Craig's idea of using neutral, mobile, non-representational screens as a staging device is probably his most famous scenographic concept. In 1910 Craig filed a patent which described in considerable technical detail a system of hinged and fixed flats that could be quickly arranged to cater for both internal and external scenes. He presented a set to William Butler Yeats for use at the Abbey Theatre in Ireland, who shared hissymbolist aesthetic.
Craig’s second innovation was in stage lighting. Doing away with traditional footlights, Craig lit the stage from above, placing lights in the ceiling of the theatre. Colour and light also became central to Craig’s stage conceptualizations.
Under the play of this light, the background becomes a deep shimmering blue, apparently almost translucent, upon which the green and purple make a harmony of great richness.[6]
The third remarkable aspect of Craig’s experiments in theatrical form were his attempts to integrate design elements with his work with actors. His mise en scène sought to articulate the relationships in space between movement, sound, line, and colour. Craig promoted a theatre focused on the craft of the director – a theatre where action, words, colour and rhythm combine in dynamic dramatic form.[7]
All of his life, Craig sought to capture "pure emotion" or "arrested development" in the plays on which he worked. Even during the years when he was not producing plays, Craig continued to make models, to conceive stage designs and to work on directorial plans that were never to reach performance. He believed that a director should approach a play with no preconceptions and he embraced this in his fading up from the minimum or blank canvas approach.[8]
As an engraver and a classical artist, Craig found inspiration in puppets and masks. In his 1910 article "A Note on Masks," Craig expounds the virtue of using masks as a mechanism for capturing the audience’s attention, imagination and soul. "There is only one actor – nay one man who has the soul of the dramatic poet, and who has ever served as the true and loyal interpreter of the poet," he proclaimed, and "this is the marionette.”[9]
On the Art of the Theatre (1911) is written as a dialogue between a Playgoer and a Stage Director, who examine the problems of the nature of stage directing. Craig argues that it was not dramatists, but rather performers who made the first works of drama, using action, words, line, colour and rhythm. Craig goes on to contend that only the director who seeks to interpret drama truly, and commits to training in all aspects of dramatic art, can restore the "Art of the Theatre."[10] Maintaining that the director should seek a faithful interpretation of the text, Craig argues that audiences go to the theatre to see, rather than to hear, plays. The design elements may transcend reality and function as symbols, he thought, thereby communicating a deeper meaning, rather than simply reflecting the real world.
Sources[edit]
Consequently, in 1904, Craig went into voluntary exile, accepting the invitation of Count Harry Kessler—the arbiter of taste at the Weimar court—to visit Germany. While there he wrote his best-known essay, The Art of the Theatre (1905; republished, with articles from The Mask, as On the Art of the Theatre, 1911). He finally arrived in Italy, where he created the sets for a production of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm for Eleonora Duse and settled in Florence. There he invented (1907) the portable folding screens used in set designs for a co-production with Konstantin Stanislavsky of Hamlet at theMoscow Art Theatre in 1912. There too he made the copperplate etchings that record his researches into the creation of an art of movement, and he founded and edited his international review, The Mask (1908–29), which helped to make his theatrical ideals widely known and in which many of his articles—notably “The Actor and the Übermarionette” (1907)—were published. In Florence he published the etchings illustrating his scenographic concepts in A Portfolio of Etchings (1908) and also wrote Towards a New Theatre (1913), which contains 40 plates of his original scenic designs. He established his School for the Art of the Theatre in 1903.
After World War I, which put an end to his school’s activities, Craig turned increasingly to theatrical history, writing Henry Irving (1930) and Ellen Terry and Her Secret Self (1931). He did take part in some outstanding productions, though, directing and designing scenery for Ibsen’s The Pretenders (Copenhagen, 1926) and for Macbeth (New York, 1928). His work as an engraver reached its peak in the illustrations for the Cranach Press Hamlet (1929), and among his notable postwar publications were the essays and articles collected in Scene (1923), in which he defined his theory of the history of stage design and expounded his ideas of a stage setting based on the use of portable screens and the part played by light in evoking atmosphere. In 1931 he went to live in France and in 1948 made his home in the south of that country, where he wrote his memoirs, entitled Index to the Story of My Days (1957).
