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A Descriptive Study Of Form And Purpose In The Surrealist Stage-Setting

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A Descriptive Study Of Form And Purpose In The Surrealist Stage-Setting

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Content This dissertation has been 65-6900
microfilmed exactly as received
CARNES, Edwin Hammond, 1925-
A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF FORM AND PURPOSE
IN THE SURREALIST ST AGE-SETTING.
University of Southern California, Ph. D ., 1965
Speech- Theater
University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan
A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OP FORM AND PURPOSE
IN THE SURREALIST STAGE-SETTING
by
Edwin Hammond Carnes
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
{Communication)
January 1 9 6 5
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 8 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
........... Edwin.H.Carnes..................
under the direction of kL?....Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements
for the degree of
D O C T O R OF P H I L O S O P H Y
.......
Dtan
Date ..............
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
..........................
TABLE OP CONTENTS
Page
LIST OF FIGURES............................ lv
Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION ...................... 1
The Problem
Definition of Terms
Review of the Literature
Preview of Remaining Chapters
II. GENERAL PURPOSES OF STAGE-SETTING . . 28
Isolation of the Dramatic Act
Provision of Space for the Actor
Visual Accompaniment to the Drama
Decoration
III. PURPOSE OF THE SURREALIST STAGE-
SETTING .......................... 58
The Search for Inner Vision
Destruction of Accepted Patterns
Surprise and Shock
Decoration
IV. GENERAL FORM IN SURREALIST
STAGE-SETTING .................... 92
Neo-romantic Painting
Automatic Production
Object Displacement
Dream and Fantasy
Symbolism
Representation
V. UNREAL REALISM.................... 129
Four Transformations of Reality
Props and Objects
Backdrops
Complete Setting
li
Chapter Page
VI. ABSTRACTION . . . . ................ 168
Linear Style
Shapes
Amorphous Shapes and Colors
Dada
VII. USES OF SURREALISM IN STAGE-
SETTING .......................... 199
Avant-garde Plays and Productions
Unreal Plays
Dream Plays
Poetic Plays and Ballet
Children's Plays
Plays Stressing Character or
Environmental Symbolism
VIII. SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, SUGGESTIONS
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH ............ 245
Summary
Conclusions
Suggestions for Further Research
A Summation
BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................. 260
ill
LIST OP FIGURES
Figure Page
1. Eugene Berman: Design for Romeo and Juliet 96
2. Andrl Masson: Battle of Fishes .......... 100
3. Hans Bellmer: Doll . .................... 103
4. Jean Cocteau: Design for The Blood of the
P o e t .................................. 105
5. Filippo Lippi: Madonna and Child .... 114
6. Max Ernst: The Virgin Spanking the Infant
Jesus.................................. 115
7 . Perugino: Crucifixion ............ 118
8 . George Grosz: Christ Wearing a Gas Mask . 119
9 . James Ensor: Christ In Agony ............ 120
10. Salvador Dali: Crucifixion .............. 123
11. Leonor Fini: The Shepherdess of Sphinxes . 130
12. Characters from 17th Century Commedia
dell1 A r t e ........... 132
13. James Ensor: Masks Confronting Death . . . 133
14. Salvador Dali: Design for Don Juan Zorllla 135
15. Yves Tanguy: Multiplication of Arcs . • • 136
16. Kurt Seligmann: Design for The Four
Temperaments .......... ........ 139
17. Wolfgang Paalen: Landfall .............. 142
18. Design from The M a s k .................... 145
19. Jean Cocteau: Harp from The Blood of the
P o e t .................................. 146
iv
Figure Page
20. Edwin Carnes: Throne for King Lear . . • 148
21. Edwin Carnes: Heath Scene for King Lear. 149
22. Edwin Carnes: Detail from a tomb for
Romeo and Juliet.................... 151
23. Musicians for the tomb of Romeo and
Juliet......................... 152
24. Figure in Birdcage............... 153
2 5. Salvador Dali: Design for Bacchanal . • 156
26. Pavel Tchelitchev: Design for Apollo . . 158
2 7. Alberto Savinio: Design for Oedipus . . 160
28. Salvatore Flume: Design for Medea . . . l6l
2 9. Joan-David de Bethel: Design for
The Balcony..................... 1 6 3
30. Jean-Pierre Ponnelle: Design for
King Stag....................... 1 6 5
31. Rudolph Heinrich: Design for Tales of
Hoffmann................. 166
32. Paul Klee: Twittering Machine ........ 171
33. Ben Shahn: Design for N.Y. Export, op.
J a z z ........................... 173
34. Frank Kischke: Design for Korczak und
die Kinder..................... 174
35. Wllfredo Lam: The Jungle......... 176
3 6. Dan Snyder: Design for Les Deux Errants. 177
3 7. Jackson Pollock: Detail from One 1950 . 179
3 8. Joan Mir6: Woman With a Newspaper . . . l8l
39. Joan Mir6: Design for Children's Games . 1 8 3
v
Figure Page
40. L. Jankowska and A. Tosta: Design for
The Servant of Two Masters.... 184
41. Joan Mir6: Catalan Landscape ...... 186
42. Hein Heckroth: Design for The Tempest . . 1 8 7
43. Matta: Le Vertige d'Eros...... 1 8 9
44. Edwin Carnes: Design for The Sandbox . . 214
45. Edwin Carnes: Design for Hop Signori . . 223
46. Edwin Carnes: Design for Euridlce .... 224
4 7. Edwin Carnes: Design for Prometheus
B o u n d ........................ 226
48. Edwin Carnes: Design for A Dream Play . . 228
49. Edwin Carnes: Design for The Haunted
Palace........................ 2 3 8
50. Edwin Carnes: Design for The Blue Bush . 241
vi
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Stage-eetting is the place of the play. In its
simplest form It is no more than a piece of ground upon
which an actor stands; its complexity may grow to encom
pass whatever a designer can imagine and still present in
the theatrical space. A setting may be dynamic or pas
sive, either entering into the action or serving as neu
tral background; it may be obvious or unnoticed. The
range is as wide as the range of drama it serves. There
is no universal formula which converts the product of word
and action into a single, plottable arrangement of space
and scenery, no set of rules. Design, however, is not com
pletely arbitrary but is dependent upon the purposes which
it is intended to serve. Form then follows to illustrate
purpose. There remains the question of theatrical useful
ness, since scene design must be Judged by what it contrib
utes to the theatre. This study is a designer's attempt
to relate the purpose and form of Surrealism to its use
in stage-setting.
1
2
The Problem
Statement of the Problem
The purpose of this dissertation was to analyze
the reasons for using a particular style of stage-setting—
Surrealism— and to describe the manner by which Surrealism
may be Incorporated into the stage-setting. The intent
was to show that the techniques of Surrealism can be of
value In giving visual expression to ideas already Inherent
in a play or other scenario for production.
The following questions were asked:
1. What is Surrealism? Since there is no single
standard in the manner of visual representation, some ex
planation is necessary for an understanding of purpose and
form.
2. What are the general purposes of stage-
setting? A consideration of the basic reasons for the ex
istence of stage-setting offers an introduction to the
specific purposes of a particular style of setting.
3. What are the purposes of the surrealist set
ting? Why is Surrealism used? What does it contribute?
4. What is the form of the surrealist setting?
How is Surrealism represented? How may the techniques be
utilized for non-surrealist playB?
5. In what situations is Surrealism a valid
design style?
3
Importance of the Study
As far as can be determined, there la no compre
hensive study of Surrealism In the theatre. There is even
less written about Surrealism In scenic design. The gap
In knowledge exists; the question Is whether Surrealism Is
of enough importance to justify a study.
Negative views can readily be found. Alexander
Domer, a partisan of modem realism, expressed the belief
that Surrealism is dying:
We cannot close our eyes to the fact that the whole
surrealist movement is rapidly becoming obsolete.
We remember well enough that it acted as a liberat
ing force In the 1920's, but what was true and
liberating Is today no longer so. . .
James Thrall Soby also recognized the decline of Surreal
ism: "Surrealism appears to be dying out as a formal
movement In this country.1 1 But he added: "its rejuvena
tion of art's Imaginative faculties remains a major and
o
pervasive contribution." Surrealism as a formal movement
is dying, just as other historical movements have done be
fore, even the greatest of them; but Its effects linger,
its ideas and techniques, and it Is these which can still
claim a place for the artist of today. Just as the
theatre can make use of the examples of Rembrandt,
^Alexander Domer, The Way Beyond 'Art' (New York;
Wlttenbom, Schultz, 19^9)* P« 99*
2James Thrall Soby, Contemporary Painters (New
York: Museum of Modem Art, 1940J, p. 79*
El Oreoo, Turner, Renoir, and other Innovators, so, too,
can It make use of the examples of the Surrealists. It Is
not so much Breton, Dali, and the others who are of im-
portance, but what they have given to the store of Ideas
from which the scenic designer may draw. There Is no
future without the past, for every action must have a foun
dation. The foundation--the Surrealist legacy— is the
vital contribution. Man Ray, long associated with Surreal
ism and Dada, observed that, "despite the reiterated an
nouncements that Surrealism w b b dead," SurreallBm "was
entering Its final phase— the public d o m a i n . The public
domain has always been a fertile field for the theatre's
creators to explore.
Surrealism, for all its supposed disappearance
from the contemporary scene, still lingers. A review of
New York art exhibits of 1964 speaks of "James Rosen-
quist's billboard brand of quasi-Pop-Surrealism"^ and "In
the good-natured Disneyland of Ferro, one may see, however,
the work of a true Pop-Surrealist. it is still present
in the contemporary theatre, especially in the Theatre of
^Man Ray, Self Portrait (Boston: Little, Brown
and Company, 19o3)# p. 392.
4
Edward Kelly, "A Review of Neo-Dada," Art Voices,
III (April-May, 1964), 14.
5Ibld., p. 13.
5
the Absurd, which is sometimes considered as a sort of
pessimistic Surrealism, as well as in ballet, and, of
course, In a variety of what may be called avant-garde.
An editorial In an art magazine begins:
A new craze has hit the art world. Art lovers
everywhere are participating In "Happenings," an
art form related to the theatre, especially the
modem"theatre in the round" . .
One of the leading exponents of this kind of art-theatre,
A1 Hansen, was quoted in the same article:
Many of us, such as Kaprow, Vostell and Whitman,
consider "Happenings" an art form, a painter's
theater.
I feel that my own Involvement with "Happenings"
stems from the work of Kurt Schwitters, who began
the art form, "Environments," in the early 1900's
e e e •
Kurt Schwitters was one of the first Dadaists, and his
ideas of theatre were part of the Surrealist program. The
Ideas seem to have been strong enough to bridge the gap of
five decades. The "Happening" is a very minor part of
contemporary theatre, but it is an indication that even
the most extreme theories of production have not completely
vanished.
Wendell Cole, in a survey of the European theatre,
remarked on the Influence of Surrealism:
In numerous recent settings this Influence of
surrealism ... is the most notable development
^Gordon Brown, "The Happenings: A New Art Form,"
"Oallery Stroll," Art Voices. Ill (June, 1964), 3*
7Ibid., p. 5.
in European aoene design during the past decade.
It is in striking contrast to_the ideals and
practice of twenty years ago.**
The surrealist influence continues, perhaps because of a
wish, or even a need, to bring a new sense of life to the
theatre, to break through traditional boundaries, to reveal
man to himself, not merely in the guise he presents to the
outer world, but as he is in the self hidden deep within.
Surrealism attempts to make visible the invisible and so
create a fantasy world within the one already known, to
make everything possible, to forbid nothing. The attempt
is generally a futile one, because few men willingly expose
their secret thoughts, even to themselves; and so the ef
fort is often doomed before It begins. Yet the effort is
made, and that is why Surrealism is Important.
Much of what has been said so far seems to be nega
tive, and certainly no brief for the establishment of Sur
realism in the galaxy of Realism, Romanticism, and the
other isms possessed of general critical acceptance. As a
unified force it has practically disappeared. It seldom
succeeds in accomplishing what it sets out to do. A third
objection may be raised to the obscurity and Contradictions
of its theory and to the puzzle which its painting pre
sents. It is admittedly a sport in the garden of culti
vated art. Still, it cannot easily be dismissed by the
Q
Wendell Cole, "Current Trends in European Scene
Design," Educational Theatre Journal. V (March, 1953), 2 9.
designer who wishes to assert the primacy of the imagina
tive over the routine. Surrealism is applied imagination,
and that is its reason for inclusion in the repertory of
the designer. The designers of the early part of this cen
tury attempted to proclaim a new image for the theatre, to
free it from what they considered the bondage of realism.
Realism is still the major force in theatre today, but de
signers continue to protest against it. Insistence on
faithfulness to ordinary experience has tended to reduce
much modem scenery to catalog-illustrations of living
rooms or bedrooms and the play to a version of what might
happen if the people next door left their television sets
long enough to make speeches. The designer, if he has a
play which is more than disguised soap opera, often
searches for a form other than realism. Surrealism is one
form to which he may profitably turn.
Surrealism is also Important In provoking the mind
of the designer to consider the value of his own personal
imagery. Herbert Read, a distinguished English critic,
wrote:
It is justifiable to consider surrealism as a
phenomenon of great importance in the history of
modem art, but its importance was precisely that
It encouraged the diversity and upheld the validity
of all individual attempts to explore the frontiers
of consciousness.9
^Herbert Read, Icon and Idea (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1955)> PP• 110-l£.
Bernard Myers*, who was not a partisan of Surrealism, also
stressed the possible value of this part of Surrealism:
• * • this extremely personalised and individualistic
form of expression has opened the way toward an In
vestigation of the vast unexplored realm of the sub
conscious, a worthy and exciting task that still
remains to be carried out*10
Surrealism can encourage the designer to explore the vari
ety of ways In which a setting may be designed, reminding
him that scenery can be something more than a reference-
book room brought onto the stage. Max Reinhardt reminds
the designer:
There is no one form of theatre which is the only
true artistic form. Let good aotors today play in
a barn or in a theatre, tomorrow at an inn or inside
a church, or, in the Devil's name, even on an
expressionlstlc stage: if the place corresponds with
the play, something wonderful will be the outcome.
All depends on realizing the speolfic atmosphere of
the play, and on making the play live. • • •11
Designer and playwright together reach for that "something
wonderful," with design and play complementing each other
and serving both actor and audience. Certainly surrealist
design will not'be appropriate for every play, and no such
claim is made, but it has value for the designer whose in
terests lie in something more than copies of what is all
about man every day, and it has value for the audience
10Bermard S. Myers, Modern Art In the Making (2nd.
ed., New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1959), P* 379.
^Max Reinhardt, "On the Living Theatre," Max Rein
hardt and His Theatre, ed. Oliver Saylor (New York:
Brentano's, 1926), p. 64.
willing to allow its imagination wo work.
Although Surrealism as visualized by its founders
in the 1920's has almost vanished, its influences remain:
The influence of Surrealist thought is as yet at
only an early stage and time will develop its in*
tentlons, with certain indispensable amendments.
An inevitable necessity has made Surrealism, at
last freed of the aggressive challenges that any
revolution Involves, a discovery that cannot be
passed over, and one that will influence decisively
the future development of art.12
It is in this Influence whioh provides the theme of the
dissertation. What can Surrealism do for the theatre?
That is what is important.
Surrealism offers no panacea for the ills of the
theatre, nor will it magically lead to a comfortable
theory of design, but when used selectively it may serve
to stir the emotions of designer and audience alike. This
study Is an attempt to show some of the possibilities of
Surrealism as a source for the designer.
Delimitations of the Study
At the outset It should be made clear that the
subject of this dissertation is not Surrealism, but
surrealistic stage**setting; that is, not the art movement,
but its ideas and techniques as they may be applied to
the theatre. The history, politics, and criticism of
12
Carlton Lake and Robert Malliard (eds.),
A Dictionary of Modem Painting (London: Methuen and
Company, T^tf), p. 2d4.------
10
Surreallam as a definite stylistic category are considered
only Incidentally as they may have application to the
theatrloal adaptation of the surrealist Idiom. When dis
cussing the background and theory of Surrealism It Is with
the idea of choosing that material which seems to be of
Importance to the problem of scene design.
Since the study Is analytical and descriptive, the
history of the surrealist setting and Its present status
are considered only as background and for illustrative
material, but the emphasis is in analysis of purpose and
In the description of visual representation.
There Is no particular attempt to compare the
surrealist setting with that of any other style. However,
some comparisons will be found, but only to demonstrate
points pertaining to the surrealist form and purpose.
Some of the illustrations are theatrical designs;
others are paintings and photographs of surrealist
objects. The illustrations picture those points which the
text attempts to make and should not be considered as a
representative selection of surrealist designs or paint
ings. When suitable Illustrations could not be found
the author provided his own.
Definition of Terms
Purpose.— The reason for the existence of a stage-
setting Is Its purpose. Why Is it there? Why are its
11
visual characteristics expressed In one manner rather than
another? The why la purpose* Purpose thus contains the
double meaning of baslo function and reason for use In a
particular way*
Form*— The term form Is used to mean the manner of
representation, as determined by content and technique, and
the physical appearance of the setting which results*
Some of the standard classifications of form are not In
cluded In the term as used in the study, since they have
little bearing on the particular problem, being applicable
to the fixed painting and not to the ever-ohanglng stage
picture In which the setting Is part of the composition
completed by the actors and varied by the lighting. Among
meanings omitted are: rhythm, structure, composition, and
other designations of formal principles of design. Form
here Is concerned with the pictorial representation of the
artist's materials.
Surrealist .— To begin with, surrealist is the ad
jective which describes Surrealism. Surrealism Is a word
of many meanings. It is the designation of a particular
art movement, begun In France in the 1920's, but It is
also what Surrealist Paul Eluard oalled "a state of
mind.”13
Paul Eluard, "Poetic Evidence," Surrealism, ed
Herbert Read (London: Faber and Faber, 193M, P» 17^.
12
A Dutch critic said much the semes
So from the very beginning Surrealism appears not
as a trend of painting but as a human way of deal
ing with reality, a.form of awareness of reality
and oneself. . . .14
The Surrealist Julian Levy further personalised the defin
ition with the statements
Surrealism Is not a rational, dogmatic, and con
sequently static theory of art— nenoe for the sur
ra all at point of view,there can be no accurate
definition or explanation. The point of view Is
essentially antl-deflnltlve and anti-explanatory•
The surrealist object precedes definition, appears
suddenly, alive and replete with suggestion for
those who are predisposed to understand, as the
solution of a complex problem suddenly reveals
itself to those who have been concerned with that
problem.
f
urreallsm Is a point of view, and as suoh
es to painting, literature, photography, cinema,
politica. architecture, play ana behavior. . . .15
Certain characteristics emerge from the surrealist point of
view, however. Among them la the concentration on the
artist's own unconscious store of imagery. At the begin
ning of Surrealism there was Andr6 Breton's Insistence on
automatic production as the basis of surrealist art and
literature; that is, the painting or poem is the result of
setting down whatever proceeds from uncontrolled movement
or thought. In accord with this part of the surrealist
method, the German art historian Werner Haftmann called
li*H. C. L. Jaffe, Twentieth-Century Painting, trans.
Margaret Shenfleld (New York: viking Press, 19637* p. 19.
15
Jullen Levy, Surrealism (New York: Blaok Sun
Press, 1936), pp. 3-4.
13
Surrealism: "nothing other than a technique for the artis
tic exploration of the unconscious . • .n1^ Another
oritio spoke in somewhat the same terms: "Surrealism • • •
is first of all discovery, the openlng-up of new material
worlds, the search for the unconscious• The search for
the material of the unconscious is perhaps the main idea of
Surrealism, and a definition should contain this point.
The visible part of Surrealism— the result of the
artist's exploration of his unoonsolous—-takes many forms,
so many that no general characteristics apply to them all,
with the exception of what painter-orltio Frederlo Taubes
18
calls the "preoccupation with the improbable." Some of
the surrealist paintings are abstract, others are realis
tic, but the improbable element-is always present. What
ever form they take, they are seemingly either glorified
doodles or meticulously-painted pictures of what appear to
be dreams or personal fantasies. They are, in accord with
the surrealist point of view, personal expressions of the
artist as he views the world contained within himself and
not that which he sees with his eyes.
16
Werner Haftmann, Painting in the Twentieth Century,
trans. Ralph Manhelm (New Vork: Frederick A. Praeger,
I960), II, p. 19.
^Alfred Sohmeller, Surrealism, trans. Hllde Spiel
(London: Methuen and Company, 195b}# P* 9*
18
Frederlo Taubes. Abracadabra and Modern Art (New
York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 19&3), p• 9b•
14
For the purposes of this dissertation the follow
ing definitions of Surrealism will serve:
1. An art movement of the 1920*a, characterized
by a quest for the marvellous and all that lies beyond the
surfaoe of ordinary existence.
2. A method for the exploration of the artist's
unconscious, by spontaneous production and chance, and by
visualization of fantasy and dream.
3* The visible content and techniques which
represent the search for the materials of the unconscious.
Surrealist refers to all three definitions, but,
for the most part, in this study, the third definition Is
ordinarily the controlling one, since the stage-setting Is
the visual representation of the surrealist idea through
the content and technique which the painter must use.
Surrealist Is the descriptive adjective which Identifies
the visible result of the attempt at exploiting the mater
ials of the unconscious. The definition Is not exclusive,
since the other meanings are contained within It, but
generally it Is the one which applies.
Stage-setting.— The simplest definition Is that
stage-setting Is the place where the action of a play
occurs. In the usual sense of the word, setting is the
specific looale of the play; that is, the room which the
playwright describes or implies, or whatever location Is
stated or Implied. The term has other meanings as well.
15
It Is the physical space In which the actors work; It is
the visualization of dramatic implications of the play and
the special ideas of the production; It Is the physical
and aesthetic object which envelopes the play on the stage.
All of these meanings appear in various parts of the Btudy.
However, as a general rule, the term simply means scenery.
Review of the Literature
Most of the material for this study came from the
field of art history and crltlolsm. Although Surrealism
has been the subject of numerous books and articles, only
a few paragraphs about Its use In the theatre could be
found. Such a lack Is to be expected, since surrealist
plays and designs are encountered only Infrequently.
