As Soviet society settled into a more dogmatic and defensive period after 1921 and particularly after 1928, the unrestrained release of emotion sparked by the mass spectacles, the critical satire of the Blue Blouses, and the highly imaginative and often idiosyncratic experimental work of the directors came increasingly to be seen as dangerous to the state. In direct opposition to the direction in which 20th-century art was moving—i.e., away from representation toward abstraction—the Soviet aesthetics branded any tendency toward abstraction as Formalist and established Socialist Realism, which was in effect a reduction of the older forms of Naturalism and psychological realism, as the official mode. Developments in France
At the turn of the century, the preeminence of Paris as the centre of avant-garde theatre had declined and the lead had passed to Berlin and later Moscow. The revival in the French theatre produced a theory diametrically opposed to that of Meyerhold and Tairov. Jacques Copeau founded the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in 1913, arguing that the director’s job was to translate faithfully a play into a “poetry of the theatre.” Believing the actor to be the only important element in a production, he advocated the return to a bare stage. In the Vieux-Colombier he removed the proscenium arch to create a raised open platform. At the rear of the stage he placed an alcove with a balcony, a structure similar to that of the Elizabethan theatre. In a succession of productions and with great ingenuity this permanent setting could be transformed with minor alterations and adaptations to suit a whole season of varied plays.
Copeau’s reasoning was based on an assessment that the modern theatre had initiated a mass of new staging techniques but had singularly failed to find the new dramatists to maintain the literary standard of the theatre. He founded his theatre in hopes of attracting those new dramatists. This effort largely failed, and Copeau’s contribution to the history of the theatre consists almost entirely in his approach to staging. The restriction of scenic means on the bare stage placed great stress upon the actor’s ability to play in a variety of styles. In the school attached to the theatre, Copeau pursued a program of actor training very much in line with that of Meyerhold, encompassing exercises drawn from commedia dell’arte, folk theatre, masked theatre, Oriental theatre, and Dalcroze eurythmics. His actors trained with the Fratellini family, the great Italian family of circus clowns and acrobats. Copeau’s aim was to equip his actors with a wide cultural understanding and a full range of physical and vocal skills. Rehearsals were improvisational. The discipline and self-denial inherent in Copeau’s program provided an example for others to follow not only artistically and administratively but also morally. The line of influence from Copeau, his colleagues Charles Dullin and Louis Jouvet, and their students extends throughout the European theatre. The example of the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier can be followed through many of the leading postwar European theatres, such as Giorgio Strehler’s Piccolo Teatro of Milan and the Old Vic and the Royal Court theatres of London. Developments in the United States
The currents of innovative stagecraft eventually reached the United States. The first migration was represented by the Viennese Joseph Urban, who when he went to the Boston Opera before World War I took with him an entire atelier of draftsmen and scenic artists. Urban moved into musical comedy and eliminated the acreage of painted vistas and box sets that had been manufactured by the stock scenic studios.
The next change grew out of marginal experimental groups, such as the Provincetown Playhouse on Cape Cod in Massachusetts and the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, which fostered designers such as Robert Edmond Jones, Cleon Throckmorton, and Aline Bernstein. By the middle 1920s, their simple, tasteful romanticism had invaded Broadway as the groups had become commercial and as the more artistic theatre managers extended commissions to the freelance designers. The industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes entered the growing ranks of theatre artists and devised grandiose projects and engineering marvels. With the impetus provided by ecstatic reports from Europe on the work of Reinhardt, Copeau, Meyerhold, and Tairov, American directors such as Arthur Hopkins and Philip Moeller attempted to synthesize the elements of production into a persuasive whole. The imaginative poetry of Robert Edmond Jones was balanced by the sensible craftsmanship of Lee Simonson for the Theatre Guild. Simonson as the exponent of “selective realism” was more attuned to the practicalities of the earthbound psychological problems that provided the staple fare of Broadway’s “serious” drama.
By the 1930s, scenery consisted of solid carpentry and tasteful furnishings that were tailored to the mood, atmosphere, and mechanical requirements of the individual play. The Urban style in musical comedy design was replaced by that of Albert Johnson—a style characterized by loose colour and calligraphic line that went well with the sharp revues that prevailed until World War II. In staging musicals, a peculiar division persisted between the direction of the plot and comedy segments and that of the production numbers—the sumptuous song-and-dance displays under the separate supervision of a “stager” who was noted for his taste. Director-producer George Abbott surmounted this artificial departmentalization in an important step forward in the development of the rhythmic, lively musical show that became America’s contribution to world theatre.
The importation of Blue Blouse techniques, through direct exposure to German groups or through political theatre groups formed by ethnic immigrants, led to one sensational development in the United States. The Living Newspaper had been a relatively crude form of propaganda elsewhere. Under the Federal Theatre Project (1935) several Living Newspapers were produced, of which Triple-A Ploughed Under (1936) and One Third of a Nation (1938) are probably the best known examples. These productions were articulate documentaries of great sophistication. So impressive were they that the model was reexported into Europe as the basis for many documentary theatre productions. Another refinement of these techniques married to the skill of Broadway-experienced professionals produced the political revue Pins and Needles (1937), which was put on to aid a strike and which ran on Broadway for 1,108 performances. The influence of Brecht
By 1936 a wide range of experimentation and innovation had established the parameters of the contemporary theatre. The training of actors in the Western theatre has since become more organized to take in concepts and programs from the earlier innovators. There are few schools today that do not acknowledge the work of Stanislavsky in their training. Less obvious but equally pervasive is the influence of Reinhardt and Copeau, largely by way of their pupils in teaching. And towering above all others (save perhaps Stanislavsky) is the figure of Brecht. It is reasonable to argue that Brecht absorbed, and in turn perpetuated, more influences than any other individual in the modern theatre.
Of central importance in establishing this argument is Brecht’s essay “On Experimental Theatre” (1940), in which he reviews the work of Vakhtangov, Meyerhold, Antoine, Reinhardt, Okhlopkov, Stanislavsky, Jessner, and other Expressionists. Brecht traces through the modern theatre the two lines running from Naturalism and Expressionism. Naturalism he sees as the “assimilation of art to science,” which gave the Naturalistic theatre great social influence, but at the expense of its capacity to arouse aesthetic pleasure. Expressionism (and by implication the other anti-illusionist theatres), he acknowledges, “vastly enriched the theatre’s means of expression and brought aesthetic gains that still remain to be exploited.” But it proved incapable of shedding any light on the world as an object of human activity, and the theatre’s educational value collapsed. Brecht recognized the great achievements of Piscator’s work, in which he himself played a significant role, but proposed a further advance in the development of so-called epic theatre.