Christopher Innes

Modern British drama, 1890-1990

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Chronology 1. Contexts 2. The traditional background 3. Defining modernism: George Bernard Shaw 4. Social themes and realistic formulae 5. The comic mirror - tradition and innovation 6. Poetic drama - verse, fantasy and symbolic images 7. Present tense - feminist theatre Index.

Erwin Piscator's political theatre : the development of modern German drama

Introduction 1. The Weimar Republic: art and environment 2. The Agitprop theatre: political 3. Agitprop and Revue: society 4. Documentary drama the material 5. Epic theatre: the actor and the structure 6. Total theatre: the audience 7. New drama: the author 8. Piscator: contemporaries and critics Notes Chronological Table Bibliography Index.

Edward Gordon Craig

Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966) is known as one of the 20thcentury’s most influential theatre theorists and makers; he was also a trained actor. The broad scope of ‘theatre maker’, albeit not a term Craig would have used himself, aptly captures how his ideas on the fusion of ‘technical stagecrafts’ (conventionally seen as set construction, stage management, lighting and sound) and ‘creative stagecrafts’ (acting, music, literature, and dance) inform approaches to directing and anticipate collaborative models of authorship. While this relates to the role of a director, the notion of a theatre maker is also inclusive of the collaborative roles and practices of a contemporary scenographer or dramaturg, actor or choreographer. Accordingly, Craig’s practicalexperiments and theoretical arguments positioned the material and spatial elements of theatre as complementary and integral, rather than in service to performers or as superficial decoration. Influenced by the staging principles of Ancient Greek drama, Craig argued that theatre had become too focused on literary texts and needed to rediscover an art of staging that embraced the experiential qualities of light and sound. The ideas that inform contemporary approaches to theatre making are partly in debt to Craig through his argument for a renewed harmony between the individual stagecrafts.

Modern German Drama: A Study in Form

List of illustrations 1. Introduction 2. The starting point 3. Developments 4. Images 5. Models 6. Dialectics 7. Documents 8. traditions 9. dialogues 10. Conclusions Notes bibliography Index.

Utopian Histories: Transforming Past Ideals in Stoppard’s Plays

In his recent plays Stoppard has tended to focus on ideologies of hope as a means of transforming the past and merging history with the present. The title of The Coast of Utopia trilogy (2002) – which derives from Wilde’s 1891 essay on socialism – questions the thrust of communism towards ideal social existence, setting the revolutionaries among the impressionists and against Bakunin’s anarchists. This is then picked up in Rock ‘n’ Roll (2006), where the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, as well as a leading Marxist in Britain are each undermined by The Velvet Underground and more pointedly by a band called ‘The Plastic People of the Universe.’ The arts in general and painting and music in particular become ideals that trump politics. An analysis of the manner in which Stoppard represents these ideals also allows for important insights into questions of historiography.

Clowns, the Circus and Avant-garde Theatre

Building on the ritual element associated with the avant-garde, the argument is that in contrast to the predominant concept of avant-garde artists as esoteric and elitist, from the beginning of the movement in the 1890s avant-garde artists chose the most popular form of expression in conjunction with their esthetic experimentalism and political radicalism. Focusing specifically on theatre, although also referencing painters and musicians, the links with clowns and circus carry through from Satie in France, Reinhardt and Brecht in Germany, through Brook and Genet, to an internationally representative pair: Lepage and Ciulli, demonstrating how this popular imagery has already changed.

The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing: Traditional staging and the evolution of the director

While this book focuses on the work of contemporary directors and the directorial principles that have become defined over the modern period, it is useful to see these in the historical context. This broad overview not only allows a sense of both aesthetic and political perspective, but also suggests the need for the functions and position of the theatre director by illustrating the varied figures who assumed less defined even if possibly similar roles in specific eras. In addition, it demonstrates a long connection between innovations in performance, challenging or pre-empting the standard stage practices of a given age, and the activities of directorial prototypes: a connection that has become one of the defining factors of the contemporary director. Theatre practice in the Western world evolved from two main origins. Firstly: the theatre in Ancient Greece, which was passed down in adaptations through Classical Rome to the commedia dell’arte , and was reintroduced – although in a very different form – during the Renaissance. Secondly: the medieval tradition of religious plays and royal pageants. Even back then there were almost certainly influences that flowed between Europe and other traditions: the theatre of Ancient Greece may well have borrowed from Asian traditions, or contributed to them (with miniature amphitheatres still surviving, carved into the hillsides across Asia Minor), while there are striking similarities between Persian Ta’zieh performance and the medieval Mystery play. However there is so little documentation of such interchanges that – while in discussing contemporary directors the influence of the twentieth-century Chinese actor Mei Lang-fan on Meyerhold and Brecht or the two-way street of Roberto Ciulli’s ‘Silk Road’ are noted – this historical overview limits itself to the Western tradition.