Surrealism
Marcel Jean, himself a surrealist painter, wrote
The History of Surrealist P a i n t i n g , ^ a well-illustrated
study of the movement since its Inception. The first
part of the book, almost a quarter of It, is devoted to
the forerunners, and Its treatment of the Dadalsts Is as
thorough as that of any available history, other than the
Robert Motherwell book described later. The remainder
offers a view of the techniques of various artists Con
nected with the movement and provides a history of what
19
Maroel Jean, The History of Surrealist Painting.
trans. Simon Watson Taylor (Mew York: 6rove Press, i$t>o).
16
happened to the art and to the painters In the years from
about 1920 to 1958. As a general history and criticism
Jean's book Is of prime Importance.
One of the standard souroes for many years has been
on
Fantastic Art. Dada. and Surrealism. originally published
to accompany a 1936-37 exhibition at the Museum of Modern
Art. The book contains essays on the fantastic, Dada, and
Surrealism, as well as a chronology and a list of devices
and techniques. It Is especially valuable for Its hun
dreds of Illustrations of paintings, objects, and arch
itecture.
Surrealism.21 by Patrick Waldberg, Is bountifully
Illustrated In color. Much shorter than Jean's history,
It Is, nevertheless, a valuable guide to the movement and
to Its artists. Furthermore, It offers opinions which
remind the reader of the strange nature of Surrealism:
• • • how strong, sometimes indeed carried to the
point of madness, was the impulse of these pilgrims
of the impossible to transcend the human situation
and to sublimate art on to what seemed to them a
loftier, truer plane.22
21
Robert Motherwell's The Dada Painters and Poets J
20Alfred H. Barr, Jr. (ed.). Fantastic Art. Dada.
and Surrealism (New York: The Museum of1 Modem Art,
wrrr-----
21
Patrick Waldberg, Surrealism, trans. Stuart
Gilbert (Paris: Editions d^Art Albert Sklra, 1962).
22
Ibid., p. 132.
23Robert Motherwell (ed.), The Dada Painters and
Poets (New York: Wlttenborn, Schxiltz, lypi).
17
Is probably the definitive volume on Dada, the near-twin of
early Surrealism and Its colorful companion ever since.
The book Includes selections from manifestoes and other
documents of the founders and followers of the movement,
along with examples of the poetry. The book Is Illus
trated with numerous reproductions of paintings and
sculpture.
Another valuable hook on Dada Is that edited by
24
Willy Verkauf, titled simply Dada. Printed In both
German and English, It Is a collection of essays on the
art, history, literature, and psychology of Dada. The
book Is Illustrated with drawings and photographs. The
attitude of the book may be summed up In a paragraph by
the editor:
Dada was anything but a hoax; it was a turning
on the road opening up wide horizons to the modem
mind. It lasts, and will last as long as the spirit
of negation contains the ferment of the future.25
Like Motherwell's book, Verkauf's Dada is an expression
of the views of Dada's partisans.
Most general histories of art contain some dis
cussion of Surrealism. One of the most useful of these
is a work In two volumes by Werner Haftmann: Painting In
26
the Twentieth Century. While Haftmann ranges across the
2\rilly Verkauf (ed.), Dada (New York: George
Wlttenbom, n.d.).
25jbid.. p. 48.
2^Haftmann, op. clt.
18
entire spectrum of modem art, he provides as thorough
a study of Surrealism and Its predecessors as can be found
In many books devoted to Surrealism alone. Along with
history and description, he gives a suggestion of some of
the appeal of Surrealism: "A magical Other, which makes
man aware of a different, unique, dangerous, and hidden
reality."27 Haftmann makes his reader aware of the magic.
In addition to the exoellent text, the book contains an
extensive collection of illustrations.
Standing midway between the orientation toward the
28
painting of Surrealism and Its literature Is Surrealism,
by Yves Duplessls. Duplessls1 interest lay mainly in the
underlying struoture and appeal. "An excursion Into this
'forbidden zone,'" he wrote, "leads to a world Invested
with such great allure that the adventurer who ventures
into it no longer thinks of retracing his steps. Like
Waldberg, he was aware of the effect of the surrealist
search on artist and public alike, and his book attempts
to indicate some of the reasons for the "great allure."
Since the literature and painting of Surrealism
are closely connected, several sources concerned with the
literature were consulted. Among these was Marcel
27Ibid., II, p. 231.
28yVes Duplessls, Surrealism, trans. Paul Capon
(New York: Walker and Company, 1962)•
Raymond's Prom Baudelaire to S u r r e a l i s m .3° a standard
orltloal work on Pranoh Symbolist postry. Raymond explored
the writings of the poets to whom the Surrealists acknow
ledge a debt, especially Baudelaire and Rimbaud, as well as
to others who were sometimes surrealist in approach. About
the Surrealists he wrote:
The specific characteristic of the surrealists
is this, that they aspired to be kings of a nocturnal
kingdom, illumined by a strange aurora borealis, by
phosphoresoenses and phantasms emanating from un
fathomed regions. There is in them a deep nostalgia,
and a desperate regret at the impossibility of going
baok to the "source*1 where potentialities exist side
by side without excluding one another, to the chaos
preceding all determination, to the central, anony
mous, and infinite focus of the universe • • .31
Raymond's book is probably more valuable for its flavor of
the symbolist and surrealist attitude than for information
of direot application to the problem of the dissertation.
Prom Cubism to Surrealism in French Literature,32
by Georges Lemaitre, explores the trends which led from the
eighteenth-century break with classicism to the stirrings
of Existentialism in the 1940's. Lemaitre wrote:
. • • Surrealism is not, properly speaking, an
artistic or literary^school. Zt is primarily
a metaphysical attitude toward the whole of
human existence.33
3°Marcel Raymond, From Baudelaire to Surrealism
(New York: Wlttenbom, Schultz, 1950).
31Ibid., pp. 294-95.
32
Georges Lemaitre, From Cubism to Surrealism in
French Literature (Cambridge: riarvard University Press.
w i : --------------
33Ibld., p. 202.
20
In accord with the Idea of his statement, Lemaitre not only
discusses the literature of Surrealism hut also attempts to
explain some of the reasons for Its existence.
poets of the nineteenth century to the present Surrealists.
More In the popular vein Is Surrealism: The Road to the
Ideas of Surrealism as a literary medium. Like Lemaitre,
she points out the Idea of Surrealism as more of a philos
ophy than a definite literary style:
Before beoomlng an art, surrealism became a
philosophy and a way of life. • • • The purpose
of their existence and art, then, was to seek
both physical and metaphysical satisfaction by
pushing back the frontiers of logical reality
and revealing the Infinite possibilities within
the scope of the conorete world. . . . The
venture was an act of creation and an expression
of vertiginous freedom on the part of the artist.
The concept of artistic freedom Is one which appears
throughout any discussion of Surrealism.
Herbert Read gathered essays by Andr£ Breton,
Hugh Davies, Paul Eluard, Georges Hugnet, and himself Into
Anna Balakian wrote two books about Surrealism.
Qil
Literary Origins of Surrealism-* traces the path from the
Absolute
35
in which the concentration is on the major
^Anna Balakian, Literary Origins of Surrealism
(New York: King's Crown Press, 19477.
Anna Balakian, Surrealism: The Road To the
S^Anna Balakian, Literary Origins of
Absolute (New York: Noonday Press, 1959).
36
Ibid.. pp. 92-93.
VJ
Surrealism. ' This book contains some of the theory of
Surrealism as stated by men oonneoted with the movement.
David Oasooyne also colleoted selections from sev-
oQ
eral writers In A Short Survey of Surrealism.’ 3
QQ
New Directions In Prose and Poetry 1940 contains
almost two hundred pages of essays* poetry* and prose In
the surrealist Idiom. Herbert Muller and Kenneth Burke
contribute essays to counter some of the excesses of the
partisans. As a general collection the book offers a use
ful seleotlon of material to serve as a reminder of what
Surrealism Is all about.
Many of the leading painters have been the subjects
of books* and some have written books of their own. Among
these Is Salvador Dali* who proclaimed In his autobiog
raphy: "I was no longer master of my legend* and hence
forth surrealism was to be more and more Identified with
me."^ He Btands as the symbol of Surrealism to most of
the general public* and his book Is Interesting as a
picture of what the symbol Is In fact and fancy.
37pp. olt.
3®David Oasooyne* A Short Survey of Surrealism
(London: Cobden* Sanderson*
^New Directions in Prose and Poetry 1940 (Norfolk
Connecticut: New Directions7 19ko).
ko
Salvador Dali* The Secret Life of Salvador Dali.
tranB. Haakon Chevalier (tfew York: Dial Press* l£bl)*
P. 338.
22
On a different level le Max Smat'a Beyond Paint
ing,**1 in which the painter writes of himself and his art.
The book also contains reproductions of many of his paint
ings and collages. As a conclusion there are short essays
by several of his colleagues.
Hans Arp, one of the founders of Dadaism, is repre-
ho
Bented with On w? w«y» a collection of his writings and
poems, as well as examples of his painting and sculpture.
Paul Klee's theory of form is contained in a
lengthy book, which is basically a collection of hlB note-
ho
books. The book, Paul Klee: The Thinking Eye. - * is con
sidered to be an important technical contribution. In a
preface, Olullo Carlo Argan pointed out:
The writings which compose Paul Klee's theory of
form production and pictorial form have the same
importance and the same meaning for modern art as
had Leonardo's writings which composed.his theory
of painting for Renaissance art. • •
45
Man Ray's autobiography provides a look into
the life of a pioneer Dadaist and Surrealist, as he lived
it in New York and in Europe.
^Max Ernst, Beyond Painting (New York: Wlttenborn,
Schultz, 1948).
^2Hans Arp, On My Way (New York: Wlttenborn,
Schultz, 1948).
45
Paul Klee, Paul Klee: The Thinking Eye, ed.
Jttrg Splller (New Yoric: deorge Wittenbom7 19&1) •
44
Ibid., p. 11.
45
-'Ray, op. olt.
23
46
Julian Levy's Surrealism la partly a discussion
about tha meaning of Surrealism and his appraisal of var
ious Surrealists, partly a eolleotion of surrealist writing
and painting. Included are the scenario for the most fam
ous surrealist film, An Andalusian Dog: the scenario for
another Dall-Bunuel film, L'Aae D'Or: one for a film
project by Joseph Cornell; and a ballet story by Dali,
William Tell.
Surrealism In the Theatre
The idea for this study developed from Antonin
47
Artaud's The Theater and Its Double. For all of its ac
knowledged excesses, the book is an Important one. Aotor-
dlreotor Jean-Louis Barrault called It "far and away the
most important thing that has been written about the
48
theatre In the twentieth century," and critic Leonard
Pronko in his study of the contemporary avant-garde
described It as "a rich storehouse of suggestions, In
sights, hopes, and dreams, which will no doubt continue to
influence the theater in subtle ways for many years
46
Levy, op. olt.
^Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, trans.
Mary Caroline Roberts (New York: Drove Press,19$o).
hQ
^°Jean-Louis Barrault, Reflections On the Theatre,
trans. Barbara Wall (London: Rooklirr Publishing
Company, 1951), p. 49.
24
to come."^ Artaud waa a Surrealist, on® of th® madmen of
the mov®m®nt, and th® program whioh h® suggested is based
on an abrupt departure from the ordinary theatre and a
plunge Into the realm of dream, fantasy, and cruelty. As
violent as his theories seem, as distasteful as are some of
his Ideas, and as wrong as some are, the baslo Idea Is the
same as that advanced by more conservative revolutionaries:
If peojple are out of the habit of going to the
theater, If we have all finally come to think of
theater as an Inferior art • • • It is because
every possible Ingenuity has been exerted In bring
ing to life on the stage plausible but detached
beings, with the spectacle on one side, the public
on the other— and beoause the public Is no longer
shown anything but the mirror of itself.50
Artaud suggests his program for revitalizing the theatre.
It is an Interesting program for the designer.
Mordecal Gorelik, in the always-useful New
Theatres For Old.^ provides a brief, concentrated history
of Surrealism In the theater. His opinion of the style
Is that It Is "Romanticism pushed to the logical limit of
C O
unreason."^
Since the Theatre of the Absurd has much In common
JlQ
^Leonard Cabell Pronko, Avant-Garde: The Experi
mental Theater In Prance (Berkeley: University of
California Press, i9&2), p. 14.
so
Artaud, op. clt.. p. 76.
5^Mordeoai Gorelik, New Theatres Por Old (London:
Dennis Dobson, 1947).
52Ibld., p. 256.
25
with Surrealism, and is sometimes confused with It, studies
of this part of the contemporary drama are useful In pro
viding background and collateral information. Leonard
Pronto1 s book has already been mentioned. George Well-
war th's The Theatre of Protest and Paradox^ iB partly
an expansion of material from the Tulane Drama Review and
provides an Interesting look at the major avant-garde
writers. The classic in the field is Theatre of the
54
Absurd by Martin BsBlin. Esslln's book is a thorough
study of the absurdists, their forerunners, and their
plays.
There is very little surrealist drama, but many of
55
the plays are collected in Modem French Theatre. Here
may be found plays by Artaud, Soupalt, Radlguet, and
Tzara, as well as the two best-known, The Breasts of
Tireslas. which was the first to be called "surrealist,"
and Cocteau*s Lea Marlas de la Tour Eiffel. A brief
Introduction by the editors is useful.
The photographic record of the modem theatre may
be found in a variety of periodicals. World Theatre is
“ ^George Wellwarth, The Theatre of Protest and
Paradox (New Yorks New York University Press, I964J.
54
Martin Esslin, Theatre of the Absurd (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1961).
55
Michael Benedlkt and George E. Wellwarth (eds.),
Modem French Theatre (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company,
1554T:-------------------
26
probably the best souroe of production pictures, espec
ially of the European theatre* Other Illustrated period
icals of particular usefulness for both pictures and
articles are Plays and Players. Dance and Dancers. Dance
Magazine * Theatre World, and Opera.
Of the sources listed above the most valuable In
providing data and Ideas for this study were Marcel Jean's
The History of Surrealist Painting, for Its Information
and illustrations; Antonin Artaud's The Theater and Its
Double, for an Imaginative way of thinking about the
theatre; and World Theatre, for Its articles on design and
Its photographic record of contemporary theatre*
Preview of Remaining Chapters
The plan of this study Is a progression from the
general to the specific* Analysis of general purpose of
stage-setting leads to analysis of special purpose of
surrealist setting, then to the general and specific form
which attempts to convey the sense of purpose* Finally,
uses are suggested In which the surrealist purpose and
form combine with the dramatic material to achieve a
psychological unity of design and play*
Chapter II Is an examination of four general
purposes of stage-setting, regardless of particular style.
Chapter III examines the specific purposes of the
surrealist stage-setting*
Chapter IV deaorlbes the general form of
Surrealism.
Chapter V describes the form of Surrealism defined
as unreal-rcalism.
Chapter VI explores the abstract form of Surreal
ism.
Chapter VII sets up criteria for the use of
surrealist design and suggests categories of plays in
which such design may be a valid expression of the material
of the play.
Chapter VIII summarizes the study and offers con
clusions and suggestions for further research.
CHAPTER II
GENERAL PURPOSES OP STAGE-SETTING
The needs of the theatre are actor, audience, play,
and place. If any of these are absent theatre does not
exist. The forms that each of the elements take are var
iable. The actor may be human or puppet; the audience may
consist of one person or many; the play may be written or
Improvised, spoken, or mimed. Place Is required because
man and his world exist In space and must be contained in
some physical area. The theatre Itself--the building or
arena, or whatever it may be— is the locale of the entire
experience; the stage-setting Is the place of the play and
Its actors, where the make-believe is separated from the
real.
Generally, stage-setting is considered as the
visual accompaniment to the dramatic action, no matter what
type of play, ballet, or opera Is presented. The question
of the need for such visual accompaniment leads to a con
sideration of the purposes of a setting. Why is it there
at all?
At the time when scenery began to become a strong
factor in the theatre, especially in the Romantic drama,
28
29
Coleridge wrote:
it* very purpose 1* to produce as much Illusion as
its nature permits. These, and all other stage
presentations, are to produee a sort of temporary
half-faith, whioh the speotator encourages in
himself and supports by a voluntary eontributlon
on his own part, because he knows that it is at
all times in his.power to see the thing as It
really is. . • •
Coleridge's statement of the purpose of scenery was one of
the first; earlier references had been mainly descriptive.
And so, for generations to follow, the idea of illusion as
purpose was a primary one, in theory, if not always in
practice.
While part of the theatre sought illusion In decor,
another part moved in the direction of breaking illusion.
The spokesmen of the New Stagecraft orltlclzed realism and
offered reasons for the emergence of a new style. Still
later, when the world had changed again, someone like Jean-
Paul Sartre could write:
Since it was their aim to forge myths, to project
for the audience an enlarged and enhanced image of
its own sufferings, our playwrights turn their backs
on the constant preoccupation of the realists, which
is to reduce as far as possible the distance which
separates the speotator from the spectacle. • • *
To us a play should not seem too familiar. ...
Coleridge's "power to see the thing as it really is" is
«
extended in the Sartre purpose and requires the speotator
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Progress of the Drama,"
European Theories of the Drama, ed. Barrett H. Clark
(New York: Crown Publishers, 1947), p. 426.
O
(June l§S81 J",IpUl3§5Ttre' "por8er8 of Myth," Theatre Arts.
30
to watoh and think* but not to feel* not to surrender hia
emotions to the play. The setting here ia one which re
minds the audience that it is to think.
One of the simplest definitions of purpose was
provided by Robert Edmond Jones:
The task of the stage designer is to search for
all sorts of new and direot and unhackneyed ways
whereby he may establish the sense of place. The
purpose of a stage setting* whatever iis form • . •
is simply this: to remind the audience of where the
actors are supposed to be. A true stage-setting is
an invocation to the genus loci— a gesture
"enforcing us to this place"--and nothing more.
For Jones* in this instance at least* there is no need for
discussion of the need for illusion or non-illusion— the
theatre simply needs a signal to remind the audience where
it is. Whatever the setting suggests is within the prov
ince of the spectator's mind.
Illusion* anti-illusion* reminder of place— whlch
of these Is the purpose of a stage-setting? The answer*
of course* is that there is no single answer. To general
ize* however* and to include the above positions* as well
as a number of others* the purposes might be reduced to
four basic categories: (1) isolation of the dramatic act
from the actual* (2) provision of spaoe for the actor*
(3) visual accompaniment, and (4) decoration. All of
^Robert Edmond Jones* The Dramatic Imagination
(New York: Duell* Sloan and Pearce* 1941J, pp. 135*36.
31
these are applicable to the surrealist stage-setting, as
well as to those of other styles, and will be considered
as a background to the specific purposes of the surrealist
setting.
Isolation of the Dramatic Act
The primary purpose of a stage-setting is to Iso
late the dramatic action by establishing a particular area
as a place in which all that happens is not real but merely
pretence. Even in the most natural surroundings, with
actors reliving their own experiences in documentary fash
ion, the dramatic action remains separated from the actual
course of events, thus reassuring the spectator that he
can watch, become emotionally Involved, and yet break off
at any time with no damage to himself, either mentally or
physically. If the separation is not present, drama dis
appears and life itself takes its place; the make-believe
suddenly becomes all too real* The line is partly drawn
by the spectator, who holds the power to stay or leave,
and partly by the conditions of the theatre, which excites
emotion or appeals to Intellect. The actor holds the key,
since he is the representative of the audience, and in his
province lies the responsibility for distinguishing between
the human and the dramatic. He Is the direct link between
the audience and theatre and whatever emotions are trans
ferred between the two are the result of his symbolic
representation of the spectator caught in the dramatic
32
event. He requires no aoenery, for his presence alone is
sufficient, but if that presence is to remain symbol and
not man, then he needs some form of setting to indicate
hiB participation in the game of pretenoe.
A stage-setting announces that what happens is the
work of actors. Whether it be a single banner strung
across the back wall of a grocery store or a room from a
boarding house dismantled and then rebuilt on stage, the
setting is a sign of fantasy, a visible reminder that the
audience is not to mistake what it sees. If even the
single banner is missing, the Betting is still inherent
in the physical separation of the actor from the audience,
for setting may be reduced to no more than the space re
quired to enclose the actor. As long as knowledge of the
actor as character remains, drama remains. When the audi
ence no longer knows the actor, but is aware of the man,
a different set of conditions exists, and the world of the
play dissolves into the spectacle of the world of man. No
actor can be himself, for the character he plays inhabits
an entirely different universe, one of illusion, where no
one is himself. A setting attempts to draw the boundaries
of this non-existent universe.
Sometimes a writer will call for the maximum audi
ence Involvement obtainable, as did Antonin Artaud:
We abolish the stage and the auditorium and replace
them by a single site, without partition or barrier
of any kind, which will become the theater of action.
33
. . . the spectator, placed In the middle of the
action. Is,engulfed and physically affeoted by
It. . .
The speotator may be engulfed by the action, but still he
Is not part of It. He knows that he Is not, for he retains
the security Inherent In the knowledge of "the absence of
practical relation between ourselves and the object,"**
which Ducasse called necessary for the aesthetic attitude
as opposed to the human attitude. As long as the audience
remains aware of the absence of any but a temporary and
sham relationship between It and the actor, the action of
the play may be carried out all around, engulfing the audi
ence and physically affecting it, as Artaud wished, but
still staying within the barrier of Illusion.
At the other end of the spectrum is the theory
that the speotator remains an Intellectual observer, not
an emotional participant, and in such a case the setting
contributes to the forcing of attention to the pretence.
In the artificial stylization of the Oriental theatre,
this might be possible; In the Western theatre, it is
probably the result of inadequacies In writing or acting,
or some other distraction. Even in Brecht’s Epic Theatre,
which was supposed to destroy any Illusion of reality, the
^Artaud, op. clt.. p. 96.
**Curt John Ducasse, "The Aesthetlo Attitude," The
Problem of Aesthetics, eds. Eliseo Vivas and Murray
Krleger (New Vork: Rinehart and Company, 1953)» p. 366.
