is just-
empty. Now.imagine the same drawing-room ar-
ranged and decorated for a particular function"""':'":1
Christmas party for children, let us say. It is not
completed as a room, now, until the children are
in it. And if we wish to visualize for ourselves
how important a part the sense of . expectancy
plays in such a room, Jet us imagine that there is .
a storm and that the children c.annot come. A
scene on the stage is filled with the same feeling

of expectancy. It is like a mixture of chemical
elements held in solution. The actor adds the 00.0
element that releasesth<F144~ ~~gy .. of..th~.
~liole·;";"Meanwha~;·~wan·ting the actor, the vari-
~:UseIements which go to make up the setting
remain suspended, as it were. in all indefinable
tension. r~. crea~~this slls.Ee~~thi!~=-~ion,._~~
~~..,~~~:.jl~;2E9~}~_~r~~~~~~g.
The designer must strive to achieve in his set-
tings what I can only call a high potential.
The walls,· the furniture, the properties, are
only the facts of a setting, only .the outline.
The truth is in everything but these objects,in
the space they enclose, in the intense vibration
they create. They are fused into a kind of em-
bodied impulse. When the. curtain rises we feel a
frenzy of excitement focused like a burning-glass
upon the actors. Everything on the stage becomes
a part of the life of the instant. The play becomes
a voice out of a whirlwind. The terrible and won-
derful dynamis of the theatre pours over the foot-
lights,
A strange, paradoxical calling, to work always
behind and around, to bring into being a. power-
ful non-being. How far removed it aU is from the
sense of display r One is reminded of the portraits
TO A YOUNG STAGE DESIGNER 73

o£the Spanish noblemen painted byEI Greco in.
the Prado in Madrid, whose· faces, as Arthur .
Symons said, are a!Lg~c:~,.· distinguished nerves,
. quiete~~.l'.(1f:l,~~irt..Wha;';p~;;'£~r"sC;g~ ·d~;.
~gners to remember! Quieted by an effort. , , .,
Itis .to the credit o~our de=i~~~~.. ~at they,~ :S:~>I
have almost made a fetish of.~atl0~:1But·let()pJ'~'
me remark parenthetically that it· is sometimes
difficult to go into the background when there is
nothing in front of you. These· pages are hardly
the place inwhich to perpetuate the centurie~
old squabble between playwrights and stage de ...
signers begun. by peevish old Ben: Jonson, who
scolded Inigo Jones so roundly for daring to make
his productions beautiful and exciting to look at. .
This kind of petty jealousy makes sorry reading
even when recorded in verse by the great Ben
himself. It is enough to say that the jealousy still
persists and is as corroding in the twentieth cen-
tury as it was in the seventeenth. The error lies
in our conception of the theatre as something set
aside for talents that are pl:1tely literary. As if the
experience of the theatre had' only to do with
words lOur playwrights need to learn that plays
are wrought, not written. There is some~~~ to

,b~,,~:i~,.,~~~~,,~~,~~:,~l];,!~rm~",Q{J9:tnL~<;Lcolor
~n~Jight..that5=~,,~t.~~!e.mJ!~u:_~~r .way.
The designer must learn'. to. sense iheatmos.
phere of a play with unusualdeamess and,exac~~
ness. He must actually live in it fiJI-a time,. irn.
merse hihlsel£'il1 it, be baptized by k'This'
processisbY1'lO means soeasy .. asitseems.We.are
all, too apt ,tosubstitutc:! ingenuity for clairvoy.
ance. The temptation toin~ent isalwayspreserit.
I was.once asked to be ()ne ofthej.udgesof'a cOrn:-
petition. Of stage designs· held by th6 Department
of Drarnaof one of our,wel1-knowl1 universities.
All the' designers' had· made sket~hes£orthesal:Ile
play. The setting was the interior of ~.' peasant
hut on the west coast of Ireland. It turned out
thai: these twenty or .thirty young designers had
mastered the', technique of using dimmers and
sliding stages and projected' scenery. They had
also acquired a considerable amount of informa-
cion concerning the latest European developments
of' stagecraft. Their drawings were full of expres-
sionism from Gennany, constJ:uccivism from Rus-
sia, every kind of modernism. They werecom~
pilacions,of everything that had been said and .
done in the world of scenery in.the last twenty