From the outset, Craig propounded an art of the theatre in which reality, instead of being reproduced by traditional representational methods, would be transcended and interpreted by symbol. To him outlines, forms, colours, and lighting were a means of conveying atmosphere. His most original theatrical concept was that the entire “scene” in a dramatic work should be movable in all parts; both the floor and the ceiling were to be composed of squares that, under the control of the artist, could be moved up and down independently or in groups within a constantly changing pattern of light. Thus an emotional response might arise in the audience through the abstract movement of these plastic forms. Craig’s stage productions and, even more, his writings and his highly stylized stage designs, woodcuts, and etchings strongly influenced the antinaturalist trends of the modern theatre in the first half of the 20th century, though, like his counterpart, Adolphe Appia, he designed very little that was actually staged.
Craig’s second innovation was in stage lighting. Doing away with traditional footlights, Craig lit the stage from above, placing lights in the ceiling of the theatre. Colour and light also became central to Craig’s stage conceptualizations.
Under the play of this light, the background becomes a deep shimmering blue, apparently almost translucent, upon which the green and purple make a harmony of great richness.[6]
The third remarkable aspect of Craig’s experiments in theatrical form were his attempts to integrate design elements with his work with actors. His mise en scène sought to articulate the relationships in space between movement, sound, line, and colour. Craig promoted a theatre focused on the craft of the director – a theatre where action, words, colour and rhythm combine in dynamic dramatic form.[7]
All of his life, Craig sought to capture "pure emotion" or "arrested development" in the plays on which he worked. Even during the years when he was not producing plays, Craig continued to make models, to conceive stage designs and to work on directorial plans that were never to reach performance. He believed that a director should approach a play with no preconceptions and he embraced this in his fading up from the minimum or blank canvas approach.[8]
As an engraver and a classical artist, Craig found inspiration in puppets and masks. In his 1910 article "A Note on Masks," Craig expounds the virtue of using masks as a mechanism for capturing the audience’s attention, imagination and soul. "There is only one actor – nay one man who has the soul of the dramatic poet, and who has ever served as the true and loyal interpreter of the poet," he proclaimed, and "this is the marionette.”[9]
On the Art of the Theatre (1911) is written as a dialogue between a Playgoer and a Stage Director, who examine the problems of the nature of stage directing. Craig argues that it was not dramatists, but rather performers who made the first works of drama, using action, words, line, colour and rhythm. Craig goes on to contend that only the director who seeks to interpret drama truly, and commits to training in all aspects of dramatic art, can restore the "Art of the Theatre."[10] Maintaining that the director should seek a faithful interpretation of the text, Craig argues that audiences go to the theatre to see, rather than to hear, plays. The design elements may transcend reality and function as symbols, he thought, thereby communicating a deeper meaning, rather than simply reflecting the real world.
Sources[edit]
- Bablet, Denis. 1981. The Theatre of Edward Gordon Craig. London: Methuen. ISBN 978-0-413-47880-1.
- Brockett, Oscar G. and Franklin J. Hildy. 2003. History of the Theatre. Ninth edition, International edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. ISBN 0-205-41050-2.
- Craig, Edward Gordon. 1906. Isadora Duncan, Six Movement Designs. Leipsig.
- ---. 1911. On the Art of the Theatre. Ed. Franc Chamberlain. London: Routledge, 2008. ISBN 978-0-415-45034-8.
- Craig, Edward Gordon. The Drama for Fools / Le Théâtre des fous. Edit. Didier Plassard, Marion Chénetier-ALev, Marc Duvillier. Montpellier: L'Entretemps, 2012. ISBN 978-2-355-39147-7.
- Innes, Christopher. 1983. Edward Gordon Craig. Directors in Perspective ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-27383-8.
- Holroyd, Michael. 2008. A Strange Eventful History. Farrar Straus Giroux. ISBN 0-7011-7987-2.