34
i
theatre had to work at dispelling the tendency of the audi
ence to believe in what it saw. Martin Esslln, in his
study of the Brechtlan style, wrote: "The producer must
strive to produce by all the means at his disposal effeots
which will keep the audience separate, estranged, alienated
from the action."^ Brecht himself, according to critic
Ronald Oray:
often required very strong Illumination of the stage
throughout, even in night-time scenes, to avoid giv
ing the speotator any opportunity of sinking into
reverie or of feeling himself linked in the darkness
with those around him. . . .•
The resistance of the audience Is strangely strong; it
seemingly wants to believe, and the actor helps in this
act of faith, no matter how he attempts to remain the neu
tral commentator. An actor cannot be neutral, for he is
part of a story and speaks and moves. As Brecht learned,
and others who sought to dispel the illusion that the
actor is something above a mere reader of lines, the
setting is a surer sign of the intent of the production as
illusion. Still, setting alone cannot ensure a total
separation of the mind of the spectator and his emotions,
for the purpose of theatre, and its reason for a contin
uing existence, is that mind and emotion mingle before the
^Martin Esslln, Breoht. a Choice of Evils (London:
Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1959)»P» 111.
7
Ronald Gray, Brecht (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd,
1961), pp. 63-64.
35
sweeping power of the play. Setting Is an Indication that
the mind is to remain in control.
Philosopher R. 0. Colllngwood offered an explana
tion of why the mind should remain in control:
There Is always a danger that, when once an emotion
has been aroused, it may break down the watertight
bulkhead and overflow Into praotloal life; but It
is the aim of both the amuser and the amused that
this disaster shall not happen, and that by a loyal
co-operation the bulkhead shall remain Intact. The
artist must steer a middle course. He must excite
the emotions which are closely enough connected
with his audience's practical life for their exci
tation to cause lively pleasure; but not so closely
connected that a breach of the bulkhead is a serious
danger. • •
The danger of a breakthrough is always present in the
theatre, because of the willingness of the audience to
surrender control of its emotions. It is as though the
people live so much with their repressions and inhibitions
that they must have an outlet, and when one is offered they
use the opportunity, even when there is nothing Inherent in
the production which might cause them to unblock the flood
of emotion confined within. This is possibly one reason
why Aristotle believed that the result of tragedy should
be catharsis, or purgation of the emotions, and not a
summons to continue the tragedy through the actions of
those who saw the play and were stirred by it. When
drama spills its audience onto the street to kill or
8
R. 0. Colllngwood, The Principles of Art (New York:
Oxford University Press, 195b), p. 83.
pillage, as It has, its strength to move minds cannot be
doubted, but its function as drama can be questioned. It
should exist in a closed universe of its own and not cross
over into the audience1s. Yet who can say that the purpose
of drama from the very beginning has not been to call to
action? If some theories of drama are to be believed,
drama arose from magical ceremonies performed as part of
the struggle for existence and so required its first audi
ences to be actors as well. When the hunting ritual ended,
the hunters began their search for game; or when the in
vocation to the gods of the earth concluded, the tribe
planted its seed. Drama then was intermingled so strongly
with life as to be indistinguishable from it. In later
development, though retaining some of its magic and ritual,
drama took as its purpose the telling of a story. The
power to stir to action remains, however, no matter what
changes the centuries have made to the primitive origins.
No stage-setting can turn a tide of emotion, no matter how
the scenery is painted or how the stage is arranged; but
it can indicate that the play is only the shadow of an
event, not the event itself.
Dramatic art seems to begin as group ritual and
then becomes an individual act for those who make up the
unit watching the play. The theatre, in some way, tends
to force the spectator to return to the more primitive
part of his personality and to Join a cohesive group of
his fellows in a rite necessary for existence. When the
tendency Is powerful a oommunlty response results and be
comes part of the drama. Yet there must always be a re
minder present that the drama exists only on the stage, or
there would result a form of spiritual anarchy In which
reality and fantasy would mingle to a degree almost psy
chotic In nature. The lines are drawn, but against the
overwhelming power Inherent In the mingling of emotive
communication between actor and audience the lines bend
and sometimes break. The danger Is relatively small*
since the conditions for such a break are rarely present,
but to reduce the danger the stage drama Is set apart as a
representation of man, not man himself. When the two
mingle Inextricably— representation and man— drama Is no
longer present; separation Is a fundamental condition.
This separation is the primary purpose of stage-setting.
Provision of Space for the Actor
Adolphe Appla once wrote: "The actor will control
the design."^ His reference was to the actor as one of
the plastic elements of a setting and as the consolidating
agent of whatever Is seen on the stage. The actor con
trols the design In an even more fundamental way, which
Is, quite simply, the need for space In which to move.
q
Adolphe Appla,"The Future of Production,"
Theatre Arts Monthly. XVI (August, 1932), p. 66l.
38
Even if he does no more than stand In one spot, he still
requires space. Appla stated a general principle; play
wrights have asked for space as a specific help in acting
out their story. Tennessee Williams, In his stage direc
tions for Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, wrote:
above all, the designer should take as many pains
to give the actors room to move about freely (to
show their restlessness, their passion for breaking
out) as if it were a set for a ballet.10
The Williams direction is one for the use of space as part
of the drama, as one means by which the characters express
themselves. It is an extension of a basic purpose.
The setting gives the actor some kind of a plat
form, whether raised or level, upon which he can walk, sit,
dance, or do whatever it is that he must do to present his
play. Generally, in what might be called organized theatre,
the platform is at one end of a rectangular room, the ar
rangement familiar in the proscenium stage. The rectan
gular area has various dimensions, as does the platform,
but it is designed with the intention that a spectator
sees the front of an actor more often than he sees the
back, this on the assumption that people would rather look
at a face than a back, especially when seeing the face is
necessary to the understanding or enjoyment of what is be
ing done. In the past few decades there have been
10Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (New
York: New Directions, 1955)» P* xiv.
39
attempts to restore the older circular forms of theatre,
and arena theatres have made a bid for significance as
plaoes for the presentation of plays. Both proscenium and
arena stages provide the necessary spaoe In whloh to move.
Even Ignoring the conflict between proscenium and
arena stages, there are many problems Inherent In the ar
rangement of space. The first Is the provision of a way
to get on and off. As Norman Bel Oeddes observed:
Regardless of the nature of the play, you begin
in the abstract, devoid of any period concept, dis
regarding architecture and locale, thinking wholly
In terms of solids and voids. The voids are spaoes
where entrances from nowhere to within sight of the
audience can be made. The solids are the areas
between these voids.11
Even if an actor appears by some magical means, he must
still appear from somewhere, whether thrust up from the
void of a basement on a spring-powered trap or dropped
from the celling. A setting which does not provide a
means of entrance Is like a bridge to which there is no
approach— It may look effective, but it is useless to
those who must cross. The only exception to this need is
a setting for a play which begins with all characters
already on the stage when the curtain opens and who re
main throughout the action.
The next problem Is to provide a gathering place
^Norman Bel Oeddes, Miracle In the Evening
(Oarden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, 19b0j, p. 261.
40
for the so tore. Even one actor requires room in which to
move about, and a oast of more than one requires ad
ditional space. Another problem Is that Inherent In the
Tennessee Williams stage dlreotlon quoted earlier— move
ment to reveal character. This Is the sort of dlreotlon
frequently encountered, since a cramped setting forces the
actors to move In a manner totally different from that con
sisting of a completely open area. A Hamlet on the wind-
driven battlements of Elsinore Is not the Bame Hamlet as
the one confined to a small cubicle through which the sky
Is seen only through a narrow window. In the open, under
the dark winter sky, all the forces of nature, whether the
human nature of the court at its drunken carouse or the
supernatural of the stalking ghost, bear witness to the
tragedy of a prince who must set his kingdom aright; but
in a small room, closed In, where the world lies beyond,
unreachable and untouchable, the tragedy is that of a man
who is prince by name, a prince of the mind. In the same
way, Ibsen*s doll's house needs Its enclosing walls, for
It Is a story of confinement, to be told within a house,
not In the unbroken sweep of a bare stage, where the uni
verse Is unlimited by walls and the reminders of society.
Space Is dramatic, and its clutter or barrenness becomes
part of the play. The actor controls the design, It la
true, but the design also controls him. They are' in
separable parts of the theatre.
41
Visual Aooompanlmut to the Drama
Drama haa survived throughout much of Its history
with hare platforms and arenas# requiring that the burden
of creating a background be borne by the Imagination of
the Individual spectator. Yet# In response to some need
on the part of audience and creator# the blankness of a
bare wall has given way to a deoorated background or to
a background with scenic pieces and furniture. Perhaps
this Is In response to the primitive delight of decor*
atlon whloh exists In even the most civilized. Blank
ness# with Its abstract evocativeness# satisfies only
briefly# then something must be added to conjure Images
to stir the Imagination .^2
In our century# when stage decoration has flour
ished In variety unknown to previous generations# the
setting may often represent the vaguely-needed reassur
ance that the world Is safe for those who are merely
onlookers. The light out of darkness which signalled
the creation of the world to the writers of Qenesls and
the lamp In the nursery Inside the child*8 bed are re
assurances to man that he will not be swallowed up In
darkness by the unnameable creatures whloh hover Just
1^The costumed actor provides colorful relief a-
galnst a blank background# but his presence alone Is
evidently not enough to supplant scenery In the favor of
the general audience.
beyond the light. In much the same way scenery la a re
assurance that the forces which clamor at the barrier of
the stage wall will not pass from the actors to the audi
ence, When the light Is present* then the demons of man* s
creation* and others too* can roam at will* for they are
repelled by the luminous shield. In our time* when the
demons are man himself, or believed to be* the need for
such a protective symbol as a stage setting Is as strong
as at any time In theatrical history. It serves as the
pentagram and circle of the sorcerer who conjures In fear
of what things he will summon. In the oonjuratlon of the
theatre the mystic symbols are less evident* but they are
present.
The mystique of scenery Is of less concern than
the controversy over the kind of scenery to be used. The
actor's position is likely to be somewhat like that ex
pressed by Stanislavsky:
The only king and ruler of the stage is the
talented actor* But alas* I cannot find for
him a true scenic background which would not
Interfere with* but would help his complex
spiritual work, . • .13
The playwright might agree with J, B, Priestley that the
author Is "the essential creator* the prime moverIn
13
Constantin Stanislavsky* fly In Art. trans.
J* J, Robbins (New York: Meridian Books* ISoh)* p. 569*
14
J, B, Priestley* The Art of the Dramatist
(London: William Helnemann* 1^57)» p, 57*
all matters of setting or with Frlederioh IXierenmatt:
"the playwright must always decide himself what kind of
stage he wantsThe designer, represented by Harry
Homer* might reply that "In modem productions" the de-
16
signer "becomes the visual director*" Often there Is a
battle among the various contributors* each considering
that his area Is the determining factor. At times the
script Is supreme; at other times* the actor; still again*
the total production. In the present century* a theatri
cal production Is generally regarded as a cooperative
venture* in which collaboration and compromise take the
place of the emphasis of one contribution at the expense
of the others. This state of affairs Is* of course* var
iable* and* as In any endeavor* the strength of one cre
ator may outweigh that of his fellows and as a result the
production becomes slanted In favor of the stronger. Then
too* In some productions* in many of those which might be
described as surrealist for example* the actor and the
play are subordinated to the scenery with deliberate
Intent.
There is no single rule as to the dominance of
any element. The play In Its complete form* as it
^Frlederioh Duerenmatt* "Problems of the Theatre*"
Tulane Drama Review. Ill (October* 1938)* 11.
^Harry Homer* "Designer In Action*" Theatre Arts.
XXV (April* 1941)* 268.
44
appears on the stage* la the ruler of the theatre.1^
All of the above la prologue to four questions
which arise In connection with the purpose of scenery as
visual aooompanlment• If some kind of setting Is neces
sary* does It represent an environment which Is Insepar
able from the characters* or Is It surrounding atmosphere?
Does It enter Into the action* or does It remain neutral?
Environment
Environment Is a recent concept In theatre* but It
is the basiB of the oonfliot between realism and the other
styles of presentation* One of the leaders In the battle*
Emile Zola* wrote: "We must cast aside fables of every
sort and delve Into the living drama of the two-fold life
of the character and its environment. • • ."18 Zola's
statement was one of the signs that the Darwinian revolu
tion was beginning to reach Into the theatre* proclaiming
its theory that environment determines the way of life for
all living creatures. Andre Antoine* a follower of Zola*
based much of his own theatrical theory on the Importance
^The controversy over the primacy of playwright
versus the produoed play has continued for centuries with
no sign of resolution. Indeed there can be no real solu
tion* since the question is one of opinion and not evi
dence. The designer Is generally guided by the need to
reconcile the play and the production. He does his best
for both.
18
Bnlle Zola* "Preface to Th£rfese Raquln*" Clark*
op. olt.. p. 401.
of environment: "It le the environment that determines
the movements of the characters, not the movements of the
characters that determine the environment. The Idea
became firmly planted that men and women are inseparable
from the surroundings In which they live, and even when
they struggle to leave, part of them always remains behind.
There Is no complete escape for any man from the place and
the people who surround him.
The power of environment as a shaper of dramatic
action required a setting In keeping with Its affective
power, as Mordecal Gorelik pointed out:
Naturalism required Its own kind of stage setting.
The audience must be made to forget that It Is
looking at decor. The setting must be the very
place of the dramatic action Itself, as If you
walked Into it off the street, as If It had grown
there.20
Not only in naturalism but also In realism was such a set
ting Important. The "awareness of milieu as destiny" was
John Oassner's expression for the need to stress the ac
tual living conditions of the characters, and as example
he cited Ghosts:
Mrs. Alvlng's story Is conceivable only under
conditions that are primarily environmental or,
broadly speaking, social. The raison d*etre of
^Andr6 Antoine, "Behind the Fourth Wall." Directing
the Play, eds. Toby Cole and Helen Krlch Chlnoy (New
York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1953)# p. 84.
20
Gorelik, o p . cit.. p. 138.
H6
the play arises from the fact, and a stage
production that failed to communicate aware
ness of It would endanger the author's argu
ment. 21
While the social and psychological environment Is
the dramatist's conoem as he writes his play, the physical
setting Is the designer's problem. He must somehow convert
the social and psychological atmosphere Into a physical
one. In a play such as Elmer Rice's Street Scene the con
version needs to be almost a recreation of what the author
has already Imagined. As Rice said:
. . . from the very beginning— before the play was
written even— I conceived the house as the real
protagonist of the drama, a brooding presence,
which not only literally dominated the scene, but
which Integrated and gave a kind of dramatic unity
to the sprawling and unrelated lives of the multi
tudinous characters and lent to the whole whatever
"meaning" it may have. . • .22
For this kind of play the designer fashions his setting
Into the sort of visual Imagery which could be a protagon
ist, to make It evident that the characters are Insepar
able from their own small section of the world and are
dominated by It as much as by any absolute dictator. The
principle is the same for the stateliest of palaces or the
most sordid cellar. The environment is the controlling
force which shapes the actions of the characters; it
cannot be forgotten.
21John Gassner, Form and Idea In Modern Drama (New
York: Dryden Press, 19^6), p. b3*
22
Elmer Rice, "The Playwright As Director," Theatre
Arts Monthly. XIII (May, 1929)# 356.
47
Atmosphere
Atmosphere has always been of more importance to
the theatre than has environment. Macbeth*e castle is not
one of stones and mortar, nor is Lear's heath a vacant
plot of ground; both are suggestions of the aura of mys
tery whloh surrounds the fictional lives of these beings.
In the fictional world suggestion Is the prime maker of
Images and It makes all things possible. Atmosphere Is
nothing but suggestion, and so Its possibilities are un
limited.
Environment as the basis of setting, especially
In naturalist drama, fell under attack from the very
first, but it was not until about the time of World War I
that the attack became widespread. Sheldon Cheney com
plained: "Nowhere in the history of the other arts Is
there a parallel to the present-day theatre producer's
23
perfect realization of a false Ideal." At about the
same time, Alexander Bakshy, a visionary, asked for the
reform that he felt was overdue:
The Titan who gave mankind the divine fire of
hlstronlc art has— now for over a century— been
kept In chains, mocked at, and tortured. It Is
almost Impossible to recognize his Image under
the countless shackles and hideous trappings
2^Sheldon Cheney, The New Movement In Theatre
(New York: Mitchell Kennerley, I9I4), p. l£l.
48
whloh have been heaped upon him by Ignorance,
sensationalism, and greed* • • ,2^
With statements such as these, and the earlier ones of
Gordon Craig and Adolphe Appla, the movement away from the
reproduction of actual environment gathered strength*
Once again atmosphere rose to prominence as a goal of de
sign*
The purpose of calls for a new spirit In the
theatre, an anti-realism spirit, was to free the imagina
tion of designer and audience alike, by providing enough
Imagery In the setting to call forth a train of thought
but not enough to stifle the Imagination by forcing the
eye to look at a three-dimensional photograph of an actual
room* As Thornton Wilder suggested: "It Is through the
theatre*s power to raise the exhibited Individual action
Into a realm of Idea and type and universal that it 1b
25
able to evoke our belief*" Every action on a stage is,
In some way, universal, for even a documentary selects
individual events to build a total picture, and a total
picture is no longer Individual, but a part of the uni
versal* Environment In setting, as Wilder knew, tends to
emphasize the Individual, but atmosphere brings the uni
versal onto the stage in a manner whloh suggests that
Oh
Alexander Bakshy, The Theatre Unbound (London:
Cecil Palmer, 1923)* p* 15*
2-*Thomton Wilder, Three Plays (New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1957)* P*x.
audience and character are almost one* At least, that la
the theory* According to thla way of thinking, an audience
might not he able to put Itaelf in the place of the drunk
ards and harlots of a Zolaesque slum, but it oan feel the
weirdness of a shadowed castle or the threat of danger from
a raging ocean* The atmospheric setting Is used In an at
tempt to evoke the emotions which each spectator carries
with him to the play and to blend those emotions with those
suggested by the play* "By means of suggestion," Gordon
Craig wrote, "you may translate all the passions and
26
thoughts of vast numbers of people * . •" Kenneth
Macgowan, writing In the same spirit, observed:
• • • the artist can build by suggestion a host of
effects that crude and elaborate reproduction would
only thrust between the audience and the actor and
the play* The artist oan suggest either the natu
ralistic or the abstract, either reality or an Idea
and an emotion.27
For this kind of setting the audience is required to be an
active participant In the theatrical event; the passive
spectator will merely be puzzled at the absence of the con
crete evidence of the world as he knows it*
Atmosphere in setting has as Its purpose the sug
gestion of what the audience might feel if it were in the
situation of the characters* It allows each member of the
2^Bdward Gordon Craig, On the Art of the Theatre
(London: Helnemann, 1957)# P* St*
27
Kenneth Macgowan, "The New Path of the Theatre,"
Theatre Arts Magazine. Ill (April, 1919)# 88*
50
audience to build his own fantasies on those whloh are
shown to him; It encourages an emotional participation In
the action by leaving room for the Imagination to provide
a broadness of impression, based upon the lived or dreamed
experience of the past. Whether the atmosphere be gloomy
or bright, threatening or charming, It expands the hori
zons of the play by giving scope to fantasy. It frees the
Imagination from the restrictions inposed by common assoc
iations and leads to the truth which lies beyond the ordin
ary.
Action
Scenery may enter Into the action itself, physi
cally as well as mentally. The theatre has had its tread
mills, cranes, and trap-doors for many centuries and has
used them to great advantage. In some forms of drama the
physical intrusion of the setting Is required by the Idea
that the play attempts to convey. For example, In
Expressionism:
The Expressionist drama not only destroys
the unity of place, time, action and character;
It ohanges time, lljffl space. Into a function
of expression • • *2tJ
Nothing could remain neutral, since it was, in a way, an
extension of the mind of the character and so ohanged with
2^Walter H. Sokel, The Writer In Extremis
(Stanford: Stanford University #ress, 1959), p. 39•
51
the character aa he thought In different ways. A tree shed
its leavea and withered as the character aged; the walla of
a house closed In on a trapped criminal; a chrysanthemum
blossomed from the roof of a castle as new life appeared.
Bootlon was transformed Into event; and the physical world,
as represented by the setting, mirrored the emotional
world. The setting thrust Itself Into the action as though
it were another character somehow disguised In alien shape.
One of the spokesmen of the New Stagecraft, Herman
Rosse, called for "the abandoning of the static parts of
the stage-pioture; and the development of moving seen-
OQ
ery." His concept went beyond the replacement of ordin
ary scenery and called for something which must at last
supplant the actor:
Imagine beyond the proscenium a void In whloh planes
and bodies will develop themselves In limitless
graduation of color and shape In one great rhythm
with coordinating music. • . .30
Rosse was one of the extremists, but his general Ideas
were shared by other designers, among them John Wenger:
The background should oontaln movement. Life is
not static. It Is fluid. The stage setting should
tend toward that elusiveness of life found In the
rainbow. In the play of shifting lights and shadows.
Imbue the stage setting with poetry. Give it an
^Herman Rosse, "Artificiality and Reality In the
Future Theatre," Theatre Arts Magazine. Ill (April, 1919)#
95.
3°Ibld., p. 96.
Imaginative quality. Let it absorb within it a
fluidity# an elusiveness that stimulates the
mind. • •
As in the atmospherlo setting# the purpose is to stimulate
the mind# not to fix thought within a photographloally-
oorreot pioture offered to the eye.
Photography enters into the setting of aotlon
through motion pictures# whloh may be realistic or ab
stract. Film# like any other effect which offers movement#
extends the meaning of drama through its power as an ever-
changing reminder of the play as the expression of the
mental state of the characters. Though its screens may be
fixed# its illusion of movement remains. What is true of
film is also true of projections when they contain shift
ing shapes and colors; they all enter into the action and
do not remain neutral in the telling of the story.
Neutral Background
One of the commonest uses of a neutral background
is to block off the view of something behind the actors
and so avoid distracting the eye of the spectator. This
Is as practical a purpose of a stage-Bettlng as oan be
imagined# since there are few plays meant to be presented
against a wall littered with pipes# dangling cables# and
cracking plaster. Even those plays intended for such a
31
John Wenger# "The Mission of the Stage Setting#"
Theatre Arts Magazine. Ill (April# 1919)# 9^*
53
background— Our Town and plays of backstage life— usually
call for some sort of adaptation of existing walls and
equipment Instead of merely taking the raw material of the
theatre in which they are staged*
The bare stage, whether the distracting back walls
and wings are hidden or not, has always offered a challenge
to the designer* Robert Edmond Jones suggested:
• • • the best thing that could happen to our
theatre at this moment would be for playwrights
and actors and directors to be handed a bare
stage on whloh no scenery could be placed* • • •
In no time we should have the most exciting
theatre In the world.32
Such theories are Interesting, if not always valid*
Neither bare stages nor the finest of scenery can bring
forth excellence and exoltement whloh are not present in
the writing or the acting* However, the bare stage,
especially when surrounded by black velvet, oan focus at
tention onto the actors and their play, although It Is in
some respects productive of an illusion somewhat as though
might be observed by a puppeteer before he had given his
figures a place in which to live* The audience may become
puppet-masters, manipulating the figures In a black void,
lighting them, and giving them life* The play given on a
bare stage with a surround of black velvet might be the
highest eaqpresslon of the sense of the audience as master
of the fate of the stage characters.