yearsJ But not one of the designers had sensed,_t.he
a~~§~!e of theparcicular playi11q-~s.d;.. .
I recalled for them my memory of the setting
for the same.. playas. 'produced .bythe.Abbey
Theatre 011. its first visit to America~ This set,;ting
was verysitnple,far simpler and farless.sclf-reori,..
scious than any~f theiidesigns.Neutral.;,til1ted
walls,aHreplace;a. door,a.window, a table~'a..few
chairst .. the red~omespun.skirts ·and bare·~eet·.pf .
the peasa.nt girls. A fisher' s net, perhaps.Noth..
ing more .. But.through the little window!~tthe
back Ol1e saw askyofenchantment~.All. th.~ .
poetty ..·.of ..·Itdandshone.in: that' little "squareiof
light, moody, haunting, full of dreams, calling
us to follow on, follow on. . . .. By this oneges.;
ture of excelling simplicity the setting was en-.
larged iritotheregion of great theatre art. '.
Now here is a.strangething, l.said to the. de- .
signers. If wecans~cceed in seeing ,~?e.~~#4:~!
j!1alif.Y.,~f~~:.e!.~Y:5~~~S~i,!I..~~~}E~:.t.~..•Weki:'w. y "
thettuthwhen we see, it, Emerson said, from.'
opinion, as we know tha'twe are awake when we
are awake. For example: you have never been in
Heaven, .and you ,have never seen an angel. But
if someone .prodllces a playabout··angels whose
scenes are laid in Heaven you will know at a

http:Itdandshone.in
http:peasa.nt
http:bare�~eet�.pf
http:sensed,_t.he
77 76 THE DRAMATIC IMAGINATION
glance whether his work is right or wrong. Some
curious intuition will tell you. The sense of recog-
nition is the highest experience the theatre can
give. As we work we must seek not for self-
expression or for performance for its own sake,
but only to establish the dramatist's intention,
knowing that when we have succeeded in doing
so audiences will say to themselves, not, This is
beautiful, This is charming, This is splendid, but
-This is true. This is the way it is. So it is, and
notOilierWise. . . . There is nothing esoteric in
the search for truth in the theatre. On the con-
trary, it is a part of the honest everyday life of
the theatre.
The energy of a p;3.rticuiar play, its emotional
content, its' aura, so to speak, has its own definite
physical dimensions. It extends just so far in space
and no farther. The walls of the setting must be
placed at precisely this point. If the setting is
larger than it should be, the audience gets a feel-
ing of meagerness and hollowness; if smaller, a
feeling of confusion and pressure. It is often very
difficult to adjust the physical limits of a setting

to its emotional limitations. But great plays exist
outside the categories of dimension. Their bounty
TO A YOUNG STAGE DESIGNER
is as boundless as the air. Accordingly we need
not think of a stage-setting, in a larger sense, as a
matter of establishing space relations. Great plays
have nothing to do with space. The setting for a
great play is no more subject to the laws of space
composition than music is. We may put aside
once and for all the idea of a stage-setting as. a
glorified show-window in which actors are to be
exhibited and think of it instead as a kind of
symphonic accon;tpaniment or obbligato to the
play, as evocative and intangible as music itself..
Indeed, music may playa more important role
than we now realize in the scenic evocations of
the future.
In the last analysis the designing of stage scen-
ery is not the problem of an architect or a painter
or a sculptor or even a musician, but of a poet. By
a poet I do not mean, of course, an artist who is
concerned only with the writing of verse. I am
speaking of the poetic attitude. The recognized
poet, Stedman says, is one who gives voice in
expressive language to the common thought and'
feeling which lie deeper than ordinary speech. I
will give you a very simple illustration. Here is
a fragment of ordinary speech, a paraphrase of

part of Hamlet's soliloquy, To be or not to be:
I wish I were dead I I wish I could go to sleep
and never wake up! But I'm afraid of what might
happen afterward. Do people dream after they
are dead? ... But Hamlet does not express
himself in this way. He says, To die, to sleep; to
, sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
for in that sleep of death what dreams may come.
. . . Here are two ways of saying the same
thing. The first is prose. The second is poetry.
Both of them are true. But Shakespeare's way-
the poetic way-is somehow deeper and higher
and truer and more universal. In this sense we
may fairly speak of the art of,.~~~_~esig':l.ing as
poetic, in that it seeks to giy~. expre~slC;~ to ~e
essential ql1ality()f_~ play rathertl1ao'i:o -itS'out-
ward characteristics.'"· -- ---., ..-.-.....
,,~ ", "." .' ~ " ...
Some time ago one of the younger stage de-
signers was working with me on the scenes for
an historical play. In the course of the production