The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing: Directors of theatricality

Vsevolod Meyerhold: commedia dell’arte to biomechanics Meyerhold was one of the most daring experimenters of the twentieth century, exploring a breathtaking variety of ways of making theatre, and it is with him that the directorial line of theatricality begins. Like Stanislavsky, he was an actor, who had considerable success playing Konstantin Treplev in Stanislavsky’s The Seagull , and performing in the provinces as well as in St Petersburg at the theatre of the renowned actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya. Despite his acclaim as an actor, he concentrated his efforts on directing, including productions at the Mariinsky Opera. His last stage performances were during the 1916–17 season of the Aleksandrinsky Theatre, an august establishment which, like the Mariinsky, was part of the group of imperial theatres of St Petersburg. However, he continued to act by proxy in so far as, in rehearsals, he ‘demonstrated, demonstrated, demonstrated’ to the actors. His improvisation skills and capacity for ‘instantaneous inspiration’ made him an outstanding actor-demonstrator – a role of fundamental importance to his work as a director throughout his life. Meyerhold, unlike Stanislavsky, saw himself as a director, first and foremost. Meyerhold was the stage director of the Aleksandrinsky from 1908 to 1917. His was an unlikely appointment given the theatre’s strong links with the aristocratic elite, although, in fact, its liberal managing director had brought him in to breathe new life into this Tsarist institution. It was during his Aleksandrinsky period that, under the alias of Doctor Dapertutto, Meyerhold started the theatre-studios where he trained actors, a practice he was to continue after his return to Moscow. Many of his students were to become brilliant performers in his companies; and this actor training was also fundamental to his work as a director, since it provided him and his team with a common artistic understanding.

The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing: The rise of the modern director

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, theatrical conditions fostered the emergence of the modern director. Already foreshadowed by the Intendant system, established in Germany almost exactly a hundred years earlier, the earliest came out of that system: Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen (1826–1914). He was followed by a group of near contemporaries: Andre Antoine (1858–1943), working with Zola (1840–1902), Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938), Adolphe Appia (1862–1928) and Gordon Craig (1872–1966). The first who qualify as modern directors, they created and represent the major lines of stylistic development at the beginning of the twentieth century. Each contributes different elements; but as we shall see, all share certain standards in dealing with dramatic material as well as common approaches to staging, and each combines theatre practice and theory: either developing theory from the work, or basing work on theory. Two – Antoine and Stanislavsky – continued to act major parts in the plays they directed, while Craig gave up an acting career specifically to reform the stage. One other influence needs to be noted: as a composer, Richard Wagner (1813–1883) conducted his own operas, and, in adding the function of commissioning settings and costumes as well as orchestrating the singers’ moves, offered a model of the theatrical auteur that was to be picked up by Appia and Craig, working on principles of design. The Meiningen Players and the conditions for naturalism As the owner of his own court theatre, and taking over the position of Intendant himself, the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen had complete freedom to experiment. In contrast to the English-speaking theatre’s focus on stars, in the form of the actor-manager, the Intendant system encouraged ensemble acting. And unity of expression on the stage, as well as ensemble work, was epitomized by his Meiningen Players.

Directors of ensemble theatre

The directors who feature in this chapter have the goal of ensemble theatre, as first envisaged by Stanislavsky, even if all follow their own path to advance the possibilities of directing. This influence has been world-wide. Some, like Harley Granville Barker in Britain in the 1910s, furthered Stanislavsky’s principles, not least the principle of ensemble acting, without fully realizing them. Joan Littlewood too promoted ensemble practices in the Theatre Workshop (thus renamed in 1945), drawing on the examples of both Stanislavsky and Brecht that led to productions such as her seminal Oh What a Lovely War in 1963; and Peter Hall was inspired by the idea of a creative ensemble when he founded the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1961. Then, too, there are directors who, like Elia Kazan in the United States, have come out of Method Acting, Lee Strasberg’s particular take on Stanislavsky’s ‘system’. However, ensemble theatre has a particularly firm tradition in Eastern Europe that has continued unbroken to the present in, for instance, the meticulously crafted productions of Krystian Lupa in Poland, where Stanislavsky’s legacy as regards ensemble work came via Juliusz Osterwa. Osterwa had come into contact with the Moscow Art Theatre when, in the mid 1910s, he directed in Moscow. The younger generation of Polish directors exemplified by Krzysztof Warlikowski and Grzegorz Jarzyna, both of whom were assistant directors to Lupa before taking off on independent careers, rely on finely tuned ensemble playing for the impact of their productions.