32jones, o p * clt*. p* 135*
54
A neutral baokdrop does not have to be blaok velvet
or a bare wall; it may be a box-set, If the room It repre
sents Is of no more Importanoe to the action than a stand
ard hotel room might be to a oasual traveller who turns on
the light only long enough to find his way around. This,
j *
Indeed, Is the usual fate of stage-setting. Perhaps It
contributes some atmosphere or environment, but it gener
ally Is little more than an enclosed area whloh does not
disturb the flow of action by seeming out of sympathy with
the play. If this were not possible, then there would be
only one setting for each play and that one setting would
have to be reproduced in every theatre In which the play is
given. The ordinary set Is the furthest extension of what
might be termed a neutral background; It does not possess
the degree of neutrality of black velvet, but it does con
tain a generous portion of anonymity and so Is able to
serve a play without becoming obtrusive.
Decoration
Decoration In setting Is an often-maligned attri
bute, treated as though it were an Intruder Into what some
critics seem to regard as the sacred preolnots of the
theatre. One of these unhappy critios was Oliver Saylor:
"The designer dominant. Play and player suffocated by
33
exquisite but obtrusive settings." And Stanislavsky,
33
Oliver Saylor, Our American Theatre (New York:
Brentano’s, 1923)# p- 149.
55
who was not among the simplifiers of scenery, also com
plained:
In theatres where scene designers are paramount
the productions are converted into exhibitions
of decorative canvas and picturesque costumes.
. . • Everything is done according to the whims
of the capricious painter, who has no regard for
the principles of our art, nor even the very
nature of the theatre . . .3**
Such criticisms are often Justified, for decorative scenery
is often quite noticeable. But decoration persists. A
later actor-dlrector, Jean-Louis Barrault, offered an ex
planation for the prevalence of decoration:
It occurs to me that it has never been realized
that defense against excessive music and decor will
be achieved only when what Is conveyed by excessive
music and decor can be replaced by means of authen
tic theatre.35
When there is a vacuum in acting or writing, scenery seems
to move in. It serves the purpose of providing the audi
ence with at least part of the expected theatrical ex
perience.
Decoration need not be in opposition to the produc
tion it serves, for sometimes the production is meant to be
regarded as spectacle primarily, as it is in much of ballet,
musical comedy, and extravaganzas. The obviously-magnified
easel paintings of a Picasso or Bakst are frankly
34
Constantin Stanislavsky, Stanislavsky's Legacy,
trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (New York: TheatreArts
Books, 1958)# PP» 163-64.
^Barrault, op. clt., p. 84.
decorative scenes and often have no particular relation
to the ballet or play for which they are used. The same
Is true with many stylized settings. The predominance of
the pictorial Is the aim of some designers, notably those
who are primarily painters. It is a characteristic of
theatrical styles based on contemporary art and is often
associated with plays regarded as avante-garde. Quite
often the decorative design reflects the Intent that the
script is of less Importance than its production. Where
spectacle is more Important than Idea, or where painting
and sculpture convey idea as effectively as words, the
decorative setting has a place In the theatre and can
afford to break the assumed rule that the actor is more
Important than his surroundings.
There is always the danger that a highly-plctorlal
setting will so distract the eye that the actors are not
able to compete, or the visual imagery of the setting may
conflict with what is heard from the actor or played out
in his actions. Shakespeare in modem dress is an anomoly,
because we moderns do not have battlements upon which
ghosts walk, nor do we carry swords with which to duel
magnificently, nor do we speak in blank verse. The eye
can lead the mind in one direction, while the ear and the
mind tell him to follow an opposite path. The result is
confusion. Fortunately, the decorative effects of the
theatre are not ordinarily used in such a fashion, but
are intended to delight the eye, especially in those plays
which call for little else*
Decoration as a purpose has had a long and honor
able history. It can still claim a place in the theatre*
along with those others of more fundamental nature.
CHAPTER III
PURPOSES OP THE SURREALIST
STAGE-SETTING
The surrealist stage-setting may he atmospheric,
environmental, or decorative; and it can be suggestive,
humorous, and surprising. Its purpose is to conjure up
the images of the conscious and subconscious mind and to
force the imagination into a stream of fantasy which leads
away from the world of ordinary experience. In a day when
the electric light has driven away the ghosts and the me-
morial-park funeral and annihilated the vampires, Surreal
ism attempts to fill the need for magic, which is the imag
ined reality beyond the sensual reality, by piercing the
barrier that separates man from the unknown. When used in
the theatre it is an effort to return to the beginnings of
thought, to reach down into the emotions and bring forth
all that has been forgotten or censored or ignored. It is
a part of a theatre of involvement, not of passive viewing.
Surrealism, and its cousins Dada, the Absurd, and
movements of various names but similar techniques are part
of the continuing stream of Romanticism which has flowed
through art and literature since the beginning of
58
59
civilization. Classicism represents man as a reasoning,
Boclal being and appeals to the intellect. Romanticism
seeks to give Impression to the intuitive individual, pro
viding escape from the demands of society and the need to
analyze experience. A prime image of Romanticism— ruins in
the midst of untamed, sometimes haunted, nature— gave way
to the more interlorized images of the imagination as civ
ilization encroached upon the most private preserves of
nature. The nineteenth-century landscape of mountains and
valleys gave way to the twentieth-century country of the
mind. Freud and Dali replaced Shelley and Cole. It is
the country of the mind that Surrealism attempts to make
visible through mannerist, shadowed, and surprising pic
tures of the confused, partly-censored, partly-unknown
images of the subconscious. Surrealism is a sort of new
mythology, substituting the gods of man's mind-burled dark
ness for those long ago given shape in idols and legend,
inventing stories of beauty and horror to rival any told
before. It strips the mystery from ancient myth by setting
the genesis of all magic, terror, the supernatural, all
hope and cheer, the horrible and the comic, within man
himself. The mind is the projector of all that man imag
ines to be the work of demons and gods. Yet the mystery
remains as great, for how could the mind be so haunted, so
vicious, so loving, so absurd? In this new mythology, in
which man is his own god and devil, as well as judge and
jailor* the bond between one man and another is as strong
as that between the closest father and son* but the under
standing of the shared experience is incomplete* vague* and
often unrecognized or ignored. The problem of fashioning
a common language from these vague, even Ineffable* sensa
tions can only be partially solved. In the method of
Surrealism the attempt at solution Is made by accepting
the recognition of common symbols by psychoanalysis* an
thropology* archeology* and mythology* by utilizing famil
iar legends and tales which have acquired both apparent
and hidden meaning* and by suggesting what may be felt but
not expressed. The solution is seldom found* since even
the most widely known legend or symbol may mean a hundred
different things. This is perhaps one of the reasons why
Surrealism has not been widespread in the theatre. The
theatre requires* for most people* quick and certain recog
nition of what is seen* so that what is heard can be under
stood without conflict. Despite its minority status* Sur
realism does provide the theatre with another means by
which to reach the emotions of the spectator and to draw
him closer to the actor and the play.
The Search for Inner Vision
Surrealism* as an integrated artistic movement*
arose as a protest against the futility of the first World
War and the values of a society which could find no other
61
solution to Its problems. The proclamations of the leaders
of the new force, most of them youthful Frenchmen and Ger
mans, demanded the destruction of the old gods of both the
art and Boclal worlds and the installation of new ones.
New attitudes and new concepts, they cried, must lead the
way from the morass of evil and ignorance In which mankind
found Itself. Turn inward, their manifestoes urged; search
for truth and beauty within the inner self, for there is
none to be found outside the self. Discard preconceptions
of truth and morality; tear away the false masks of preju
dice and convention; create the world anew. Revolution
must sweep away the past and clear the road to the future.
Andre Breton, one of the leaders of the movement,
suggested the use of a mental Oulja Board in his manifesto
proclaiming the value of automatism:
Surrealism is sheer psychological automatism,
by means of which it is Intended to express verb
ally, in writing, or in some other way, the actual
function of thinking. Dictation of thinking, with
out any control exercised by reason, outside any
aesthetic or moral prejudice.1
The subconscious was to be the absolute ruler of the crea
tive process, but the basic element of art was missing—
the responsibility of the creator to select images from
the myriad of impressions which can be conjured up by the
mind and then to adapt his ideas to his medium. The
^Quoted in Alfred Schmeller, Surrealism (London:
Methuen and Company, 1956), PP* 8-9*
62
psychological automatism of which Breton wrote cannot Ig
nore the production facilities of the stage If It dictates
a play or specified the scenery to be used. The subcon
scious alone cannot be the sole determinant, but It can be
a guide.
The difference between theory and practice was In
dicated In part of a definition of Surrealism provided In
a history of modern art:
The Surrealist asserts that all our actions are
dominated by the subconscious and that the Impulses
stemming from that direction oan be channelized
Into concrete esthetic form. Although It often
claims to be directed by this subconscious apparatus
and maintains that the painting or other work Is
done entirely under its domination, the resultB seem
far too consciously precise and^loglcal to be the
product of a dream alone. ...
The answer to such a criticism Is that surrealist painting
combines the subconscious Impulse with the overlay of con
trolled technique, except in those instances when pure
automatic production is realized.3 The Surrealists them
selves recognized that automatic production by Itself is
not always the determinant of the final result. Nicolas
Calas wrote that "Surrealism started with automatic
^Charles McCurdy (ed.). Modern Art (New York:
Macmillan Company, 1958)* P» 471.
^No one will argue that the meticulously-painted
pictures of Dali or Tanguy are the product of the uncon
trolled mind. Indeed, they require much time and effort.
Still, the stimulus is contained within the mind of the
artist, since there Is no actual model for what they
paint.
writing,1 1 but that this soon lead to "the discovery of a
i i
new objectivity"; that is, to a creation of concrete images
based on what the mind produced from its subconscious.
This might be taken as an illustration of Jung's state
ment: "All the works of man have their origin in creative
fantasy."^ There must be a beginning. A rock exists;
but, until an artist sees the shapes and colors which re
mind him of a castle or some weird beast, a rock is no
more than a conglomerate of minerals.^ The mind of man
transforms whatever it Bees or whatever is already within
it to create an image for transmission to another mind.
Surrealism is an eclectic movement, drawing from
sources as diverse as the fantastic paintings of Bosch,
the calculated eroticism of de Sade, and the occult
charlatanry of Cagliostro; and it numbers among its patron
saints figures as disparate as Leonardo Da Vinci, Columbus,
Lenin, and, of course, Freud.
From each man and each movement Surrealism took
only what it wanted. Surrealism is not so much Freudian as
Sttcolas Galas, "The Meaning of Surrealism," New
Directions 1940, p. 306.
^Carl 0. Jung, Modem Man In Search of a Soul
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1933)# P* 66.
^One of the exercises of the Renaissance painters
was the painting of shapes suggested by a small area of
a rock. An Imaginative painter could see a virtual host
of human, animal, and geological formations in what an
ordinary man would consider featureless rock.
64
pseudo-Freudian, a fact which many critics have pointed
out. From Symbolism it took a little of Baudelaire and
Rimbaud, but had little use for the mists of Maesterlinck.
Gk>thic Romanticism provided subject matter and imaginative
descriptions, but the sentiment, the moralizing, and the
shadows are absent from the surrealist adaptation. In the
following discussion it is important to remember that the
Intent is to show elements which the Surrealists found of
Interest and which consequently will be of interest to the
designer who adapts Surrealism to the stage-setting.
Qothic Romanticism
Surrealism borrowed some of its subject matter from
the novels and stories of Qothic Romanticism, those tales
of terror which provided their readers with an imaginary
journey to lands in which maidens were menaced by evil and
where ghosts wandered through dark castles. The Surreal
ists would have preferred that the castle's keeper to be
the Marquis De Sade and the landscape not to be Italy or
Germany, but some country where no man could travel on any
commercial coach. Yet the Gothic tales offered the at
mosphere of mystery and erotic sex, and this atmosphere
entered the surrealist grammar.
The atmosphere of a Radcllffe castle, with its
complicated maze of shadowy passageways, secret panels,
weed-choked gardens, and dungeons, finds echoes in the
65
setting of a surrealist picture. But there Is a difference,
The world of the Qothic romance Is one In whloh a char
acter breathes the air of life and walks on solid ground;
that of the surreal Is one In which the character dreams
and does not wake. The Max Ernst episode In the film
Dreams That Money Can Buy^ was described by Siegfried
Kracauer:
The Max Ernst sequence, "Desire," Inspired by
six drawings of La Semalne de Bonte. features the
voluptuous dream of a sleeping girl. Her vagabond
unconscious materialized In an enraptured soliloquy
through Images In which fragments of conventional
reality help build up a more real dream world.
Shipwrecked bodies are dragged from under the girl's
bed, and her bedroom Itself floats through a Jungle
of threatening corridors and dungeons. When her
lover finally Joins her, the girl's solitary dream
Is superseded by their common dream— a succession of
exuberant visions which symbolizes the ecstasy off t
love fulfillment and Its vibrant afterglow. ...”
In contrast, the Qothic bedroom is solid, deliberately so,
for its very physical presence contributes to the feeling
of horror and fear which the best of the Qothic tales can
sometimes arouse. It is an indication that ghosts can
walk and murder strike in any place and at any time. In
both cases, the underlying sexual implications of the sit
uation are present. The description of the standard
?A surrealist film (1946) to which Max Ernst, Man
Ray, Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, and Julien Levy con
tributed.
Q
Siegfried Kracauer, "Filming the Subconscious,"
T h e a t r e Arts. XXXII (February, 1948), 37.
66
Gothic situation could well be applied to a surrealist
Incident:
... To give the matter of a woman's pursuit and
persecution a more dreadful appearance the terror-
romanticist chooses the most gruesome surroundings
he oan Invent for this persecution, the desolate
passages and crypts of the hsunted castle, the
catacombs of monasteries, etc. To my mind, this
choice of milieu is in general, and particularly
in its application to eroticism, an abnormal trait.
In the interest whloh Matthew Gregory Lewis displays
in depicting an eroticism bordering on bestiality
in circumstances of secrecy and night, it is hard
not to descry the fruits of inflamed, neurasthenlcal,
sexual visions, of a pathological psychology which
betrays, unknown perhaps to the writer himself, an
abnormal trait in his composition. The more lonely
the spot to which he leads his victim, the more
heated and lively does the Imagination of this
writer become. . . .9
What is all this but the most common of all fanta
sies: sexual pursuit and conquest, accompanied by at least
a touch of sado-masochistic pleasure, on the part of the
man, and surrender after struggle by the woman? This has
been the material of writers throughout the centuries,
although the dictates of conventions have, in most cases,
subordinated the extremes of eroticism into a sublimated
form acceptable to a society in which sexual freedom is to
be disguised. The Surrealists, by blending the physical
settings of the Romantics, so suggestive of the scenery of
fantasy, with the open sexuality of a de Sade or the dis
guised sexuality of Freud, created a world closely
9
Eino Railo, The Haunted Castle (London: George
Routledge and Sons, 1927), p. 266.
67
resembling that of Qothic romance but breaking through the
compromise which prevented the Radcliffes, Lewises,
Hoffmanns,and Poes from completely baring the desires
which inflame the mind. Even so, the Surrealists bow to
the demands of censorship. In public the shades are still
drawn.
The Symbolists
The French Symbolists looked deeper into them
selves than did the Romantics. From Symbolism the Sur
realists learned the lessons of Baudelaire and Rimbaud,
both of whom have been revered as gods in the surrealist
pantheon. From Baudelaire and Rimbaud the Surrealists
selected, as part of the legacy upon which to build a
new movement, a poem and a letter. There was more, but
basically the debt is for only two items, and only parts
10
of those.
The final stanza of Baudelaire's poem "La Voyage"
contains one of the basic philosophies of Surrealism:
0 Death, old captain, it is time! Raise anchor1
This country bores us, Deathl make ready! If the
sky and sea are black as ink, our hearts, you know,
are filled with sunbeams!
Pour us your poison to comfort us! This fire
bums our brains so, that we want to plunge to the
The vivid lives and suggestive poetry of both men
became part of the surrealist heritage, but, Just as some
religions claim the entire Bible yet base their particular
creed on a single verse, the actual philosophical contri
bution may be summed up in a few lines from each poet.
68
bottom of the gulf* Hell or Heaven* what does It
matter? To find something new In the depth of
the UnknownI11
A phrase which recurs throughout surrealist thought is
"plunge to the bottom of the gulf* Hell or Heaven* what
does it matter? To find something new in the depth of the
Unknown."
For Baudelaire* and those he Influenced* the gulf
In which both Heaven and Hell flowed* was the psyche* the
fundamental driving force of all human activity. Whatever
means were available to free the floodgates of the mind*
to set loose the torments and ecstasies locked within*
became a part of waking existence* in a continuing effort
to seduce dreams. Narcotics* sex* natural and perverted*
beauty and decay—'these led to distortions of reality*
which in turn led to escape from inhibition and to poetic
truth. The fragile* yet immensely powerful yearnings of
the subconscious swept against the unyielding rocks of the
finite universe. The individual struggled against soci
ety, not with the revolutionary zeal which seeks to over
throw governments* but with the haunted determination of
^Charles Baudelaire, "Le Voyage," The Penguin Book
of French Verse 3. ed. and trans. Anthony Hartley
(Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books* 1957)* P* 175.
This particular prose translation seems to express the
surrealist point of view in a clearer fashion than any of
the many verse translations. The lines of particular
Interest are:
"Plonger au fond du gouffre* Enfer or Ciel* qu'importe?
Au fond de 1'Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!"
the solitary voyager who forces his way along the perilous
path which leads to recognition of himself. Baudelaire,
like Verlaine, Rimbaud, and other nineteenth-century
Symbolists and their descendants, followed the path down
ward, sharing the secrets of Hell, not Heaven. This was a
world In which the torments of the flesh gnawed away at
the entrails of the soul, where darkness displaced light,
and where madness waited to seize the voyager whose foot
steps led too close to the abyss from which there could be
no escape. Yet this is the world to which the artist must
descend If he is to lose the individuality of which he is
the keeper. If he does not, he becomeB not creative but
Imitative. If he Is afraid to answer the summons of the
devils which dwell behind the gates of surface existence,
then he touches only the surface of the creative forces
which lie within. He is safer. "The study of beauty,"
Baudelaire warned, "is a duel in which the artist shrieks
with terror before being overcome.1 His audience hears
the scream.
Those not In sympathy with the Symbolists called
the duel of which Baudelaire wrote nothing more than de
cadence and criminality, an excuse for all of the censor-
able excesses of which too many of the artists of the
12
Charles Baudelaire, "Artist's Confiteor,"
Paris Spleen, trans. Louise Varfese (New York: New
Directions, 19^7), p. 3.
nineteenth century were guilty, but those In revolt against
the terms which society sought to Impose on the Inner urg-
lngs of all men accepted both the philosophy and tech
niques of Baudelaire and his followers, dramatizing their
refusal to submit to convention with the forging of an
amoral Bohemlanlsm, in which the artist becomes an out
cast, scorned by those to whom he seems but a creature to
avoid, and persecuted by the world for his disavowal of
authority and morality. The Immediate heirs of Baude
laire, like the master himself, crawled through the under
world, suffering the deprivations and cruelty of an ex
istence in which the creation of unwanted painting, plays,
poetry, and prose was too often the only reward of a
bitter life.
Such an existence was In Itself partly surrealist,
and the young Parisians of the next generations, and the
Beatniks of our own time, borrowed freely from this phil
osophy of life. In their midst they sheltered dope ad
dicts, homosexuals and nymphomaniacs, drunkards, the in
sane and the eccentric, the criminals and the fallen
saints, the artists and the shams. They were outsiders.
All this became a part of the art and literature of the
avant-garde of generations to follow. Baudelaire was a
spokesman for this rebellion and one of the creators of
the surrealist rebellion.
Arthur Rimbaud provided a letter which was to
71
become part of the surrealist theory* In part, the
letter reads:
I say that we must be voyant * make ourselves
voyant.
The poet makes himself voyant by a Iona. Immense,
and calculated derailment of all 'the senses. All the
forms of love and suffering and madness; he seeks
himself and exhausts In himself all the poisons,
keeping only the quintessences* • • • he attains the
unknownJ • • • He reaches the unknown, and If, finally
overwhelmed, he turns out to lose the meaning of his
visions, at least he has seen theml Let him die In
his surge through things unheard of and beyond naming;
other horrible workers will come after him and begin
at the horizons where he sank back.13
The artist was to see what was not there to see, to become
a seer, one who sees beyond, who can look Into the unknown*
Rimbaud owed much to Baudelaire for the Idea, as Enid
Starkle pointed out:
From the Cabala, the books of magic and the
works of Balanche, Rimbaud obtained the material
for his doctrine, and in Baudelaire he found a
model of what a voyant should be. He imagined that
it was freedom from moral inhibition and prejudice,
and addiction to drugs and alcohol that had made
Baudelaire what he was, that these had helped him
to burst asunder the fetters that normally bind
the human spirit. He knew that this had brought
Baudelaire great suffering but he was prepared to
accept for himself the same suffering. . .
Although the Surrealists did not particularly advocate suf
fering to produce their own art, they did appreciate the
^Arthur Rimbaud, "La Lettre du Voyant," W. M.
Frohock, Rimbaud1s Poetic Practice (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1^63) > P. 255".
■^Enid Starkle, Arthur Rimbaud (New York: W. W.
Norton, 19^7)> PP. 125-26.
72
concept of the voyant. with the ability to project himself
mentally into those areas closed to him physically.
The artist of the unreal must become a voyant.