we had to design a tapestry, which was to be
decorated with figures of heraldic lions. I sent
him to the library to hunt up old documents. He
came back presently with many sketches, copies
of originals. They were all interesting enough,
but somehow they were not right. They lacked
something that professionals call "good theatre."
They were not theatrical. They were accurate and
-lifeless. I said as much to the designer. "Well,
what shall we do about it?" he asked me. "We
have got to stop copying," I said. "We must try
something else. We must put our imaginations
to work. Let us think now. Not about what this
heraldic lion ought to look like, but what the de-
sign meant in the past, in the Middle Ages.
"Perhaps Richard, the Lion-Heart, carried this
very device emblazoned on his banner as he
marched across Europe on his way to the Holy
Land. Richard, the Lion-Heart, Coeur de Lion
. . . What memories of childhood this name con-
jures up, what images of chivalry! Knights in
armor, ent~antedca~tles, magic cas<fents, peril-
ous seas, oriflammes and~()!l~~lons Hear the
great battle-criesl See the b~~ners floating
through the smoke! Coeur de Lion, the Cru-
sader, with his singing page Blondel. ... Do
you remember Blondel's song, the song he sang
for three long years while he sought his master
in prison? '0 Richard, 0 mon Roil L'Univers
t'abandonnel .. :
"And now your imagination is free to wander,
if you will allow it to do so, among the great

names of romance. Richard, the Lion-Heart,
80 mE DRAMATIC IMAGINATION
King Arthur, Sir Percival and the mystery of
the Holy Grail, the Song of Roland, the magic
sword, Durandal, Tristan and Isolde, the love-
potion, the chant of the Cornish. sailors, the ship
with the black sail; the Lady Nicolette of whom
Aucassin said, Beauvcnir et bel aller, lovely when
you come, lovely when you go; the demoiselle
Aude, who died for love; the Lady Christabel;
the Ancient Mariner with the Albatross hung
about his neck; the Gd, Charlemagne, Barba-
rossa, the Tartar, Kubla Khan, who decreed the
pleasure-dome in Xanadu, in the poem Coleridge
heard in a dream. . . . And there are the leg-
endary cities, too, Carcassonne, Granada, T or-
cdlo; Samarkand, the Blue City, with its fa'rades
of turquoise and lapis lazuli; Carthage, Isfahan,
T rebizond; and there are the places which
have never existed outside a. poet's imagination-
Hy Brasil, BroceIiande, the Land of Luthany, the
region Elenore, the Isle of Avalon, where falls
not hail, or rain, or any snow, where ever King
Arthur lyethsleeping as in peace. . . . And
there is the winged Lion of St. Mark in Venice
with the device set forth fairly beneath it, Pax
Tibi, Marce, Evangelista Meus;and there are the
mounted knights in the windows of Chartres,

'
81TO A YOUNG STAGE DESIGNER
riding on, riding on toward Our Lady as she
bends above the high altar in her glory of rose.
"These images of romance have come to out ..
minds-all of them-out of this one little symbol"
of the heraldic lion. They are dear to us. They
can never fade· from our hearts.
"Let your fancy dwell and move among them
in a kind of revery. Now, in this mood, with
these images bright in your mind, draw· your
figure of the lion once more.
"This new drawing is different. Instead· of
imitating, describing what the artists of the Mid-
dle Ages thought a lion looked like, it summons
up'an image of medieval romance. Perhaps with-
out knowing it I have stumbled on a definition of
art in the theatre; all art in the theatre s.hpJ.llc;l be,
_"~,,,,,.,,"~.~''''''.'''"''".''V'' ",,," "" ""'~'/'d,_';"
~.~:~~p~ti~.~j?"l,1;...evDCatixe. Not ~ description,
hut an evocation. (A bad actor descnbes a charac-,.. ....."
..........................
t~!;he explains it.· He, e"pounds it.~·gooaac~or
~It~~e~,~42:::::;gi;P;~~:.
SOmethf!;g-~b~ut it brings back memories of
medieval love-songs and crusaders and high ad-

