3/7/13- Naturalism & Non-realism

(Vimeo: "Meyerhold, Theatre, and the Russian Avant-Garde")

Lots of varying styles aesthetics in late 1800s

Naturalism (continued)

• Harley Granville Barker
• Midsummer design in Savoy, 1914
• not realistic; draping fabric
• Everyman- famous morality play from Medieval times
• Poel as God in Everyman
• Beerbohm Tree's Midsummer
• Realistic; famous for live rabbits
• Alfred Jarry- Ubu Roi
• very controversial play
• originally created to be crazy puppet version of Macbeth
• Theatre l'Oeuvre (Theatre of the Work)
• Benjamin Franklin Wedekind
• scenes of realism then sudden expressionistic scenes
• Pic: University of Waterloo's "Spring Awakening"
• Wedekind's "Lulu"

University of Waterloo's Spring Awakening

• Max Reinhardt
• spectacles
• outdoor extravaganza
• Everyman, Midsummer, The Miracle
• would transform Broadway theatres
• Master of Regiebuch
• or, the Promptbook
• wrote down everything he did
• Meyerhold- a great Russian director
• split in Russian theatre between Stanislovski and Meyerhold
• arrested and "purged" in 1920s
• "The Dawns", 1920
• style of acting: Biomechanics
• physical shape and movement; kinetic approach
• constructivism - like arts and crafts projects (looked like machines)
• "The Magnificent Cuckoo"
• like an Erector set

Meyerhold

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Non-Realistic Designers

(beginnings of modern theatre design)

scenography- everything of design work is under 1 person

• Adolphe Appia
• "Parcifal"
• think of space as environment; lighting creates its own language- a kinetic environment and special rhythm
• "Tristan and Isolde", 1896
• "rhythmic spaces"
• Gordon Craig
• Book: "The Art of the Theatre"
• Macbeth, "Scene", Hamlet
• Abstract design
• Ubermarionettes
• also, could use a monochromatic surface for projecting images or shadows

• Robert Edmund Jones, 1887-1954
• "The Dramatic Imagination"
• Macbeth
• Father of American Design
• revolution against realism in scenic design

Ghost Shows: Fantasmagoria & Fantascopes

-create ghosts with projectors

-spectre box (1871); picture: spectres on the stage, 1871

a Ghost Show