The true seer is one to whom all mysteries are unveiled,
yet, at the same time, shrouded by a shifting haze which
alternately thickens and thins. He sends his spirit roam
ing across the known and unknown worlds; but, since he,
9
like all man., can summon forth only what lies within himself,
the voyant must force his way into the recesses of his
mind and there confront the unnumbered Images which are
himself disembodied. In Rimbaud, as in so many driven by
the creative furies, the spectacle which the seer views is
"the port of misery, the enormous city with fire-and-mud-
stained sky."1- * In this land of plagues and fearful
sights dwells the ghoul which feeds upon the imagination
of the host which shelters it. Each new creation wears
away the guard-rails which ring the road at the barrier
between sanity and dementia. In his voyage to the for
bidden depths Rimbaud had too thoroughly explored the
path to complete subjectivity and found that hallucination
had become reality. He deserted poetry at the age of
nineteen. This hazardous course is part of Surrealism.
It leads to the unknown.
15
Arthur Rimbaud, "Adieu," A Season In Hell, trans.
Louise Varfese (Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions,
1945), P* 85.
73
The Freudians
It le dangerous to write of Freud, since there Is
a scientific Freud, a literary one, and an adapted one.
It Is the layman's adaptation of his Ideas which is of im
portance to Surrealism. It Is doubtful whether most of
the Surrealists had read Freud at all, much less understood
him, but they paid him tribute and found Justification for
Ideas which they already held.
Andre Breton, who had read Freud and studied psy-
choanlysls, described Freud as “Someone all alone who had
Just pierced the night of Ideas in the region where It was
thickest," and continued:
. . . could one ever have concentrated more truth so
new, crying, essential in the scope of a thought,
a life? And tell me if the hardest rock, that of
prejudices, of taboos, of Immemorial dissimulations,
did not split as soon as this finger of light
pointed upon it, if from this rock the word did
not spring limpid, or better, radiant . •
Freud became the new surrealist Moses, bringing the light
of divinity to the damned. He became the voice of author
ity and the patron of those who roamed the forbidden lands
of the uncensored mind. He showed them the signs of the
path to the new art. He said that when the artist can
elaborate his daydreams so “that their origin in prohib
ited sources is not easily detected," then “he opens out
^Andr4 Breton, “The Situation of Surrealism Between
the Two Wars," Yale French Studies, I (Fall-Winter, 1948),
?1_72#
74
to others the way back to the comfort and consolation of
their own conscious sources of pleasure, and reaps their
gratitude and admiration . . . The Surrealists seemed
to care little for the gratitude and seemingly not much for
the admiration; yet the gratitude of an audience Is one of
the alms of the artist. The theatre audience expects some
thing from what it sees, and If It Is given that something,
whatever It may be, then it does feel gratitude for those
who have provided so rewarding an experience. In one case
it might be something like that described by Jung:
. • . It is as If man had an Inalienable right
to behold all that is dark, imperfect, stupid
and guilty In his fellow beings— for such of
course are the things we keep private to protect
ourselves. . .
The theatre, so often plagued by those who would transpose
their own guilt to others, brings the dark and the guilt
onto the stage, there to be shared by the audience, but
shared In safety. In explaining Freud's view of this
willingness to see the forbidden as another acts It,
Reuben Fine wrote:
. . . The artist can allow himself to portray
forbidden wishes because they come out in dis
guised form or one permitted In the medium which
he Is using, while the spectator who enjoys the
17
Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psycho
analysis , trans. Joan Riviere (New York: Liverright
Publishing Company, 1935)> P» 328.
18
Jung, op. clt.. p. 34.
75
artistic production also finds in It an out
let for his forbidden wishes.1°
Surrealism strips away a small part of the Illusion that
the audience Is watching people who might be extra-ter
restial beings for all their relation to their own lives.
Surrealism shocks; it breaks through censorship and re
minds the viewer that he Is watching his own reflection In
a mirror of distortion. It Is often rejected and called
madness or nonsense or worse. Still the Surrealist con
tinues his attempt to free the mind from Its overlay of
controls and to bring back the primitive power to partake
fully in the mystery of life.
The Surrealists selected what they wanted from
Freud, not his sex theories, but parts of the dream and
free-assoclation theories. According to Lemaltre:
... As a rule, the Surrealists took from psycho
analysis the general notion that the subconscious
constitutes the fundamental basis, the essential
reality of our mental life. The subconscious is
the truth, a truth most of the time too crude and
too potent for our shy, convention-ridden selves
to bear; so clear Intelligence Is constantly busy
disguising that truth. . . .20
The Surrealists indulged in what one critic termed "vivi-
21
sectional subjectivity." For both creator and audience
the subconscious must be probed, which could be a painful
^Reuben Fine, Freud: A Critical Re-Evaluation of
His Theories (New Yorlci David McKay Company, 19^2),
p. 143.
20
Lemaltre, op. oit.. p. 184.
21
Balaklan, Literary Origins of Surrealism, p. 80.
76
prooesa. It was all part of the inaatiable search for the
unknown. The attempt waa made by the Surrealiata. Success
waa not alwaya theirs, but they made the attempt and asked
their audiences to understand and to solve the ciphers
from their own knowledge and emotions.
When the artist relied too much on Freud's Idea of
spontaneous production of words and Images as the outpour
ing of the raw material of the subconscious the result was
as obsoure as the most confused dream. Creation became
too personal, so much so that It was beyond the understand
ing of the audience and generally unintelligible even to
Its creator. "Automatic production" was among the first
catch-phrases of the Surrealists, for It implied a com
plete by-pass of conscious controls and a tapping of the
innermost reaches of the mind. The idea was exciting, but
the result was too often absolutely nothing but a string of
disconnected words or lines:
In the comer a purple sword the bells the paper
folds a metal sheep life lengthening the page a shot
the paper sings the canaries In the white almost
pink shadow . . .22
That was supposed to be a poem. Its writer, Pablo
Picasso, is undlsputably an artistic genius, but the poem
certainly reflects no genius, unless a psychoanalyst might
find some hints. Certainly an audience would wonder about
the poem and the poet. Freud's free-association provided
QO
Pablo Picasso, "Poems." New Directions 1940. p. 535*
77
the raw material, but not the art.
A slight ordering of the technique gives an Im
pression that there might be something in the lines, al
though the meaning is doubtful:
To drink red wine In blue glasses and castor oil In
German brandy, distant horizon.
A Man alive rides a horse alive to meet a woman alive
leading on a leash a dog alive.23
Carrying the process a step further might lead to
a Gertrude Stein "play":
Klim backwards is milk just like silk
Is milk a can.
Circles are candy.
Irregular circles.
Can you think with me
I can hear Alice.
The value of such a technique lies in its power to evoke
thought, not to direct it.
However, there is more in the subconscious than a
mere collection of unstructured words and phrases. Freud
opened the door to the vastness of fantasy and dream.
This is the raw material of Surrealism, fashioned through
interpretation and control into an art which is at once
personal and universal, and, because of the distortion
present in dreams, disturbing and irrational. Yet it Is
2^Paul Eluard, "Information Please." ibid., p. 509.
oil
Gertrude Stein, "A Circular Play," Last Operas
and Plays (New York: Rinehart and Company, 1^49), P*151.
78
almost always the surfaoe aspect of dream which guides the
mind of the artist, for he is artist and not psychoanalyst;
he borrows* even if he does not understand. The surface is
enough* for the intent of art is to summon forth the
beauty and wonder inherent in the dream process* not to
offer an analysis which would destroy the fugitive mys
teries.
Acceptance of all aspects of Freudian psychology*
or even understanding of it* is not to be expected from a
movement which is artistic and not scientific. The over
whelming tributes paid to Freud* especially for his dream-
work and free-associatlonal techniques* might well be
tinged with both self-conscious exhibitionism and the need
for a champion to give respectability and status to their
views of the Surrealists. Enough remained* however* to
make the acknowledged debt completely valid. In exploring
the secrets of the unconscious* Freud stirred the imagina
tions of those to whom reality was insufficient and pro
vided a basis by which intelligibility might arise from an
otherwise incomprehensible art form.
Quest for the Unknown and the Unseen
The underlying purpose of Surrealism is to make
visible the invisible. No stage-setting can fully reflect
the visions of the unconscious mind* not even the single
mind of the designer who created it* but Surrealism
attempts to satisfy the audience that such a Journey Into
the unconscious has been made and to provoke the audience
into making the journey along with the actors who Inhabit
the world enclosed in the setting. "The appeal of the un
known is often stronger than the appeal of the known,"
wrote Herbert Read, giving as his reason:
. . . it is strong because it is mysterious, be
cause it has not been dissected and analyzed. We
invest such form with our own feelings, of sympathy
or of fear. . . .25
Surrealism has for one of its purposes, perhaps
its main one, the suggestion of the unknown and the ac
companying hope that the audience will enter into the
mystery.
Destruction of Accepted Patterns
Surrealism began as a revolt from the past and em
phasized its spirit of rebellion by calling its magazine
first La Revolution surrealiste and then Le Surr^allsme au
service de la Revolution. Just as Napoleon and Darwin
changed much of European thinking for earlier generations
so World War I, Freud, and Einstein showed the tenants of
the twentieth century that even more of its cherished past
was built on nothing but illusion. Surrealism intended to
further shatter the illusion. Among the weapons they used
were humor and distortion.
2-*Herbert Read, The Philosophy of Modern Art
(New York: Horizon Press, 1953)/p. 55.
80
Humor
"Humor," Yves Duplessls wrote, "Is the expression
of revolt." Furthermore:
Mockery of the conventions, and a stressing of
the absurdities must Inevitably end In a revolt
against established order. As Freud has shown, humor
Is an expression of Insubordination, and a refusal
to bow to the social prejudices; It Is the disguise
of the desperate."26
Charlie Chaplin is supposed to have said that clowning Is
a desperate business, meaning that comedy is as serious as
any tragedy, for actor and audience. Desperation is the
private affair of the creator, not of his audience, unless
he can somehow convey his feeling to them and make them
realize that the affairs of the world have gone awry. The
clown sees the illogical contradictions which attend the
affairs of men and uses his mockery as a weapon to make
others see the same thing. He is a moralist, sometimes
knowingly, more often only Incidentally, and his message is
that humanity swims about in an ether of absurdity and too
often seems to enjoy himself. Surrealism points out the
absurdity, seldom with bitterness as the political satir
ists or the pessimistic Absurdists, but with a good measure
of cheerfulness. Surrealism is the childhood of an aging
Absurd, and it finds fun in the oddities of man and his
ways of living.
In a New York gallery two paintings were hung. They
2^Duplessis, op. clt.. p. 25.
81
were framed and exhibited, and critics came to look and
then to write their reviews. The critics did write their
reviews, In the meaningless jargon which accompanies so
much of the writing about contemporary art. Unfortunately,
the paintings were nothing but unpalnted canvas, framed and
labelled, but absolutely untouched by paint. Many years
earlier the "art" of Dadaist Kurt Schwitters was treated
with the same respect; as his fellow Dadaist George Grosz
recalled:
He gathered everything he could find on the streets
when he went out for a walk. . . . He would then
put them together Into a smaller junk heap, which he
would proceed to paste on canvas or old boards,
fastening them down firmly with wire and cord. The
result, called Merzbllder ("garbage pictures"), was
exhibited and actually sold. Many critics who wanted
to keep astride of the times praised this abuse of
the public. They assessed this art seriously. Aver
age people, on the contrary, who understood nothing
about art, reacted normally and called It "dirt,
filth, and garbage"— exactly what this sort of art
actually was.27
Times evidently have changed little since the early 1920's
when Schwitters made his "art objects," for in a recent
review of artist Robert Rauschenberg we may read:
Rauschenberg's most famous combine painting is
called Monogram and, to the casual observer, looks
like nothing so much as a stuffed Angora goat with
a badly battered muzzle standing In the middle of
^George Grosz, A Little Yes and a Big No. trans.
Lola Sachs Dorn (New York: Dial Press, 194o), pp. 186-87.
Former Dadaist Grosz was being unkind to his old friend.
Schwitters did not consider his collages "garbage," nor
did he mean anything by the word "merz." The word was a
random result of cutting up a newspaper headline.
32
nowhere with a real automobile tire round Its
middle* . . • Monogram Is one of his most ad
mired works, exercising an eerier and totally
Inexplicable fasolnatlon on viewers. Critics
speak of its "rightness" but are unable to ex
plain the goat's allure* It remains one of the
most bizarre art objects ever created, an ex
treme Instance of the Juxtaposition of unlikely
objects.28
Are these instances comic? In a sense they are, in the
absurd sense of the word, and In the surrealist sense, for
they show how serious the comic may become as an expression
of the unwillingness of many to think for themselves. This
is not only the Age of Anxiety, but the Age of Authority.
When a sign proclaims: ART, then art it is, especially
when further authority, in the form of the critic, upholds
the claim in a learned Journal. Suppose a surrealist de
signer wished to exploit the prejudice for the dictates of
authority. He could paint his scenery on periaktol copied
from a Disney cartoon, attribute the authentication of de
sign to Margaret Bleber or Von Qerkan, and have the whole
thing reviewed in the Tulane Drama Review as a contribu
tion to theatrical research by a new Vitruvius. Some of
the audience will see the joke and take a good look at
much of the theatrical research which appears in the Jour
nals, and this would be one of the aims of the Surrealist.
As for the others, the Surrealist would smile and shake
his head.
28
Rosalind Constable, "Art Pods In," Life.
July 10, 1964, p. 68.
83
When Meret Oppenhelm displayed her famous fur-lined
cup, saucer, and spoon, the object puzzled most viewers,
who tried to see some deeper meaning in it. Perhaps there
is some esoteric meaning which could be attached to so
unique and useless an object as a fur-lined tea set, but
it is more likely that humor is the desired impression.
After all, some viewers of this kind of surrealist play
thing do smile as they look at it, although they may not be
able to give a reason. The secret smile is too often
rooted in the subconscious to be explained, but there is a
reason for it.
What of an object which could be found in many a
store in the 1930's, not surreal by design, but surreal in
effect— a plaster statue of a feather-bonneted Indian
princess with a clock in her navel? The variety of clocks
set in ships, wheels, covered wagons, and anything else,
which deluged tables and mantlepleces all over America,
could not but inspire someone to carry the fad to its
extreme and thus was bom the Indian princess with the
clock firmly implanted in her navel, and an alarm clock at
that. Alarm clocks are funnier than plain ones. The
surrealist stage-setting can spy out the ridiculous bric-
abrac and furniture which customers purchase in vast quan
tities and push the ridiculous one step further and turn
everything into the princess and the clock. When one fad
vanishes, another will appear for the designer to use for
his own comic purposes.
Surrealist humor is absurd because the point is
that mankind and its ways and appurtenances are absurd.
In some ways it is the illogical humor of dreams, reflect-
ing Henri: Bergson's theory: "Comic absurdity is of the
PQ
same nature as that of dreams." 7 It is confused and
often demands laughter for reasons that cannot be ex
plained. Something Just seems funny, as it might in a
dream. It may be so personally comic that another person
might see nothing to smile at, even if the Joke is pointed
out to him. This is a problem of all comedy, especially
of much of the surreal kind. We laugh, but analysis can
not provide an answer. Too much of the effect belongs to
Freud's idea that the comic is part of the unconscious de
sire to disguise true feelings. What the comic incident
may represent is too often buried; only the laughter comes
to the surface. It is the kind of humor that might find
expression in an old joke about a preacher who sent a
letter to his bishop: "I regret to inform you of the
death of my wife. Can you send me a substitute for the
week-end?" There would be many who could not laugh, since
the idea of humor in the clergy or in death might not be
allowed. Others, who might themselves have suffered a
29
Henri Bergson, Laughter, trans. Cloudsley Bereton
and Fred Rothwell (New York: Macmillan Company, 1911),
p. 166.
recent loss of a wife, might laugh. Probably neither
group could give a reason for laughter or the withholding
of it.
Surrealist humor is generally closer to something
like the sort of thing which occurs in newspapers: the
slip which reveals unconscious thoughts but remains comic.
Earth's last war. How and where will it be
fought? At Adventist Church, Sunday night.
The beautiful deb was attired in an Imported
creation of Jade-green crepe trimmed with ecru
lace around the punch bowl.
And a very surrealist sentence:
The concealed gun is shown in the photograph.3°
To provide the visual counterpart of such lines is one of
the purposes of the surrealist stage-setting. It at once
illustrates a truth and yet retains a sense of mystery.
It is a difficult task to perform, but it is part of the
design problem to discover a way to make visible the
sentence: "The concealed gun is shown in the photograph."
Distortion
A common way to change accepted patterns of think
ing is to distort that which is known. Rings are round,
but the fingers they fit are somewhat rectangular. A
mirror shows us to ourselves, but we are reversed. The
examples can be multiplied many thousands of times. We
30
Milton Wright, What's Funny and Why (New York:
Harvest House, 1939)# p. i£B.
know something, even if it is not true. The surrealist
attempt to make us know that what we see is false is
evident in many of their own theatrical productions. The
actors focus binoculars on the audience and watch them
carefully; a bathtub suspended above the stage tips and
spills a purple poodle waving an American flag; a be-
medalled doorman pulls open an ornate door to reveal a
brick wall, through which a Grecian-robed woman steps to
find herself in a Chinese opium den. * What does all this
mean? The whole idea of watching actors on a stage is
somewhat ridiculous, but it has been done for thousands of
years. The Surrealists imply that those thousands of years
have been spent foolishly, that the audience could do the
same things they watch on the stage if they had the desire,
since a play is nothing but life arranged to fit a time
limit. The other oddities reveal that normal expectation
can be distorted, if anyone cares to look beyond the usual,
Bathtubs are not used to provide dressing rooms for per
forming dogs, but they could be; doors opened by official
doormen do not open on blank walls, nor do people merely
step through brick walls. Yet, what if they did? The
Surrealists remind the audience that an entirely new world
could open up for those who forget the past and change
their point of view. Just as Edison had to see the light
from the gas lamp and not the fuel before he could de
velop an electric light, so muBt every man look beyond
the obvious and see the possibility of transformation of
one idea to another. Transformation is an important con
cept to the Surrealists; it is part of the search for what
could be. Thus, on the stage, a door may open at the
hinge side, an elevator may travel sideways, a painting
may come to life, a floor may tilt and spill the actors
into the first row of spectators. Anything which should
not be, ,1s. It is all a part of a scheme to show that an
entire universe is waiting for those willing to enter into
it imaginatively. The distortions of function and meaning
are part of a technique for forcing the imagination to
discard stereotypes and to range widely.
This same sort of distortion is not restricted to
the Surrealists. There are, after all, cigarette lighters
built like pistols, one-way mirrors, exercycles, colorless
lipstick, and the variety of items of commerce which are
either not what they seem or which do not function as they
should. On a stage, as part of a theatrical production,
such distortions may be magnified, which results in some
of the excesses. Yet the theatre is a magnifier of all
that It presents; the Surrealists merely add another dimen
sion to the process. Part of the scenic plan of distor
tion is showmanship, a production exploitation of the
bizarre, and this is perhaps its prime reason for ex
istence. When used in such a manner it is as legitimate
as the parades of the circus or the whirling saws and
88
sword cabinets of the magic show or even the singing and
dancing routines of a musical comedy. It Is showmanship
in the long tradition of the theatre. Below the surface,
present for those who wish to look. Is the suggestion that
the spectator can create a show of his own, if he looks at
his own world as it might be transformed by the theatre.
Surprise and Shock
Surrealism Is often condemned because Its material
Is shocking, too much so for the taste of many; but the
shock Is deliberate, as Julien Levy pointed out:
The surrealists often deliberately propose to shock
and surprise, so that you may be deprived of all
preconceived standards and open to new impressions.
They Intend to shock, as the safe-burglar might pare
the skin off his finger tips, so that his super
sensitized bared flesh might the better feel the
tumblers fall; to shock as the bull-fighter first
bares the nerves of his audience by the wilful
shedding of blood and disembowelling of defenceless
horses, so that the supersensltlzed public might
the better respond to the grace and agility of
subsequent performance. Age and habit have too
often overcome the original intensity of living.
Unfortunately, unless people are startled they
frequently fail to devote their attention to any
thing as subtle as a work of art, which must be
understood through contemplation. The surrealist
fight is against apathy, not against incompre
hension. 31
Just as there are many who uannot watch a bullfight, and
others who condemn it completely, so there are those who
cannot break through the barrier which the shock effect of
some Surrealism has erected. It is an admitted barrier,
31
Levy, op. cit., p. 8.
one whioh will permanently divorce a large portion of the
prospective audience from the experience which comes from
viewing what lies beyond. The shock may be too much, but
it is part of Surrealism. Again, it may be so mild as to
be readily passed over, thus becoming an accepted factor.
For the theatre, shock may have to be reduced, at
least if the designer thinks that he may so offend his
audience that they will no longer accept the play. But,
then, he must usually omit all offensive material.
Surprise is a mild form of shock, and may be ser
ious or comic. It attempts to catch the spectator in a
state of unawareness and to make him suddenly aware. It
may have a meaningful point to make, although its usual
aim is to provoke laughter or a gasp of amazement. It
breaks the expected pattern, and that is its value to the
surrealist method.
The danger of using surprise in the theatre is
that it may divert the audience's attention from the play
and make It aware of the theatre. In a serious drama
this would be an admitted drawback, in most instances;
but in the comedy, the farce, and the entertainment the
disadvantage would become advantage, especially when the
ridiculousness of man and his world are to be mocked.
Both shock and surprise are used to achieve a
feeling of wonder about the world as it is known. What
does it all mean? That is a question often asked.
90
It means simply that things are marvellous, that Is, that
they are to be marvelled at, to be examined emotionally
for what they might be If they were not what they already
are. The Surrealists "Incessantly exclaim over their con
suming passion for the marvellous," Herbert Muller wrote,
"but this passion consumes a deal of pretty cheap thrills
and shocks. Their magic often looks like voodoo."^2
True, the Jack-in-the box or the pistol which shoots out
a flag lettered BANG! are not Intellectual novelties, but
they can serve an Intellectual purpose, which is to imag
ine a real man confined in a tiny box or a real gun which
fires messages and not bullets. Someone could make a case
for the Jack-in-the-box as a symbol of man's imprisonment
in a suffocating environment and his unalterable urge to
escape whenever the door is opened. As for the gun, are
not votes sometimes called "paper bullets" and artillery
shells sometimes stuffed with propaganda leaflets instead
of explosives? As for voodoo, it has its tricksters, but
It also possesses its unexplained mysteries. The unex
plained mysteries of the thrills and shocks are what the
Surrealists attempt to suggest, not to explain, but merely
to suggest.