ventures. People will look at it without knowing
why. In this drawing of a 'lion-onlya detail in
a magnificent, elaborate setting-there will be a
quality which will attract them and disturb them
and haunt them and make them dream. Your
feeling is in it. Your interest is in it. You have
triumphed over the mechanics of the theatre and
for the time being you have become a poet."
The poetic conception of stage design bears
little relation to the accepted convention of realis-
tic scenery in the theatre. As a matter of fact it is
quite the opposite. Truth in the tlI~,atre, as the
masters of the theatre have always known, stands
above and beyond mere a,<,:curacy to fact. In the
theatre the actual thing is never the exciting
thing. Unless life is turned into art on the stage
it stops being alive and goes dead.
So much for the realistic theatre. The artist
,hould omit the details, the prose of nature aiid

give us only the spirit and splendor. When we
'p~t a star in asky, for example, it is not just a
star in a sky, but a "supernal messenger, excel-
lently bright." This is purely a question of our
point of view. A star is, after all, only an electric
light. The point is, how the audience will see it,
what images it will call to mind. We read of
Madame Pitoeff's Ophelia that in the Mad Scene
she handled the roses and the rosemary and the
rue as if she were in a Paradise of flowers.
We must bring into the immediate life of the
theatre-"the two hours' traffic of our stage"-
images of a larger life. The stage we inhabit is a
chamber of the House of Dreams. Our work on
this stage is to suggest the immanence of a vision-
ary world all about us. In this world Hamlet
dwells, and Oedipus, and great Juno, known by
her immortal gait, and the three witches on the
blasted heath. We must learn by a deliberate
effort of the will to walk in these enchanted re-
gions. We must imagine ourselves into their vast-
ness.
Here is the secret of the flame that bums in the

work of the great artists of the theatre. They
seem so much ~ore. aware than we are, . and so
much. more awake, and so much more alive that
they make us feel that what we call living is not·
living at all, but a kind of sleep. Their knowl-
edge, their wealth of emotion, their wonder, their
elation,th!'!irswift clear seeing surrounds every
occasion with a crowd of values that enriches it
beyond anything which we, in our. happy satis-
faction, had ever imagined. In their hands it be-
comes not only a thing of beauty but a thing of
power. And we see it all-beauty and power
alike-as a part of the life of the theatre.
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SOME THOpGHfS ON STAGE COSTUME
Let HS have a glimpse pf incompl'chemibles:. and
thoHghts of things, which thoughts bllttendel'ly
tOHch •.
-SIR THOMAS' BROWNE
IN LEARNING how a costume for the stage isde..
signed and made. we have to go. through a cet:-
tain arnOllntof 'routine training. We must learn

aboute:~~Ens~ ,and about E~s,W:ehave. ,to
know what farthingales are, and wimples, and
patches and calechesand parures 'and g()dets and .
appliques and passementerie. We J"tave to' .know
the instant we see and touch a fabric what it will
look like on the stage both. in movement and in
repose. We have to develop the brains that are in
our fingers. We have to enhance out: feeling for
style in the theatre.. We have. to experiment end-
Jessly until our work is as nearly perfect .as we can
make it, until we are, so to speak, released from
it. All this is a part of our apprenticeship. But
there 'coines to every one of us a· time when the
problema{ cr~~~g~resen~.~L its.~lf.
87
If we are to accomplish anything in any art
we must first see what our problem is before we
can proceed to solve it. What we do in the theatre
depends upon what we see. If we are to design
for the theatre we must have the clearest possible

image in our minds of the nature and the purpose
and the function of the theatre.
Now this theatre we are working in is a very
strange place. It deals, not with logic, but with
magic. It deals with witchcraft and demoniac
possession and forebodings and ecstasies and mys-
tical splendors and legends and playthings and
parades and suspicions and mysteries and rages
and jealousies and unleashed passions and thrill-
ing intimations and austerity and elevation and
luxury and ruin and woe and exaltation and se-
crets "too divinely precious not to be forbidden,"
-the shudder, the frisson, the shaft of chill
moonlight, the footfall on the stair, the knife in
the heart, the face at the window, the boy's hand
on the hill. . . . The air of the theatre is filled
with extravagant and wheeling emotions, with
what H. L. Mencken calls "the grand crash and
glitter of things."
In the theatre, the supernormal is the only
norm and anything less is subnormal, devitalized.
SOME THOUGHTS ON STAGE COSTUME 89
If we try to bring the theatre down to our own
level, it simply ceases to be. When we see Oedi-
pus Rex in the theatre, when we hear Pel/cas
and Mclisande, when we examine a stage design
by Adolphe Appia, we realize that great artists