- Leiter, Samuel L. 1994. The Great Stage Directors: 100 Distinguished Careers of the Theatre. Illustrated ed. New York: Facts on File. ISBN 978-0-8160-2602-9.
- Skou, Ulla Poulse. 1973. Genier er som Tordenvejr - Gordon Craig på Det Kgl. Teater 1926. Selskabet for Dansk Teaterhistorie, 1973. In Danish, with 36 unpublished letters from Gordon Craig as an appendix in English.
- Steegmuller, Francis. 1974. Your Isadora: The Love Story of Isadora Duncan & Gordon Craig. Pub Center Cultural Resources. ISBN 978-0-394-48698-7.
- Taxidou, Olga. 1998. The Mask: A Periodical Performance by Edward Gordon Craig. Contemporary Theatre Studies ser. volume 30. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-5755-046-6.
- Walton, J. Michael. 1983. Craig on Theatre. London: Methuen. ISBN 978-0-413-47220-5.
- Wills, J. Robert. 1976. The Director in a Changing Theatre. Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield. ISBN 978-0-87484-349-1.
- L. M. Newman, The White Fan: Gordon Craig's neglected masterpiece of symbolist staging (2009. Malkin Press)
- Archival material relating to Edward Gordon Craig listed at the UK National Archives
- Edward Gordon Craig prints of Hamlet, 1913-1914 and undated, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
- Edward Gordon Craig material held by the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
- Donald Oenslager collection of Edward Gordon Craig materials, 1898-1967, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Consequently, in 1904, Craig went into voluntary exile, accepting the invitation of Count Harry Kessler—the arbiter of taste at the Weimar court—to visit Germany. While there he wrote his best-known essay, The Art of the Theatre (1905; republished, with articles from The Mask, as On the Art of the Theatre, 1911). He finally arrived in Italy, where he created the sets for a production of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm for Eleonora Duse and settled in Florence. There he invented (1907) the portable folding screens used in set designs for a co-production with Konstantin Stanislavsky of Hamlet at theMoscow Art Theatre in 1912. There too he made the copperplate etchings that record his researches into the creation of an art of movement, and he founded and edited his international review, The Mask (1908–29), which helped to make his theatrical ideals widely known and in which many of his articles—notably “The Actor and the Übermarionette” (1907)—were published. In Florence he published the etchings illustrating his scenographic concepts in A Portfolio of Etchings (1908) and also wrote Towards a New Theatre (1913), which contains 40 plates of his original scenic designs. He established his School for the Art of the Theatre in 1903.
After World War I, which put an end to his school’s activities, Craig turned increasingly to theatrical history, writing Henry Irving (1930) and Ellen Terry and Her Secret Self (1931). He did take part in some outstanding productions, though, directing and designing scenery for Ibsen’s The Pretenders (Copenhagen, 1926) and for Macbeth (New York, 1928). His work as an engraver reached its peak in the illustrations for the Cranach Press Hamlet (1929), and among his notable postwar publications were the essays and articles collected in Scene (1923), in which he defined his theory of the history of stage design and expounded his ideas of a stage setting based on the use of portable screens and the part played by light in evoking atmosphere. In 1931 he went to live in France and in 1948 made his home in the south of that country, where he wrote his memoirs, entitled Index to the Story of My Days (1957).
From the outset, Craig propounded an art of the theatre in which reality, instead of being reproduced by traditional representational methods, would be transcended and interpreted by symbol. To him outlines, forms, colours, and lighting were a means of conveying atmosphere. His most original theatrical concept was that the entire “scene” in a dramatic work should be movable in all parts; both the floor and the ceiling were to be composed of squares that, under the control of the artist, could be moved up and down independently or in groups within a constantly changing pattern of light. Thus an emotional response might arise in the audience through the abstract movement of these plastic forms. Craig’s stage productions and, even more, his writings and his highly stylized stage designs, woodcuts, and etchings strongly influenced the antinaturalist trends of the modern theatre in the first half of the 20th century, though, like his counterpart, Adolphe Appia, he designed very little that was actually staged.