Decoration
In the theatre, the purpose of a surrealist
32Herbert Muller, "Surrealism: A Dissenting
Opinion," Hew Directions 1940. p. 561.
91
stage-setting is often no more than decoration. Other
considerations, such as those discussed in preceding
sections, may enter, but the usual reason for adapting the
techniques of Surrealism to the theatre is to provide
interesting and colorful scenery. When the decorative
possibilities are foremost in the mind of the designer
there is no need to consider the processes of surrealist
creation or the psychology of it; it is enough to borrow
what has already been done and to bring it onto the stage,
either in direct copy or by adaptation. In this way
Surrealism can be treated as any other historic style and
its characteristics utilized for their appeal to the
audience.
CHAPTER IV
OENERAL FORM IN SURREALIST
STAGE-SETTING
Scenic form Is the outer expression of an Idea.
Both form and idea are required to achieve the Intended
goal— the aesthetic whole. Roger Fry, to whom the problem
of form was of prime importance, commented: I conceived
the form and the emotion which it conveyed as being in
extricably bound together in the aesthetic whole.The
form must somehow evoke the emotion which it seeks to con
vey, then, in the words of William Butler Yeats:
. . . when sound, and colour, and form are in a
musical relation, a beautiful relation to one
another, they become as it were one sound, one
form, and evoke an emotion that is made out of
their distinct evocations and yet is one emotion.
The same relation exists between all portions of
every work of art . . . and the more perfect it
is, and the more various and numerous the ele
ments that have flowed Into its perfection, the
more powerful will be the emotion, the power
^■Roger Fry, Vision and Design (London: Chat to and
Wlndus, 1920), p. 2^4.
2William Butler Yeats, Essays (New York:
Macmillan Company, 1912), p.. .193*
92
93
The attempt at such a synthesis must be made. The attempt
begins with a determination of the content and techniques
which underlie the form.
The surrealist content and technique developed, to
a large extent, from nineteenth-century Romanticism and the
later Neo-romanticism as practiced by Olorglo de Chirico,
Pavel Tohelltchev, Christian B4rard, and Eugene Berman.3
Surrealism added psychoanalytic symbolism and automatic
production to further expand the concept of subjectivity
and removal from the ordinary world of experience. Almost
at the beginning, despite the Insistence on the Idea of an
unconscious flow of thought as a guide to the writer or
painter— automatic production— Surrealism divided into two,
quite opposite methods of representation. One was unreal
reality, the near-photographic painting of the unreal;
the other, unstructured and spontaneous paintings or
planned but amorphous pictures. The two methods, and
their adaptation to theatrical scenery, are described In
chapters following. The common material of both Is the
subject of this chapter.
Neo-gomantic Painting
The Neo-romantlcs displaced the ruins, shadows,
and abandoned landscapes of their Romantic predecessors
3
These artists have all been successful designers
in the theatre.
94
into a country of the mind, where imagination transformed
nature into a world less real than dreamed, day-dreamed
in this case, as opposed to the night dreaming of the
Surrealists. It is a theatrioal world. The skies of a
Berman or de Chirico are the unreal greens, blues, or
yellows found nowhere else but on a gelatin-lighted
cyclorama, and the forced perspective might have been
transferred from the Teatro Ollmplco. An aura of theatri
cality infuses the strange worlds, which are
characterized by a mood of languid sadness, of
futility and melancholy . . • distant horizons
. . • long, accentuated perspectives leading
either into vast distances or, perversely, point
ing all emphasis toward relatively miniature
objects in the paintings (creating an element
of surprise that such objects should be there
at all). . . .4
The Neo-romantic world is a lonely one, drawn apart from
the crowded one that is all about, Just as the universe of
the play is set apart from everything else and confined to
a small stage, alone but observed. The loneliness, to
gether with a faint melancholy and futility, later ap
peared in Surrealism.
Giorgio de Chirico expressed an idea, in 1913$
which was to become another feature of Surrealism:
. • . Thought must so far detach itself from
everything which is called logic and sense, it must
4
George A. Flanagan, Understand and Enjoy Modern
Art. Rev. ed. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1962),
P. 277.
95
draw ao far away from human fetters, that things
may appaar to It undar a naw aspect, as though
lllumlnatad by a constellation now appearing for
the first time.5
It was still not Surrealism, yet close to It. Signifi
cantly, de Chirloo's Illumination Is from the stars, bril
liant, dim, unoapturable stars shining In darkness, and
not from the sun, even one setting baJLow the distant hori
zon, or from the moon. Romanticism had been left behind,
with Its reliance on nature, and the interiorlzatlon of
imagery had begun to replace It. Neo-romanticism was the
Romantic adapted for a theatrical representation. No
matter how open its landscapes or vast its horizons, the
settings of Neo-romanticism are Interiors; they belong
on a stage, not in an art gallery.
When Eugene Berman designed a tomb for Romeo and
Juliet (fig. 1)^ he draped the vaguely-Renaissance crypt
with sweeping masses of what might be silk, and he placed
the tomb on a barren plain, where nothing exists and where
even the wind Is silent. No moss grows on this tomb, nor
do the stones split under the grasp of strangling vines
or the guardian angels above crumble under centuries of
weather. It exists in a theatrical world, not one of
"I believe in a world of poetic Illusion and Imaginary
^Quoted in Alfred A. Barr, Jr. (ed.), Masters of
Modem Art (New York: Museum of Modem Art, i95^)»
p. 134.
^Design for a ballet.
FIGURE 1
Eugene Berman: Design for Romeo and Juliet
97 ;
reality,"? Berman wrote, and his Romeo and Juliet fulfil
their imaginary-real destinies in a tomb of poetic il
lusion. The Berman style, according to fellow designer
Oliver Smith, is "Infused with his personal lyric and ten
der mood, his preoccupation with baroque architectural
forms, with flamboyant and nostalgic color poetically
a
balanced." Painter Frederic Taubes adds that "his is an
enchanting world of sunsets, ruins, half-faded memories,
and vivid dreams.Berman is not a Surrealist, but he
stands as a model of the Neo-romantic tradition from which
the Surrealists drew.
Automatic Production
Surrealism began with an attempt at calling forth
the raw material of the unconscious, with no attempt at
control or later arrangement. It was what two leading
critics called
a serious search for the material of art in the
subconscious mind, in dreams and hallucinations,
in the irrational and atavistic layers of being,
. . . Surrealism is an artistic parallel to
?Eugene Berman, "Scene Design and Theatre," Stage
Design for Stage and Screen, ed. Orville K. Larsen (East
Lansing: Michigan State University, 1961), p. 303*
^Oliver Smith, "Ballet Design," Dance News Annual
1953. eds. Winthrop Palmer and Anatole Chujoy (New Vork:
"Sirred A. Knopf, 1953), P. 9^.
o
^Frederic Taubes, Abracadabra and Modem Art
(New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1963), p. 93.
98
Freud's researches, though on an intuitive
rather than analytical level.10
It attempted to break through the barriers to reach the
source of the creative powers, following one of the prem
ises of Freud:
The differentiation of mental life into what
Is conscious and what Is unconscious is a funda
mental premise of Freudian psychology. It holds
that powerful mental processes exist outside
conscious awareness which can produce In the mind
all the effects which ordinary ideas can, Including
the effects which then become conscious as ideas,
without those processes themselves becoming
conscious.11
The ideas were already present,waiting only to be freed.
The purpose for the search for the liberating forces was
something like that suggested by Carl Jung:
The shaping of the primordial image Is, as It were,
a translation into the language of the present which
makes It possible for every man to find again the
deepest springs of life which would otherwise be
closed to him. Therein lies the social Importance
of art; it is constantly at work educating the
spirit of the age, since it brings birth to those
forms in which the age is most lacking. • •
In the Junglan sense, the methods used by Surrealism might
serve a double purpose: to search for a way to liberate
the hidden material of the mind and so tap new creative
forces, and to reinstate lost visions to a generation
10Lloyd Goodrich and John I. H. Baur, American Art of
Our Century (New York: Frederick A. Prager, 19&1)» P»
^Patrick Mullahy, Oedipus: Myth and Complex
(New York: Hermitage Press, ±94ti), p. 14.
12
Carl 0. Jung, Contributions to Analytical Psychol
ogy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 192o), p. 24o.
99
which remembered them only vaguely In dreams. Automatism
possessed the power to free both creator and audience from
the shackles of convention, if it could somehow utilize
that power.
The common form of automatic production is the
simple doodle, which is no more than the random response
of the hand to whatever is in the mind at the time. One
surrealist form of the doodle was the "Exquisite Corpse,"
named from what was supposedly the firBt sentence produoed
from a cooperative effort at automatic production. The
sentence was written by three men, one of whom provided
the subject; the second, the verb, with no knowledge of
the previous words; and the object by a third, who was
unaware of what had gone before. The sentence produced by
this method was: "The exquisite corpse will drink the new
wine." In drawing, the same technique could be used. One
artist drew what he wanted, folded the paper, and handed it
to the next man, who did the same. The result was a ran
dom drawing produced without control. In somewhat the same
way, cooperative automatic production might appear painted
on a backdrop or as a picture to be hung on a set wall.
More closely related to the usage of the theatre
is a painting like Andre Masson's Battle of Fishes
(fig. 2). Here there seems to have been no particular
effort to paint an underwater scene consciously, but merely
to draw lines which arranged themselves into fish. The
100
j
i
FIGURE 2
Andrl Masson: Battle of Fishes
101
designer for the theatre may also start with lines and
allow his hand to cross the paper as he thinks about the
play. Whether the result will be useful is unpredictable,
but, after all, the designer, in his preliminary drawings,
is free to continue the process until he has achieved what
he feels to be suggestive enough to oonvert to a full-size
backdrop.
Even freer than random lines Is random color,
which is already a part of the theatrical heritage in much
of the effect obtained by lighting and also in some of the
techniques of the scenic artist. Again, the application
is without previous planning. The paint can be spilled
in a pool on the canvas and then allowed to spread, or
the canvas might be folded to produce large patterns like
over-scale Rorschach Tests. Indeed, the accidental is
worked into an arrangement which satisfies the demands of
the play, as conceived by the designer. This part of
Surrealism, at least, is no stranger to the theatre.
Object Displacement
Objects generally have an accepted connotation,
but when they take on a different function they may become
surrealist. "The thing is to detach objects from each
other," wrote Yves Duplessls, "to no longer consider them
in any particular relationship, but as they are in
t h e m s e l v e s .*3 Thus a statue on a pedestal la a work of art,
but one mired In a ditch may be a frozen human waiting the
rescue that never comes* Many of the surrealist props for
the theatre follow this pattern* They are things which
have a meaning, but which have had the meaning stripped
away. An Empire couch might be supported by a pair of
hands, or a stairway built from a ladder of the bones of
the rib cage* Whenever an object 1b found in a place
where it does not belong it possesses the quality of Sur
realism, although it may never become surreal; the Juxta
position and manipulation of the designer's material are
still required.
Objects then become what Surrealist Georges Hugnet
called: "pure and simple expressions of a desire, ful
filments of a dream." They are nothing else. "There can
be no possible excuse for regarding them in an aesthetic
light. Nothing in them could Justify it . . . It is
with this in mind that the surrealist object must be ex
amined. It is, or it is intended to be, a visualization
of fantasy.
The sort of object found useful in the theatre
may be something like a Hans Bellmer doll (fig. 3)> which
is a department store mannequin capable of being arranged
^Dupleisis, op, clt., p. 28.
^Georges Hugnet, "1870 to 1936," Read, Surrealism,
p. 247.
FIGURE 3
Hans Bellmer: Doll
104
Into a variety of positions and which can conjure up Im
ages not In the mannequin Itself but Inherent In Its re
semblance to a human. Although Ballmer's doll Is frankly
a display form, other mannequins, with a close resemblance
to humans, can Increase the powers of evocation, espec
ially those of a sado-masoohlstlc nature. The dummy, In a
way, becomes a human, which Is undergoing some strange
torment•
Reversing the Bellmer technique, a human might be
come a doll, or a statue.They might be transformed Into
living candelabra, holding torches to illuminate a myster
ious palace. They might be the Invention of a Roman Em
peror or an Eastern Prince, to whom slaves are only that
which he Intends them to be. If he wills that men and
women become statues, then they take their places and
serve him. Where other men would use marble or metal fig
ures to support lights, or fireplace mantles, or furniture,
the omnipotent ruler can transform humans into statues,
since they are his property and an extension of his will.
The dreamer, who is the same supreme ruler in his world,
creates his own kingdom, where all is his to do with as he
pleases, no matter how censorable or fantastic that pleas
ure might be. The Surrealist, who is the dreamer awake,
gives shape to his dreams and paints or builds whatever
he can imagine.
A man might become part of a drawing (fig. 4) and
105
FIGURE 4
Jean Cocteau: Design for The Blood of the Poet
i
106
i
I
serve as an Instrument for carrying out actions necessary
for the action of the play. The Cocteau object-drawing,
with his face painted almost as a skull, may reaoh out
hypnotloally to draw his victims toward the coffin he
guards. What was two--a man and a drawing— has been dis
placed by a new object, which has become one. With this
technique a painting on a wall might come to life. In the
way of the ghoBt story "The Mezzotint," In which the be
ings which Inhabit the gardens of a painting move about
and reach out to swallow up those who watch In horror.
The comic possibilities are also present to be exploited,
as they have been In the ancestral paintings which step
down from the walls or the tree-trunks which move off as
the comedian leans against them. The theatre has use for
the technique of object displacement, for comedy, horror,
wonder, and surprise, whether based on dream, fantasy, or
an absurdity already suggested by the object Itself.
Dream and Fantasy
In dreams and waking fantasies lie all the
thoughts of man. Their form Is generally changed to meet
the demands of life and society, but the content remains.
Surrealism exploits the content. In the theatre the
dreams of the play mingle with the dreams of the designer,
and the setting of the play, filtered through the ever
present practicality of scenery, becomes the expression of
107
both. The attempt le to create a world of the beauty,
amasement, horror, and whatever elae la suggested by some-
thlng other than the logical, neceaaary modea of thinking.
Here is found "the beautiful appearancea of the dream
world, in the production of which every man la a perfect
artist,"1* * which Nletzache considered the baala of art.
The difficulty lle8 in the translation of the dream onto
canvas or properties.
A dream is supposed to be wish-fulfilment, al
though the wish may be ao disguised aa to be unrecogniz
able. For the theatre the wish represented should be that
of the character moat responsible for the action of the
play. In a play like Lady In the Dark the dreamer and her
dreams are contained in the script, but in other plays the
designer's problems are multiplied by the multiplicity of
dreams which are important. There are Macbeth's dreams
and those of Lady Macbeth, those of the island of The
Tempest and the forest of A Midsummer Night's Dream, as
well as those of the characters of many other plays. As
with all of theatre, selection of what is to be repre
sented and emphasized is left to the discretion of the
designer and producer.
One great problem in converting dream to the form
^^Friederich Nietzsche, "The Birth of Tragedy," The
Philosophy of Frlederioh Nietzsche (New York: Modem
Library, n.d.J, p. l6d.
108
required for the theatre Ilea In the difficulty of under-
standing what Is dreamed. According to Jolande Jacobi, a
follower of Jung:
• . • The dreamer is shaken by his inner images,
he is astonished and often confused, but they
suggest nothing, or only nonesaentials, to him.
Very frequently he understands neither their
language nor their meaning. • •
If the designer relies on his own dreams alone, he may find
something of use in his setting of a play, especially If
the play does not demand a strict interpretation of a char
acter viewpoint. Or, if he is fortunate, the dream will
be wish-fulfilment and reveal the imagery he wishes for.
Fantasy is probably of more value to the designer
than dreams, for it can be guided and built upon with
models already present. From the work of painters,
writers, other designers, abd non-artists who allow their
fantasies to range widely— children, the insane, the near-
insane, or the criminal, for example— he can siphon ideas
which satisfy the requirements of the play he is to design.
He need not be so afraid that the audience will not under
stand as he would be if the raw imagery of dreams appeared
on his stage. Much of fantasy is standard; it possesses
meaning for a large audience. Edgar Allan Poe's House of
Usher is no real house, but one in which the weird is a
^Jolande Jacobi, Complex/Archetype/Symbol. trans.
Ralph Manheim (New York: Pantheon Books, 195^), P- 129*
109;
constant companion; and Macbeth's Witches conjure up their
ghostly line of future Icings In a dark forest where magic
Invades the earth and everything that grows thereon*
These are places of fantasy, recognized as such, and used
as such throughout history. They need no translation by
experts or the initiated. Their presence Is the indi
cator of the departure from the real.
Dream and fantasy can provide some of the subject
matter for the designer, for they are the basic material of
Surrealism. The form that Is given them is In the prov
ince of the designer. It is his choice whether they re
main personal to him, and so possibly without meaning to
an audience, whether they use symbolism acceptable and
known through long usage. It is further his choice to
illustrate the dreams of the play's writer or one of his
characters, or to give visual expression to a character
trait or dramatic event which might be dream, fantasy, or
hallucination. Dream provides the tool; the designer re
mains the artisan who must put it to work.
Symbolism
All art is symbolic, since it reproduces in
another medium the evidence of the senses. It is appear
ance, not the thing itself, and thus symbol, for a symbol
is that which is not the thing but something which repre
sents the thing. It may be recognizable or obscure,
110
variable In meaning or meaningless to anyone but he who
uses It. Thousands of objects are found In the visual
vocabulary to represent what might take pages of words to
describe, If words could be found. To a large extent they
are cliches, although they might better be described as
conventions. In the movies the western hero wore a white
hat and the villlan wore black, at least until the advent
of the so-called adult western, whloh required the audi
ence to discard the days of guns and fists for those of
neuroses and sociology and to revise Its Ideas of symbol
ism. The stage had Its young men with tennis rackets,
sedate butlers In dress suits, ladies of the night with
red dresses and swinging purses, and Its Columbines,
Pierrots, and Harlequins. These are symbolic figures, or
to give them the theatrical title, stock characters. Prom
their appearance alone th6y Indicated what the audience
was to think. Such is the purpose of symbolism. Since
Surrealism makes much use of symbolism, especially that of
dream and mythology, it would be well to consider the sub
ject briefly, not so much as Symbolism, a theatrical style
or literary term, but as one aspect of the form which the
surrealist stage-setting adopts for part of its content.
Symbolism is verbal or visual shorthand, sometimes
expressing that which is readily translatable into words,
at other times standing for concepts which cannot be
adequately described. There are symbols which are so
in
i
i
common as to be called universal, such as the sun and its
representation of the creative foroe; others which apply to;
i
a particular culture, as the Satanic serpent of Christian
ity; still others which give form to dream, as Freud's
Identification of a house with the human body; and, fin
ally, those which hold meaning for a particular Individual
only, as might be found In the identification of a sailboat
with one which caused the death of a member of the family.
So, when speaking of symbolism we must bear In mind the
variety of symbols and the concepts which they express.
Suppose we see three dots of color:
These mean nothing in themselves, unless they have a
private meaning for some one person, but when arranged in
another way, as part of a traffic signal
they become the red of danger, the amber of caution, and
the green of clearance, all of which are arbitrary, but
accepted meanings for those colorB when used In the context
112
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of a traffic signal. Such symbolism Is dependent upon the
convention of our particular society and In that particu
lar usage. In another context the green could represent
the coolness of the sea or the quiet of a forest, just as
the red might represent passion, fire, or cheerfulness.
Obviously symbolism Is a variable thing.
The amorphous quality of the symbol might be il
lustrated by a design like the swastika. It Is common to
a variety of countries and eras of history, but what hap
pens when someone comes across It? For much of the western
world there Is an Immediate reaction: the Nazis, and all
that the Nazis stood for in Hitler's Germany and in the
United States. There Is nothing Germanic about the design,
but the idea of It is so involved with Nazism that many
years will elapse before the link between the two is sub
merged. At one time, the swastika was a mark of Christian
ity, rather than the cross, and it remained prominent un
til about the third century, but who today, other than a
specialist, would connect the two? Thus two opposing
philosophies may be represented by the same symbol. In
another sphere, the swastika Is used as a good-luck sign
and may be found on the pottery of American Indians, dime-
store bracelets, and on the covers of the collected works
of Rudyard Kipling. Before any of these uses, it was part
of the Sanscrit system. Without knowledge of the context
in which the swastika Is placed there can be no secure
Interpretation. Standing alone, It becomes whatever the
viewer makes of it. If used In a design for a play set in
the distant past it may serve as a reminder that the Idea
of oppression is a continuing force in the world, not con
fined to any one time or country, but recurrent whenever
men use the state to rule rather than to represent.
It is apparent that symbols may be manipulated to
serve the purpose of the user. In Surrealism, where the
usual so often becomes the unusual, the fluidity of sug
gestion is a useful tool for the designer, allowing him to
combine an accepted meaning with a changed one to provide
a distortion of the expected. Suppose, to illustrate this
we compare two standard Christian symbols as they occur
normally and as transformed for the purpose of forcing an
alteration of patterns of thinking. We will use the
Madonna and Child and the Crucifixion.
First, compare the Madonna and Child of the
Renaissance painter Filippo Lippi (fig. 5) with that of
the Surrealist Max Ernst (fig. 6). The Lippi "Madonna and
Child" is a standard Quattrocento representation, with an
Itallnate woman and child, identifiable as holy by the
luminous golden haloeB which surround their heads. Lippi
adds the further symbolism of the shell-shaped niche in
which the two are found, saying visually that the pagan
shell of Aphrodite's birth is also the shell of the birth
of Christianity and a sign that the new religion will
FIGURE 5
Filippo Lippi: Madonna and Child
115
FIGURE 6
Max Ernst: The Virgin Spanking the
Infant Jesus
I
116
flourish. Everything in the painting is calculated to give
the impression of orthodox Christianity as it was known in
the Renaissance. The figures are painted statues, en
closed in a nlohe, as Surrealist figures might be, but
they serve as examples, or symbols, of the two people they
are supposed to represent.
The Max Ernst Madonna and Child are humans who
happen to be the founders of a religion,nuch as Goya's
royal families happen to be rulers of Spain. They are
power brought to earth, degraded, if you will, but removed
from the protective cloak of tradition and fear to become
a part of the ordinary family of man. Perhaps Ernst
wanted the viewers of his painting to think that if Jesus
had been spanked as a child, Instead of being treated as a
divine creature, he might have grown up to be a good
Jewish carpenter instead of a parable-quoting Messiah.