like Sophocles and Debussy and Appia create as
they do, not only because they are more skilled,
more experienced than the rest of us, but because
they think and feel differently from the way the
rest of us do. Their orientation is different from
our own. When we listen to what artists tell us
in their work-when we look at what they look
at and try to see what they see-then, and only
then, do we learn from them.
There is no formula for inspiration. But to ask
ourselves, why did that artist do that thing in
that particular way instead of in some other way?
is to take the first step toward true creation.
Nature has endowed us all with a special
faculty called imagination, by means of which
we can form mental images of things not present
to our senses. T revisa, a seer of the late fourteenth
century, defined it as the faculty whereby "the
soul beholds the likeness of things that be ab-
sent." It is the most precious, the most powerful,
and the most unused of all human faculties. Like
90 THE DRAMA TIC IMAGINATION

the mantle of rainbow feathers in the Japanese
No drama, Hagarotno, it is a treasure not lightly
giVen to mortals. Many people confuse imagina ..
tion 'with . ingenuity, ,'with inventiveness.· But' im-
agi:Mgo.~is not this thing at aU:}~)2"5!?:.~~~i~
po;wer of se:~g"'~'~~"'~~":Y~"~"'!!t~,!!!!!!~.Andit
'1StIie'very" essence of the, theatre. ' " '"
Many of you are familiar with the region of
the Ardennes, in Belgium .. Now thiscountryw.
side, charming and poignant. though it is, may
seem no more beautiful than many parts ·ofour
own country, nearer and dearer to us. But Shake.-
speare once ''Vent there. And in his drama, As
You Like It, the familiar scene is, no longer the
Ardennes we know, but the Forest of Arden,
where.onevery enchanted tree hang the tongues
that show the beauties of Orlando's Rosalind.
Atalanta's better part, sad Lucretia's modesty.
Shakespeare's imagination joins with our own to
summon up an ideal land, an image of out lost
paradise. Or let us take another example: King
Lear had, I dare say, a life of his own outside the
limits of Shakespeare's play. a daily life of routine
very much like our own. He got up in the morn-
ing and put on his boots and ate his breakfist and
SOME THOUGl;ITS ON STAGE COSTUME 91
signed dull documents and yawned and grumbled
and was bored like everyonedse in the world. But

