Russia also followed the pattern of the independent theatre movement that developed in France, Germany, and England (see below Developments in Russia and the Soviet Union). Reactions to Naturalism
The Théâtre-Libre had scarcely been established when the reaction against Naturalism got under way. Symbolism developed out of a total opposition to the philosophy that lay behind Naturalism. It sought an intuitive and spiritual form of knowledge, regarded by its proponents as higher than that which science could provide. If Naturalism attacked the materialist values of society from a critical and reformist standpoint, Symbolism rejected them altogether. In their manifesto of 1886 the Symbolists suggested that subjectivity, spirituality, and mysterious internal forces represented a higher form of truth than the objective observation of appearances. The Belgian Maurice Maeterlinck, the most successful Symbolist playwright, gave as his opinion that an old man sitting at his table, surrounded by silence, was more dramatic and true-to-life than the lover who strangles his mistress in a tirade of jealousy. The Symbolists drew for example and inspiration on Wagner and on the later plays of Ibsen. They were influenced by the poets Mallarmé and Baudelaire, and the latter’s poem Correspondences, which finds comparative values in colours and musical notes, is often seen as the first manifesto of the movement. The expressive paintings of Gauguin were also influential.
The first of the Symbolist theatres was the Théâtre d’Art started by the French poet Paul Fort in 1890. Fort was principally concerned with the power of the poetic text but nevertheless made some ingenious contributions to staging. In his production of the Frenchman Pierre Quillard’s play The Girl with the Cut-off Hands (1891), the actors intoned their lines behind a gauze curtain, backed by a gold cloth framed with red hangings. In front of the gauze, a girl in a long blue tunic repeated the actors’ lines and commented on their feelings. This is the first instance in which the setting of a play derives entirely from the ideas of the director and the designer rather than from tradition or from direct evidence in the text of the play itself. The setting for The Girl with the Cut-off Hands is a visual image, suggested by the play but not dictated by it. It is a poetic vision and does not place the play in a specific context.
In 1893, Aurélien Lugné-Poë founded the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre. Guided by the belief that the spoken word creates the scenery, Lugné-Poë attempted unity of style instead of illusion of place and employed such painters as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Maurice Denis, Odilon Redon, Édouard Vuillard, and Pierre Bonnard. Lugné-Poë’s production of Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas and Mélisande typified his technique—no furniture or props were used; the stage was lit from overhead, most of the time to a level of semidarkness;a gauze curtain created the illusion of mist; and backdrops painted in gray tones conveyed a general air of mystery. The one production of the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre that has had the greatest historical significance was not seen as anything more than a scandalous, schoolboy joke in its own time. Alfred Jarry’s Ubu roi (“King Ubu”) was produced in 1896, with nonrealistic settings and costumes. All the scene settings were displayed simultaneously on a backdrop, and the costumes and makeup were deliberately grotesque, as was the acting style, an amalgam of buffoonery, the horror of Grand Guignol, and extravagant mock-tragedy.
Far from posing an alternative to the materialist values of the bourgeois audience, the first line of Ubu roi attacked the audience’s values head on. When Firmin Gémier, in the title role, advanced to face the audience, looked directly into their eyes, and uttered the first scandalous word of the text, “merdre” (“excrement”), a pattern was set that has been followed by many avant-garde theatre companies throughout the 20th century. The dialectics of conflict had shifted from being contained within the stage area to being opened between the stage and the auditorium. If an attack on the audience were to be mounted effectively, however, the separation of stage and auditorium had to be diminished. Various attempts were subsequently made either to contain stage and auditorium in a single unified spatial area or to adapt existing spaces in order to break through the barrier imposed by the proscenium arch. The influence of Appia and Craig
The two most important theoreticians and designers of the non-illusionist movement were the Swiss Adolphe Appia and the Englishman Edward Gordon Craig. Appia began with the assumption posited by Wagner that the fundamental goal of a theatrical production was artistic unity. Appia felt, however, that the incongruity of placing three-dimensional actors in front of two-dimensional settings, which many of the stage reformers rejected, was intensified by the mythic, symbolic nature of the Wagner operas. He concluded that there were three conflicting elements in production—the moving three-dimensional actor, the stationary vertical scenery, and the horizontal floor. He categorized stage lighting under three headings: a general or acting light, which gave diffused illumination; formative light, which cast shadows; and imitated lighting effects painted on the scenery. He saw the illusionist theatre as employing only the first and last of these types. Appia proposed replacing illusory scene painting with three-dimensional structures that could be altered in appearance by varying the colour, intensity, and direction of lighting. The solid structures, according to Appia, would serve to create a bond between the horizontal floor and the vertical scenery and enhance the actor’s movements, which were rhythmically controlled by the music of the score. The lights, too, would change in response to the musical score, thus reflecting or eliciting changes in emotion, mood, and action. In creating a scene, Appia conceived of light as visual music with an equal range of expression and intensity.
Appia elaborated his theory through a series of proposed designs and mise-en-scènes (complete production plans) for Wagner’s operas. He was brutally rebuffed by Wagner’s widow, who considered his projects the work of a madman. Intensely shy, he created only a few designs and realized even fewer productions. His influence spread largely through his three books on staging and lighting design published from 1899 onward, one exemplary performance in a private theatre in Paris in 1905, and his collaboration with Émile Jaques-Dalcroze. Jaques-Dalcroze was a fellow Swiss who developed, and published in 1906, a system of physical exercises that he called eurythmics, intended to inculcate in the student a sense of rhythm and control over it. The exercises made liberal use of space and grew into an expressive dance movement. For Appia, eurythmics became a part of his integrated system of production. In 1912, at Hellerau on the outskirts of Dresden, as part of one of the first garden city developments in Europe, a large hall was built to the design of Appia and Jaques-Dalcroze. Stage and auditorium were united as a single rectangular hall without proscenium or separate lighting. The walls and ceiling were hung with translucent silk through which beams of light filtered. The lighting equipment comprised 10,000 lamps, all controlled by a gigantic console capable of fine gradations of intensity. Appia designed an abstract scenic architecture of platforms and steps that could be arranged in a variety of combinations. Every trace of illusionistic scenery was dispensed with, and the setting served only as a structural foundation for the rhythmic, gymnastic movements of the players. The few performances, which were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I, were attended by many of the leading innovative directors in Europe at that time.