Or perhaps Ernst Intended us to realize that religion is
the product of man, not of Qod, and so should not be called
upon to solve such problems as those begun by man with the
first World War and the years of privation and disillusion
which followed. Possibly he merely intended to shock the
sensitive. All of the above Implications are found in
Surrealism, since it has as its intent the forcing of new
patterns of thought. Whatever his original intent, it
was certainly not to illustrate standard dogma, but to
suggest that man might take a fresh look at, and to renew,
1 1 7 !
an old belief.
As a second religious symbol the Cross of the
Crucifixion will serve to reveal the changed value of a
symbol when transformed for a purpose. The "Crucifixion"
of the Renaissance painter Peruglno (fig. 7) la represen
tative of Church Illustration and not an attempt to por
tray a historical event. The landscape Is not a Golgotha
In Palestine but the Umbrian Italy of faceted rocks and
thin-trunked trees so much a feature of Renaissance paint
ing. The cross Is made of smoothed wood, balanced nicely,
and painted cleanly. This Christ Is nailed to the cross,
but the arms seem to bear no weight, nor does the face
show pain. The blood trickles from the nall-wounds, but
It is only a red line. The Peruglno Crucifixion is of a
kind which Intends to point out that the event was not
confined to a historical place and time, but is part of
the whole condition of mankind and could happen anywhere.
The universal Christ and the universal message are de
picted, not the particular.
Consider next drawings by George Grosz (fig. 8)
and James Ensor (fig. 9). We recognize the event, but we
are aware that it is no longer that described In the Bible
and interpreted by the Church. It has been brought from
the past to serve a modern purpose. George Grosz had an
obvious propaganda motive In his depiction of Christ wear
ing a gas mask as He died on the Cross. He wanted to
118
FIGURE 7
Perugino: Crucifixion
FIGURE 8
George Grosz: Christ Wearing a
Gas Mask
120
FIGURE 9
James Ensor: Christ In Agony
i
121
show that war, In hla case World War I, destroyed Chris
tianity, even though each side appealed to God and Christ
for help in gaining victory for its side.1^ Could there
be a Qerman Christ and an English one at the same time?
Both sides murdered Him, the picture proclaims. He may
don a protective gas mask, but He is doomed to die, Just
as the modem soldier and civilian, who wore their gas
masks, also die brutally at the hands of their persecutors
who call themselves the state. Religion has been swept
aside by politics. Grosz's vision saw this, and his draw
ing tells us to see it with him. Whether we agree or not,
we think about it. It is part of the surrealist vision
as well.
James Ensor returned to the ancient world for the
setting of his drawing, but it is not the death on Calvary
as proclaimed by the Bible and the Church. It has been
described aB "symbolic of the attempt to give dignity and
meaning to human life mocked and destroyed by the mob."^®
Certainly men are mocked by and destroyed by other men, as
was Christ, but what are those gargoylish creatures on the
ground near the foot of the cross and the winged skeletons
17
He also wanted to protest against the Nazi march
toward war. The drawing was one of those which brought
him before Nazi Justice. His protest was all too clear.
Libby Tannenbaum, James Ensor (New York: Museum
of Modem Art, 1951), p. 6TT
in the air? They are more than the spirits of men. They
are the invisible (lemons which torment man, especially
imaginative man, demons hidden by day, appearing only in
nightmares and the ultimate night of death. Then it is
that they come out to Jeer at man, to claw at him, as the
creature at the top of the cross claws at the eyes of
ChrlBt. The light which fills almost half the picture is
not the Godly light from a welcoming Heaven, but the
stream of a Satanic fire, upon which glides a winged skel
eton and his crew. And from the distance even more of the
fleshless, devouring angels of Hell fly in for the feast,
as the vultures must have flown toward the bodies raised
upon the crosses at Golgatha. We may ask what the picture
really means, but there is no answer. It is a graveyard
tale, remote from the untroubled Perugino world.
Salvador Dali's Crucifixion (fig. 10) is un
troubled and his landscape quiet, if unusual, but the
woman at the foot of the cross is no Virgin Mary, but
Dali's wife, and the figure on the cross might be Dali
himself. It is a theatrical stunt, set on a checker-
boarded patio which looks out onto a desert with no
features but the moutains in the far distance. The cross,
too, is a prop, suspended in space, not supporting the
body, but merely existing. The whole thing is
FIGURE 10
Salvador Dali: Crucifixion
124
"melodrama" and "sheer schmaltz"1^ In the opinion of some,
or "intrusive and embarrassing," according to New York
Times critic John Canaday, who went on:
They seem to me to be blatant expressions of
morbid eroticism, In which the artist has
abused the right of sanctuary to the point of
sacrilege. They are super-surrealist. • • .20
The painting Is a sort of science-fiction thing, appearing
as though Christ had come from a different planet and had
been quickly executed as an invading Venuslan or Martian
might be. Still, It is a recognizable Crucifixion, and at
least a vestige of the original Bymbollsm remains, enough
to remind the viewer of the fact and to suggest that the
world has changed.
The kind of symbolism most often associated with
Surrealism Is that of dreams and Is largely based on the
findings of Freud and his followers. Partly, it is de
rived from the standard symbols deciphered by the psycho
analysts; partly, it Is the Intuition of the artist. A
psychoanalyst might quarrel with the symbolism of theatri
cal Surrealism, saying that It is not true; but since the
theatre is not a clinic, the designer, not the scientist,
is the interpreter of the play and the visualizer of its
^Frank and Dorothy Getlein, Christianity in Modem
Art (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1961) >
pp. 06-87*
20
John Canaday, Embattled Critic (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Company, 1962), p. 100.
125j
I
images, and it is his task to suggest the required back
grounds, not to illustrate a case history.
To find symbols which can be given form in a
stage-setting the designer may search the writings of
those who have explored the unoonscious, especially Freud
and Jung. Freud wrote: "The number of things which are
represented symbolically in dreams is not great,"21 but
those he listed are capable of undergoing metamorphoses
of such great variety as to be indecipherable. When the
basic idea is emphasized, not the extreme extension, an
audience may recognize the meaning attributed to the sym
bol. For example, Freud's identification of a house with ,
the human body would be meaningless in the theatre unless
the scenery house underwent some distortion to make it
less apparently what it is and more Implicitly what it is
supposed to be. Still, the house, however changed, must
remain recognizable in some way. So it is with all
"Freudian" symbols. Their inherent characteristics iden
tify them for what they are, and distortions of various
kinds give them the dream-like aspect which is required
for the departure from realism. Unless the dream quality
is present, they have underlying meaning only for the
small section of the audience which is analytic in nature.
21
Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psycho
analysis . trans. Joan Riviere (New York: Liveright
Publishing Co., 1935)# P« 136.
126
The symbols of Surrealism are adaptations of those of
psychoanalysis.
The value of such symbols, when used properly, was
explained by Erich Fromm:
Symbolic language Is a language In which inner
experience, feelings and thoughts are expressed as
If they were sensory experience, events in the
outer world. ... It Is the one universal language
the human race has ever developed, the same for all
cultures and throughout history. . • *22
Symbolism transforms emotions without form Into visual
images which can be perceived, however faintly, In the
dream, for it is only when a man is asleep that he can
remember what Fromm called the forgotten language. When
Surrealism uses the content of dreams It Is, partly at
least, with the expectation that the universal language
will speak to Its audience and to say things which no
words could. Yet meaning may be so burled in the uncon
scious that It is sensed, rather than known, If it has not
been forgotten completely. Supposedly there are universal
symbols, in dream and myth, which if given expression,
convey the same message to everyone. The problem is to
transfer the universals to the stage in a form with mean
ing to the audience. The problem is admittedly difficult.
Since the typical designer knows very little about
psychoanalysis, he relies on a combination of intuition
22
Erich Fromm, The Forgotten Language (New York:
Rinehart and Company, 1951)» P• 7•
and paBt models for the sources of his symbolization* The
two together then enter the setting, with sucoess measured
by the audience which accepts or rejects the design* The
designer exploits his conscious knowledge and unconscious
feelings to give form to the underlying currents which
flow through the play. There are no rules; each designer
is his own master and pupil, and the setting is his
creation.
Representation
No one manner of representation is possible, since
the material of Surrealism is so strongly affected by the
unconscious, either through dreams or automatic produc
tion. This makes description difficult, since there is no
single definable style, but rather a variety of modes of
presentation, ranging from the precise, near-photographic
painting of a Dali to the amorphous swirl of a Matta.
Dali shows his Freudian symbolism openly and even an
amateur might discover a dozen symbols. This is probably
23
the style most associated with Surrealism. The attempt
2^Dali is perhaps too extrame for much of the gen
eral audience, especially in his more shocking paintings.
The designer will find much of value in Dali, but he
should also beware of Dali's excesses. If the designer
finds that the Dali style is too readily identifiable, he
might turn to other painters of unreal realism, especially
to Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, and Ren& Magritte.
128
Is made to suggest a scene, however removed from the
world of experience, as though photographed by a camera.
The artist gives the cues— his symbols, objects, and Neo
romantic landscapes— and the viewer fills In the scene
with his own Imagination. The Matta style, and those
which bear slight resemblance to anything that might be
seen on earth, even In a dream, presents Its swirls and
colors, Inviting the viewer to descend Into the depths of
the painting and to find the world which lies within.
Both are forms of representation which lend themselves to
transferral to the stage.
The theatrical designer, generally not a Surreal
ist by training or temperament, may take the outward
characteristics of the paintings and objects of Dali,
Matta, and the others and Incorporate them Into his
settings.. He takes, only to give back, In meaningful
form, as the setting In the theatre. The material is
there, waiting.
CHAPTER V
UNREAL REALISM
This chapter considers the pseudo-photographic
style of Surrealism and ways by which the techniques and
content may be utilized In the stage-setting.
What Is real Is made unreal, and what is not real
Is made real. Dreams are photographed with a camera which
records the unseen, and fantasies given form as though
posed and filmed. The methods are not new, although the
appearance might be. The Egyptians, to mingle man and the
gods, created statues of supernatural gods and demons by
Joining the heads of animals to the bodies of humans; and
the Creeks, seeing man and nature as part of a double Im
age, gave animals the heads of men to make their satyrs
and centaurs. A modem Surrealist, LSonor Pini, created
a troupe of youthful sphinxes (fig. 11), not Egyptian or
Grecian, as Oedipus might have met, but creatures of the
mind of a modem, yet possessed of the strange animalistic
femininity which was part of the fascination and awe of
the classic sphinxes. In a surrealist setting for Oedipus
Rex one of this tribe of mind-created animal-women might
be that encountered and vanquished by Oedipus.
129
130
FIGURE 11
L^onor Flnl: The Shepherdess of Sphinxes
The actors of the Commedla dell'Arte donned their
masks, which are deformed faces, to make a man appear what
he Is not, yet, at the same time, what he Is. The actors
have been transformed Into something else In their scene
(fig. 12), by mask and posture, but they remain recogniz
ably real. The transformation Is from one form of human
ity to another, tinged with the stuff of dreams, for the
faces are exaggerations, but not removed so far from the
expected as to seem unreal. When taken a step further,
as in the portrayal of the creatures In James Ensor's
"Masks Confronting Death," (fig. 13) humanity has been
distorted so far that a new form of human is created, not
of this world, but of a world in which the geneology of
man has been from skeletons and corpses. The masks have
become surreal, that is, beyond the real.
Throughout time man has changed what is for what
might be. as if nature were ruled by the imagination and
not by the forces which set forth the principles of exist
ence. In the theatre especially this is done, by the use
of masks, makeup, costume, and by the very condition of
drama that whatever appears on the stage is not what is,
but what it seems to be. Surrealism offers its own
theatrical pretence and sets up a world of make believe,
where the artist is creator of the universe and all things
obey his command. He is thus freed from the need to con
form to the world of the senses, and his audience Joins
FIGURE 12
Characters from 17th Century Commedla dell1 Arte
| 133
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FIGURE 13
James Ensor: Masks Confronting Death
with him In the rebellion against reality as perceived by
the waking senses.
Four Transformations of Reality
The flight from perception might begin with a win
dow, not as seen, but as imagined by Salvador Dali In his
design for Zorrilla's version of the Bon Juan legend, Don
Juan Tenorlo (fig. 14). He used the barred windows so
typical of Spain, but the bars are no longer steel, nor Is
the window that which would be found in a house. Don
Juan's world, so filled with death, is gazed upon by the
sightless eyes of the skull, which was a man like Don Juan
and which is present as a reminder of what even the strong
est of mortals must become. The skull is recognizably a
skull, though quite obviously not anatomically correct,
and the window which is barred by itB lengthened teeth is
a window. The point of departure was reality, but the
destination was something beyond. In this case the effect
is not so far removed from normal experience as to be
obscure in its meaning. It is strange, to be sure, but it
is the picture of a window in a weird villa.
Another variation on reality is of the kind
painted by Yves Tanguy in "Multiplication of Arcs"
(fig. 15). Thousands of objects lie silently beneath a
clouded sky. What are they? They might be stones and
shells, the rough covering of a tide pool or a rocky
FIGURE 14
Salvador Dali: Design for Don Juan Zorllla
FIGURE 15
Yves Tanguy: Multiplication of Arcs
137
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beach. Perhaps this is a seashore onto which the ocean
has driven objects scoured by sand and sea. But what kind
of a beach Is this?
The sands of the beach are a world of death,
the meeting place of the earth's two faces, land
and sea— the double death of drowned land-things
thrown up by the waves, the death of sea-things
choked In dryness. • • .1
This does seem to be a world of death, an arid world de
spite the presence of the sea. Nothing moves. Nothing
lives. Whatever is there waits for the beginning of life,
or it has seen life vanish and waits for its own dissolu
tion into the vast Stream of eternity. And If It is not
a beach, what then Is It? Could it be a city designed by
i
a race of the distant past, or the distant future, either
a lost Atlantis or a still-to-be Megalopolis? Look deeply
and a city emerges, with Its bulldlngB and streets and
parks; but It 1b a city of the mind, not of the earth, and
it Is populated with phantoms which exist nowhere but In
the mind. It has been called "a landscape of harrowing
desolation,"2 but Its location in space and time cannot
be fixed, nor can Its condition of existence. Perhaps it
is only a vast graveyard of the ocean's stones and shells,
nothing more. The painting began with objects which could
1Libby Tannenbaum, James Ensor (New York: Museum
of Modem Art, 1951 )* P* 27^
Waldberg, op. clt., p. 78.
138
be gathered on a trip to the beach, but the arrangement
changed the normal Into the paranormal. Jamea Thrall Soby
described It:
The picture Is a sort of boneyard of the world, Its
inexplicable objects gathered In fantastic pro
fusion before a soft and brooding sky. The close
gradations of light, tone and form are handled
with such acumen that a pristine order evolves,
whose poetic impact is more than likely to
establish the picture as one of the maBterworks
in the art of our time.3
It Is a boneyard of the past world, or the future world,
or that which can never exist, except in the mind. The
natural objects remain, If they are regarded individually
and if they can be called natural; but together, sur
rounded by the atmosphere of mystery suggested by the sky
and the landscape they become the dwelling-place of a
hidden race.
Tanguy is a painter to whom the stage designer
may often turn, for he suggests the mysterious, but not
the psychotic. He invites the viewer into his wonderous
landscapes. It is this invitation which the theatre can
exploit.
The real may be transformed even further, as in a
design by Kurt Seligman for the ballet "The Pour Tempera
ments" (fig. 16). The landscape is reminiscent of the
desert outlands of Arizona or Utah, where ancient seas
^James Thrall Soby, Yves Tanguy (New York: Museum
of Modem Art, 1955), P* 22.
139
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FIGURE 16
Kurt Sellgmann: Design for The Four Temperaments
carved the rooks and sand, and then, when the water van
ished, wind ohlselled the land Into pillars and arches of
strange shapes. The land Itself Is unreal already, whether
In the depths of the Orand Canyon or on the ochre-and-red
plains of Monument Valley, but Seligman twisted the rocks
and the earth even more, wringing them Into Jagged, con
voluted objects which appear to be figures shrouded like
mummies and held prisoner by forces stronger than the
heaviest chains. The landscape Is more interlorlzed than
Tanguy's and Its objects less readily Identifiable than
Dali's skull-window. Some of the unconscious urglngs of
the artlBt have helped to shape the objects into the
double Images of rock and man. "I do not believe In pure
automatism," Seligman commented. "It is a beginning only.
It must be sustained by a creative will and a discipline."^
The "Four Temperaments" landscape seems to have been the
result of both the unconscious and the conscious creativ
ity of the artist. The landscape Is still recognizable as
something that might be, but it has been transported to
another world beyond the earth. That world Is within mem,
for the design was created for the ballet The Four Temper-
ments, which is about the four aspects of man's mental
makeup— the humors. About the ballet, Bernard Taper
^Quoted in Ralph Pearson, The Modern Renaissance In
American Art (New York: Harper and Brothers, l9§4)»
pT 2bG.-----
141
wrote:
It was not like anything that had ever been seen in
ballet before and opened a realm of new possibilities,
.. . It was an Inexorable work, Four Temperaments,
but not a gloomy one; It had grandeur, ii manifested
a kind of force new to ballet, a kind of ruthlessness
even in its degree of concentration, and what was
then a novel kind of Impersonality which was not
an absence of quality but a meaningful attitude
toward life— one very much of our age. • .
The design was intended to open the realm of possibility
inherent in the ballet itself, to be impersonal, yet mean*
ingful. The twisted shapes of the design are impersonal,
yet they somehow suggest the internal structure of man.
They are not real, but they are reminders of the real.
The final step, in which reality may be trans
formed and yet remain a photographic image, might be some
thing like Wolfgang Paalen's "Landfall" (fig. 17). The
location seems to be a hill, which rises like a smooth-
topped mesa against a cold night sky. The swirl above is
a cloud, though not one which should appear in a sky.
Some kind of humans, or animals or demons, stand upon the
hill, but they are engulfed by lustrous cobwebs or the
gelatinous secretions of some strange worm. Where is this
mesa where creatures are ensnared? The title is "Land
fall." This landfall may be at the bottom of the sea,
where drowned sailors find unquiet graves, where flesh is
stripped away by things which roam the ocean. Pictor-
^Bemard Taper, Balanchine (New York: Harper and
Row, 1963)* PP* 225-26.
FIGURE IT
Wolfgang Paalen: Landfall
143
lally it 1b no place at all, though It appeara as though a
cameraman had photographed It, but Imaginatively It be
comes a haunted scene from Poe, Lovecraft, or from the mind
of whoever looks at it.
The four transformations of reality described in
the preceding paragraphs are examples of the way by which
the scenic designer works. He begins with what he can see
and changes it into something which might be seen, if the
eye of man could extend its perception of wave lengths be
yond the ultra-violet and infra-red limits of the present
spectrum. Reality is the beginning of Surrealism, but the
suggestion of something beyond the known is the end.
Whether the images are translatable into normal terms or
remain unrecognizable, the design's effectiveness is de
pendent upon the willingness of the spectator to project
himself into the scene and to decide for himself what he
sees. The hope of the designer is that the spectator will
be caught up in the atmosphere which surrounds the play.
Props and Ob.lects
The atmosphere of Surrealism is often produced by
the use of props and the transformation of scenic elements
into objects which possess qualities of the unusual. A
couch might be metamorphosed into a supporting hand, re
taining its function as a resting place, but assuming
another meaning as an imaginative piece of furniture. A
144
doorway, such as might lead to Sadie Thomp&on's bedroom In
Rain, when evolved Into a curving pattern, with the frayed :
strands of a bead curtain hanging down across the opening,
could be enough to convey the Idea of Sadie as the woman
to be violated through entry of the doorway. A landscape
of giant hands (fig. 18) suggests a place where the ordi
nary no longer exists. Both the obvious and the suggested
can become part of a setting, depending on the desired
amount of surrealist emphasis. The landscape of giant
hands Is obviously unreal, or at least nothing which could
be encountered on a casual nature walk, while the doorway
of Rain might be regarded less as Surrealism than as a
form of Symbolism. However, in both cases the technique
Is basically the same.
An Orpheus play— Cocteau’s Orpheus or Anouilh's
Eurldlce— might make use of a mythological harp like that
designed by Jean Cocteau (fig. 19)• The curving horns of
a bull, springing from a skull and strung with a penta-
tonlc row of cords, might have been used by the first
Orpheus, suggesting as it does an ancient form of harp,
not so much one of men, but one fashioned by the first
harplst-god. The mystery Is present, partly because of
the death-reminder of the whitened skull, partly because
of the change in expected function of the horns and skull
of a bull, from a relic to musical Instrument.
FIGURE 18
Design from The Mask
I
FIGURE 19
Jean Cocteau:
Harp from Blood of
the Poet
147
Surreal objects may be used to stress the re
moteness of time* The designer of King Lear might provide
a paganistlc throne (fig* 20), which at once encompasses
the king and stands as a threatening reminder of the power
of the omnipotent father, which the primitive king was,
and of the strange gods who wait to destroy any who would
displace him. The gods are above and at each side, guard
ians of the divine right of the father-klng, and the flam
ing, phallic columns which the chief god holds are burning
proof that the king Is the giver of life to his tribal
family. When the king abdicates, when he discards his
masculinity and confers that masculine power on his daugh
ters, the flames of his symbolic torches suffocate and
die, Just as the kingdom will die with no male to set him
self up as the fountain of all creation.
Later, when Lear Is driven onto the barren heath,
the deserted plain which represents the tribe without the
procreative force of the king, the ancient megaliths
(fig. 21) bend toward the ground as though their energies
had been spent. The megaliths, the erected stones of
antiquity, are phallic symbols, monuments to the creative
forces of the earth in which they are planted and of the
gods to whom they point. In such pillars the first gods
dwelled, but on the heath on which Lear finds himself in
his dismal wanderings the stones are empty shells, drained
of their strength and primitive power. Empty and Impotent;
148
FIGURE 20
Edwin Carnes: Throne for King Lear
FIGURE 21
Edwin Carnes: Heath Scene for King Lear
i
150
as la Lear, they bend toward the earth, waiting only for
time of the fall.