thedram.a ~loes" not give. us those, momentsi, It
giveS ,usLeat· at his highest pitch' oflivi,ng. It
shows him .. inJntimsest action, a wild old' man
stonningatheavell,. bearinghi~ dadghterCor.
delia, dead in' his arms,. , ,
I~.these··eiamples we may divine Jh*~$F~are:s:""
oWt.int(:ntion rowardthe' theatre. His atcitt;&de-
the trije dramatic~tti~ude, the mood, 'irid~d: in
~~~~~:~,~U:*'gi~~:~E~I~':~~~~J~.,JS,,;g~~11fi~t~se
awareness. of infecclOusiexdtemellt,l£ we arc:' to
.'_'~w",_<"'-M~ ...";.__ ... ,:~;;,,,,.t_·""":"':""
__~'~'''f,.~~''''_t'::1'.... ".;':'~"~".' .. ...,.~".:~~ ...:~.."'" " ' ' ,:~"
,', ';, ',"
create .inthe~heatre,. w~lIltist first leam taput
on this creativ~ inte~ti6n1ike the 'mandeof rain·
bow f~athers. We must learn, to feel the, drive
and beat of th~ dramatic imagin~tionin its home.
W ¢ must take the little gift we llave intQthe hall
of the gods.
A stage costume isa creation of the theatre.
Its quality is purely theatrical and.E~,~outsid~
the theatre, it ..loses its magic at,gl1ce. It dies as
a plant dies when uprooted; Why this should
be so I do not know. But here! is one more proof
of theetemal enchantment which every worker
in the ,theatre knows and feels. The actual ma-

92 THE· DRAMATIC· IMAGINATION
terials of which a stage costume is made count for
very little. Outwardly it may be ~()t,hingp~~e
tkaE..;a_l!.~~~I:!~_~Q.~._9.! sh:~bQY~Y:kh:ets.and cheap
glass "glits." I remember Graham-Robertson'sde-
~;ipti~~C '~r a co.stume . worn· by Ellen T erty as
Fair Rosamund:
She looked her loveliest in the rich gown of
her first entrance, a wonderful Rosettian· effect of
soft gold and glowing color veiled in c blar:ther
masses of bright bair in a net ofgold and golden
hearts embroidered on her robe. . .. Tbe foun-
dation was an old pink gown, worn with stage
servic; and reprieved for the occasion from. the
rag-bag. The mysterious veiling was the coarsest
and cheapest black net, the glory of hair tbrough
golden meshes was· a bag of gold tinsel stuffed
with crumpled paper, and the broidered . hearts
were cut out of gold paper and gummed on. The
whole costume would have been dear at ten shil-
lings and was one of the finest stage dresses that
1 have ·ever seen. .

The wardrobes of our costume-establishments
are crammed with hundreds of just such cos-
tumes. I can see them now, with their gilt· and
their fustian ,and their. tinsel and their .. bands· of
SOME· THOUGHTS ON .. STAGE COSTUME 93
sham ·ermine. You all know them-.the worn
hems, the sleeves shortened and lengthened and
shortened again, the seams tak,en in. and let out
and taken in, the faded tights, the .embroidery
hastily freshened with new bits from the stQ(:k-
room, the fashions ofyesterday gone Hat like stale
champagne.... lW.t.in the theatre a miracle
takes p. lace. The dramatic .imaO'ina.tion transforms
..~"...... ~, ...._-_.' .......;;.•.t.,,_...."'......_"'''''~,...
__'"..:;,'''c.:,'''.'''.....''''h',''.........,..;.,''''~''"'___-:
_~em.:;_!~~r.~c:()m&... 4Xt:l~fP:~~.~.!h:.y~~~~3~~ a
~!l!.P!~~L~.!!._'.l~y~~e.. a ~~miIl:der. ()f .~mgs".we
?~c:(!...lill~~...~~,~r:?~.. ~~~~~E.. ~!m-jpy. The
actors wearing them become ambassadors . from
thathright other world behihd the footlights.
But a· stage costume has an added sigriificance .
in the:: theatre in that it is created to enhance the
particular quality of a special occasion. It is.-4e-
:~g~~d for· a particular character in . a· particular
scene in a particular play-.not just for a character
in .a scene in a play. but forthfl.t ~h:Jt"'~J~~t..~in.Jkfl.t
s~~~?, ..~t.I t}!'!~.play-·and accordingly it is an or-
g~nic and necess<ry part of the drama in which
it appears. One might say that an ordinary cos-

tume,an ordinary suit or· dress, . is an organkand
necessary part of our everyday living. And so it
is. But-and here is thepointl-dramaisnot
everyday living. Drallla and life are two verydif~
·'~'~"",----,,,,,,"~c<c,ct,.,,,,,,,,,""""""'_"""'"
94 THE. DRAMATIC IMAGINATION
ferent things. ~i!~, as we all'1ive it, is made up
of troubles and blunders and dreams that are
never'fulii-;~~1~~d~"Theeternal eyer~n~~~q~~~~;;
William James' c.a1ledit.. We .go o~lfromday to .
day, most of us, beset··by uncertainties and Eros",
trations,and try to do the best we can, not seeing
very clearly, not. understanding very welL And
we say,' Life is like thad Butdcamatsnot in the
least. like that. Drama isl~fe, to be surC!, b~tJ.iJe
s~~l1._thXQ.~g~._~~~~~;;:;~~G:dramatistr.seen.:~ply .
!iID~.~9g~lh~r:~ .·.~eA .. ~!~~.~..~RiJ:~ary,...£orin-..and
order. We see ~~r.?wnlivesrefIected as.ina~~gic
m!!i~r~_~!~~~:[il1d'"-~§lpn1ied'lna pattern,ve
had not nercdvedbetore:"'Even,thing ort his sta!7e
_""'~"_"''''''~' '~""~''''r'-''4~---'":''''"1"'''''~'''~'f ..
,,,,,",~,,,L'''''''''.''~''''t _,,_._, ,~,/,_, .. " '", ,/', ""',, ';; ':-P' " '~'" ,
'~·'"·,",,D'C:::·
~~~~~-.aLp.ru:.t.Qt.J:h~t._..~~qt:;r.order-.. the words,
the situations, the actors, the. setting, the lights,
the costwnes.Eaeh element has its own particu",

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