The atalantes and caryatides of antiquity are hu
mans displaced Into stone. When people were available they
were used, as Nero did when he set fire to Christians
placed In his garden to serve as torches or as the ancient
Persians did with the slaves whose bodies bore the weight
of thrones. The prevalence of the practice of supporting
architectural units with stone figures suggests that the
enslavement of humans Is a recurring wish, though gener
ally unconscious. Surrealism, which attempts to evade all
censors, will use the living when It can. Thus, in the
crypt of a surrealist Romeo and Juliet slaves eternally
bear the weight of the marble bed on which the dead lovers
lie (fig. 22), and a musician plays her woman-harp
(fig. 23), bringing forth strange melodies for ears which
cannot hear.
When slaves are not available, even theatrical
performance-slaves, the Surrealist will compromise with
the mannequin, like the lifelike woman who gazes blankly
through the open gate of a wicker birdcage (fig. 24) her
mouth bound shut to stifle any protest. What she would
say if she were free to speak are words to be formed by
the mind of the audience as It watches the play in which
the silent prisoner waits. The human enslaved, so much a
part of the history of mankind, is, for most, no more than
151
FIGURE 22
Edwin Carnes: Detail from a tomb for Romeo
and Juliet
152 I
FIGURE 23
Musicians for the tomb of Romeo
and Juliet
FIGURE 24
Figure in Birdcage
154
a dream; but In a theatre, where dreams live, the captive
Is at the mercy of whoever uses him. The spectator may
either be slave or master; the suggestion Is there; the
choice Is his.
The number of props which can be turned Into sur
real objects through distortion Is limited only by the
Imagination of the designer and the competence of his
technicians. When used In a surrealist setting, or in
one otherwise resembling the normal, such objects contri
bute an element of the unusual, serving at once the pur
pose for which they were created and that which the de
signer wishes to suggest. They remain real enough to
possess the quality of existence, yet contain character
istics which remove them from ordinary experience.
Backdrops
One of the simplest ways to create the surrealist
form Is through the painted backdrop. Things which could
never be built can be painted; the world of dreams lies
open with the painter's brush as key.
Of the paintings of Salvador Dali, Marcel Jean
wrote:
. . . They are not so much dream Images as Illustra
tions for a kind of still unwritten manual of psycho
analysis ... A predilection for suggestive or even
remarkable unsymbolized sexual themes is noticeable
in his work. .
Jean, op. cit.. p. 207.
155
i
Such illustrations appeared in the backdrop whloh Dali de
signed for the ballet Bacchanal, a "paranoic performance,"
according to Dali* The backdrop (fig. 25) revealed the
temple of Raphael's "The Betrothal of the Virgin" trans
formed into a huge swan. The entrance into the swan, an
opening vaginal if not virginal, served as the portal
through which Lola Montez was to pass on her way to enter
tain the mad king Ludwig of Bavaria. The mountain is the
Venusberg of the Tannhfluser scene by which the ballet was
vaguely suggested. The meaning of the symbols was left
to the imagination of the audience, which was considerably
stirred by the danced hallucinations of Ludwig and a com
pany of nymphs, satyrs, cupids, Sacher-Masoch, and Lola
Montez.
The whole affair, according to a dance reviewer,
was
obviously designed to create a sensation— the old-
fashioned kind of Dlaghileff's day when sensation
alism meant success. For no other reason would
anyone have combined Dali's weird surrealistic
ideas and designs with music from Wagner's Tann-
hauser. . . .'
It created a sensation, but it did not achieve popularity.
The design, however, remain? as one of the classic ballet
designs and is frequently reproduced.
Pavel Tchelitchev's design for the ballet
Albertina Vitak. "Dance Events Reviewed,"
American Dancer* XVIII (January, 19^0), 19*
FIGURE 25
Salvador Dali: Design for Bacchanal
157
Apollo (fig* 26) Is less Intrusive than those of Dali.
The choreographer was George Balanchine, who wrote in re
gard to the ballet: "Whether the ballet has a story or
not, the controlling Image for me comes from the music."
He called the score— his controlling Image-maker— music of
"discipline and restraint."® Tchelitchev*s design is dis
ciplined and restrained, but still suggestive of events
which occur nowhere but in fantasy* The hero is Apollo,
the time is distant, the place is mythological* The story:
Apollo is born, discovers and displays his
creative powers, instruots three of the
Muses in their arts, and ascends with them
to Parnassus,9
There is no place for the Dali scandal here, not with the
given story, nor with the Balanchine choreography, but
there is a place for surrealist design.
Whether a backdrop is painted or projected, the
principle remains the same* The symbols are painted and
the atmosphere suggested. As with the rest of the design
problem the question of what to paint lies within the
province of the designer. The backdrop, or projection,
provides the medium of expression; the painter gives it
form:
®George Balanchine, "Marginal Notes on the Dance,"
The Dance Has Many Faces, ed. Walter Sorell (Cleveland:
World Publishing Co., l$5l)> P« 39• The music was Igor
Stravinsky's Apollon musagete.
%aper, op. clt*. p. 103.
FIGURE 26
Pavel Tchelltchev: Design for Apollo
159
Complete Setting
As In a setting of any style, the Surrealist
makes use of the standard materials: architectural units,
flats, props, backdrops, hangings, and whatever else
might be Included In scenery*
Alberto Savlnlo's setting for Oedipus Rex
(fig. 27) combines backdrop with a raked platform, a
foundation In whloh the water swirls to form a watchful
eye, and a flight of steps (probably painted on the drop)
In the shape of an arm and hand. The building at the
right stands on toes, not on the expected foundation of
stone; and the temple high above gazes down on the city
with Its single baleful eye. The painter provides part
of the setting; the carpenter the remainder. The audi
ence accepts or rejects.
Illustrative of one of the foundations of Surreal
ism are the Salvatore Plume settings for Siparietto*s
Medea (fig. 28). Buildings are carved to resemble people
and animals, revealing the paronoic imagery present in
much of Surrealism. According to Marcel Jean:
. . . Any sight or object of the physical world
can be treated in this [paranoic] manner. Prom
which the proposed conclusion Is that it is im
possible to concede any value whatsoever to
immediate reality, since it may represent or
mean anything at all.
[It Is] an attempt to disorganize the outside
FIGURE 27
Alberto Savinio: Design for Oedipus
l6l
FIGURE 28
Salvatore Flume: Design for Medea
162
world, a sort of paroxysmal impetuB towards
disorientation. • .
The Flume buildings are the result of seeing shapes In the
Inanimate, just as the paranoic In his flight from reality
sees shapes which are present only when logic Is dis
oriented* This city of Medea's, with its strangely-shaped
buildings and its fantasy-height, belongs to the world of
sorcery, where magic is the architect. In the theatrical
world, steps lead to the painted fantasy, and a status or
two stand as silent sentinels.
Jean (tenSt's The Balcony Is an illustration of
Martin Esslln's description of the Theatre of the Absurd
as drama "in which the world is seen as a hall of reflect
ing mirrors, and reality merges imperceptibly into fan
tasy."3,1 The play is Surrealism-by-descent, and a setting
for it, such as that designed for a London production
(fig. 29), might also be second or third generation Sur
realism. The reflecting mirrors are present, not as
yielding spaces through which a man might walk, as do the
dead in a Cocteau play, but solid and blank surfaces which
reflect only what a man wants to see and reveals nothing
to the women confined to The Balcony. The candelabra are
women, painted and two-dimensional, present, as the women
10
Jean, op. clt., p. 207.
11Esslin, op. cit., p. 289.
FIGURE 29
Joan-David de Bethel: Design for The Balcony
164
of the brothel are present. Prom the rafters of the tin-
finished room— In a dream the construction need be only
sketchy— hang unkempt masses of what might be hair, the
symbols of those women who inhabit the place, available
and sexual. The setting is built from flats, architect
ural units, near-surreal objects, and backed with a plain
drop. It represents what might be the usual adaptation
of Surrealism to the theatre, not strange enough to be
completely foreign to experience, but suggestive of
dreams•
The fairy-tale opera King Stag, as designed by
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (fig. 30), is played within scenic
units, objects, and a backdrop studded with star-like
lights. A setting like this is a typical adaptation of
Surrealism to fantasy and children's theatre, remaining
painterly and closer to the daydreams of Neo-romanticism
than the more censorable dreams and fantasies of Surreal
ism.
Finally, a setting like that for Tales of Hoffmann
(fig. 31) is only reminiscent of Surrealism. Its exact
classification is indeterminate, possessing as it does
elements of the Neo-romantic, the Baroque, and the dream.
Such a setting is an example of borrowing ideas and not
technique. Its furnishings and shapes are fantasy, yet
fantasy such as might be found in the house of a wealthy
man. The idea of dream is present, but it is waking
165
FIGURE 30
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle: Design for King Stag
166
FIGURE 31
Rudolph Heinrich: Design for Tales of Hoffmann
167
dream. Surrealism is present only by Implication, and
even the implication is vague.
Physically, the surrealist setting is no different
from any other found in the theatre. It makes use of no
unknown geometry or magic material. Its form differs only
in the content and technique of representation. Just aB
dreams are built on reality, so is a setting built on
whatever the theatre can provide.
\
CHAPTER VI
ABSTRACTION
The second style of Surrealism followed the lead of
individual vision and mode of representation, with no par
ticular attempt to make the visions perceptible to the
viewer. Symbolism was sometimes present, although not as
pictorially presented as with the near-photographic style,
nor as easily interpreted. This other form of Surrealism
was personal, based to some extent on the original idea of
the movement as expressed by Andre Breton in his first
manifesto:
. . . Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended
to express verbally, in writing, or by other means,
the real process of thought. Thought's dictation in
the absence of all control exercised by the reasons
and outside all esthetic or moral preoccupations.1
Without control there could of course be no standard con
tent or technique; art was what each individual made it
and its meaning what each viewer saw in It.
In this chapter, discussion of the abstract form
will be divided into four categories, none of which are
strict; (1) linear, as found In the work of Paul Klee;
^■Quoted in Sarah Newmeyer, Enjoying Modern Art
(New York; Reinhold Publishing Company, 1955)* P» 177•
168
169
(2) shaped, as featured in many of the paintings of Joan
Mir6; (3) amorphous, as illustrated in the swirling colors
of Matta; and (4) dadaist, which is art without moral or
esthetic control.
Linear Style
Three variations of the use of line to convey the
painter's intent are illustrated in the work of Paul Klee,
who often used line alone; Wilfredo Lam, who combined line
and shape; and in the action painting of Jackson Pollock,
not himself a Surrealist, but an artist who exemplifies
the technique of seemingly-uncontrolled scribbling and
spattering.
Klee's work has sometimes been compared to that
of children, or the insane. Sarah Newmeyer wrote of his
painting:
. . . He saw the invisible, he heard the sound of
silence, he listened to mute laughter, and he felt
the movement of growing things. The miracle of
his art communicates all this.2
Fortunately, the designer in the theatre need not have
this ability, no more than he need share the paranoic
visions of Dali or the madness of Artaud. It is enough
he be able to take from Klee the outward manifestation of
the inner vision and convert it into a backdrop or part
2Ibid., p. 171
170
of a flat.^
A painting such as "Twittering Machine"(fig. 32)
may serve to illustate the Klee use of the linear style.
James Thrall Soby described the painting as "laughable"
and went on to say that the auditory experience of the
twittering machine is conveyed:
. . . The bird with an exclamation point in its
mouth represents the twitter's full volume; the one
with an arrow in its beak symbolizes an accompanying
shrillness— a horizontal thrust of piercing song.
Since a characteristic of chirping birds is that
their racket resumes as soon as it seems to be end
ing, the bird in the center droops with lolling
tongue, while another begins to falter in song;
both birds will come up again full blast as soon as
the machine's crank is turned. The aural impression
of thin, persistent sound is heightened by Klee's
wiry drawing, and his color plays a contributory
part, forming an atmospheric amphitheatre which sus
tains and amplifies the monotonous twitter.^
Such a painting might be found on the walls of an Insane
asylum where "there's no distinction between the world and
a madhouse" and where "You're a madman among madmen,"5 as
Ernst Toller described the madness of the world in his
Hopplai Such is Life. All about, the people of the civil
ized world twitter their meaningless, illogical songs,
^This point should be emphasized. The ordinary
designer is not a master of all styles, but he usually can
adapt the characteristics of a style to his design.
ii .
James Thrall Soby, Contemporary Painters (New
York: Museum of Modern Art, 194tJ), p. 99•
^Emst Toller, "HopplaJ Such Is Life!" Makers of
the Modem Theater, ed. Barry Ulanov (New York: McGraw
Hill, 1961), p. 353.
FIGURE 32
Paul Klee: Twittering Machine
172
while tyranny marches. In the madhouse, where the abnormal
Is the normal, the true picture of the crowd can be
painted.
Another form of twittering machine appears In the
design of the ballet New York Export, op. Jazz (fig. 33).
The designer, Ben Shahn, an occasional near-Surrealist,
assembled dozens of television antennas, those symbols of
the modern machine which forever calls out shrilly, and
often with no more meaning than can be discovered in the
song of birds. The linear technique resembles that of
Klee and attempts to suggest something of the same message.
Somewhat further from the Klee style, but still
with some of the characteristics, is a design for Korczak
und die Kinder (fig. 3^). The luminescent lines, broken
by rough crosses, could either be barbed wire or the tracks
of sea animals left on the floor of the ocean. In Erwin
Sylvanus1 play they are the barbed-wire barriers which hold
people captive in the ghetto, but, at the same time, they
are the .tracks at the bottom of an ocean in which they are
submerged, with as little hope of escape as those ocean
creatures who can never crawl out into the light. The
luminous lines suggest more than strands of barbed wire;
and In Surrealism, whether actual or adaptive, suggestion
is the goal.
A painting like Wllfredo Lam's "The Jungle"
FIGURE 33
Ben Shahn: Design for N.Y. Export, op. Jazz
FIGURE 31 *
Frank Kischke: Design for Korczak und die Kinder
1 7 5 > .
if
(fig. 35) combines line and color, with line as the major
characteristic. The Lam technique carried over into seen-
ery can be illustrated with the design for the ballet
Les Deux Errants in its 1956 setting by Dan Snyder (fig.
36). Here both backdrop and costumes are elongated shapes,
which could be deciphered into some sort of jungle-like
machine. In the ballet two people, a man and a woman,
wander through their world in a search to find understand
ing for themselves, all the while watched by the anonymous
crowd, who are costumed to blend in with the setting to
emphasize that anonymity, just as Lam's people blend In
with their jungle. Despite the oddity of the design tech
nique, the setting Is basically standard ballet wing and
drop, again reminding the designer that the adaptation of
Surrealism to the theatre is no different from the adapt
ation of any other art style.
Jackson Pollock is generally described as an
"action painter," which means that his painting is the re
sult of improvisation and accident, with only an indefin
ite amount of pre-planning, Just as is so much of Sur
realism based on automatic production and slightly-
controlled motion. In describing a typical Pollock paint
ing Alfred H. Barr wrote:
. • . Pollock used no brush but, laying his Canvas on
the floor, trickled the fluid paint on it from above,
his hand weaving the thick stream of color back and
FIGURE 35
Wilfredo Lam: The Jungle
FIGURE 36
Dan Snyder: Design for Les Deux Errants
178
forth and around yntil he created a rhythmic,
variegated, transparent labyrinth.8
The method, certainly, would satisfy Breton's theory of the
worth of automatic production. A detail (fig. 37) from
such a painting reveals that the structure of the total
composition is built from a miscellaneous collection of
drops and trickles of paint, combined with brush-strokes,
and owes much to chance. As for subject matter, meaning
is present only in the mind of the beholder. Critic Bates
Lowery commented: "Nowhere In this work are we given a
key by which any specific previous emotion or experience
will serve us as a guide for our reaction." The guide
is the spectator's own will to see and his interpretation
of what he sees. To quote Barr again, on another but sim
ilar picture:
Number 1 presents an extraordinary adventure
for the eye— an adventure which involves excite
ment and discovery, pitfalls, fireworks, irrita
tions and delights. As your eye wanders, a mys
terious sense of depth and internal light develops
in the whirling dynamo of lines. ..."
The mystery is present; the solution is in the mind of the
beholder. What kind of play could use a backdrop of this
kind? It might be expressionist, like Toller's Hopplal
^Barr, Masters of Modern Art, p. 178.
^Bates Lowry, The Visual Experience (New York:
Harry N. Abrams, 1961), p. 2^7*
8
Barr, Masters of Modern Art, p. 1 7 8.
179
FIGURE 37
Jackson Pollock: Detail from One 1950
180
Such Is Life, or modem surrealist, Tennessee Williams1
Camlno Real, for example.
The linear style belongs to the oldest form of art,
since It Is the easiest way to Indicate the shape of an
object. When lines bound something which is not quite an
object, or when they bound nothing at all, they become
part of the imaginary world, of the surrealist world,
where life is mystery. It is the designer*s task to
capture the mystery on his backdrops and flats.
Shapes
In paintings like those of Mir<5 line and shape
mingle, but shape is predominant. "Every form and color
in my pictures Is taken from something that really ex
ists," Miro wrote. "The notion of *pure form* or *pure
color1 means absolutely nothing to me."9 As has been said
before, the beginning is realism, in some form or other,
but the result is a strong departure from that which the
eye can observe. Some of the Mlrd paintings are cheer
ful, as the Woman With A Newspaper (fig. 38)* "brilliantly
original works, conceived in a spirit of play and evoking
the Innocence of childhood.The woman is certainly a
woman reading a newspaper, probably the comics, to Judge
from the dinosaurish creature near the bottom of the
^Quoted in Waldberg, op. clt.. p. 7^»
1QIbld., p. 70.
FIGURE 38
Joan Mir6: Woman With a Newspaper
182
painting but she would not be met on any street. Her
theatrical counterpart might be a Saroyan creation. At
least she could appear on the wallpaper of a house in
habited by a Saroyan character. Of this kind of painting
Sarah Newmeyer wrote:
. . . He has a genius for delicate absurdity,
creating endearing yet comical representations
of man*s— or dog's— puny effort to challenge
the universe by barking at the moon, or his
elaborate preparations to perform a simple act.
The description might almost be that of a theatre critic
writing of Saroyan.
One of the ballets which MIr<5 designed was,
significantly, Children's Games. In his design (fig. 39)
the forms are somewhat obscure, although the round object
is a child's ball, greatly enlarged as though seen by a
very small child In a giant's world, as the world must
occasionally appear to the very young, and the tri-colored
shapes at either side are the edges of buildings. The
theatrical conversion of the design used the near shapes
for wings and the far ones for backdrops. The figures
are costumed dancers. The spirit is somewhat childlike,
but represents a childhood of games different from those
played on the streets. More cheerful would be the Polish
design for Goldoni's comedy The Servant of Two Masters
(fig. 40), in which Mir<5-like shapes hang over the stage,
having nothing to do with eighteenth-century comedy but
^Newmeyer, op. clt.t p. 181.
FIGURE 39
Joan Mlr<5: Design for Children's Games
FIGURE 40
L. Jankowska and A. Toata: Design for The Servant
of Two Masters
185
much to do with the spirit of comedy of any time.
The shapes of Mir<$, and those like him, need not
be comic or gentle. The Catalan Landscape (fig. 41) was
partly a drawing induced by hallucinations of hunger. As
happens so often in surrealist painting, the artist seems
drawn to the sea, for the things of the painting seem to
be creatures of the ocean. If Surrealism does reach into
the primitive part of the mind, as it is supposed to do
when forced to the limit, then the sea should be a recur
rent image, present as a vague reminder of man's birth
from the sea of earth and the sea of the womb. This
aspect of Mir6 can be reflected on the backdrop of an
opera about an island set in the middle of a magical
ocean. The design (fig. 42) for any version of The
Tempest,should be suggestive of the sea, for Prospero's
island is part of the magic of the sea, brought into being
by the surge of land from the ocean's floor and populated
by men and monsters who came from the sea. Present too
is the sexual symbolism so identified with Surrealism, in
V
the shapes of #he backdrop and the ramp which spirals up
ward like one of the oldest fertility symbols.
The technique of shapes adapted to the theatrical
setting should present few practical problems. With the
backdrop to be painted, or projected, and objects to be
built, the resources of the theatre should not be taxed
beyond their capability.
186
FIGURE 41
Joan Mir6: Catalan Landscape
187
FIGURE 42
Hein Heckroth: Design for The Tempest
188
Amorphous Shapes and Colors
Shapes are no more than color in the style of
Matta. The depths of swirling color and line invite the
viewer to project himself into the depths of the unknown,
as if he were being drawn helplessly into a maelstrom*
In a sense the effect, if the viewer can hypnotize himself
sufficiently, is like that of a dream in which the dreamer
feels himself falling helplessly into nothing. The
dreamer wakes, Just as the painter or the viewer of the
painting wakes, but, for a moment, dream is nightmare.
Of Matta's paintings Patrick Waldberg wrote:
. . . In Matta's work both horizon and weight
cease to exist; undulations, beams of light and
streams of force interpenetrate, whirling up and
down like spiral nebulae.12
In a painting like Le Vertige d'Sros (fig. 43) there is a
suggestion of the penetration of the barrier from this
world into some futuristic country, or perhaps back to
our own planet In the era before the present flow of
civilization began, or perhaps into the interior of our
own mind.
In the theatre the Matta technique might be used
on a backdrop, or the planes suggested by the paintings
might be created three-dimensionally by hanging transpar
ent layers of color one in front of another. More
12
Waldberg, op. clt., p. 121.
189
FIGURE 43
Matta: Le Vertlge (PEros
190
valuable, however, would be Its conversion into projected
light. "We are more immediately affected by our sensi
tiveness to variations of light in the theatre than we are
by our sensations of colour, shape, or sound," Lee Simonson
wrote, and continued:
Our emotional reaction to light is more rapid than
to any other theatrical means of expression, possibly
because no other sensory stimulus moves with the
speed of light, possibly because, our earliest
inherited fear being a fear of the dark, we inherit
with it a primitive worship of the sun. • •
With variable intensity and color projected by the machines
of the modem theatre the emotions can be played upon with
no fixed shapes to direct the pattern of thinking.
The furthest extension of the idea of projected
light is of the kind invented by Thomas Wilfred and called
the Calvilux. Stark Young wrote of it:
. . . This art of mobile color may be capable
of becoming the last step toward the completion
of the use of,light in art, as music completes
sound. . . .I1 *
Mobile color is Matta in motion and the effects are even
more suggestive of mystery:
. . . The Clavilux, in its highest forms of develop
ment, is Just as capable of expressing sinister
dreadfulness, of arousing terror, repulsion, uncer
tainty, passion of all kinds, as it is capable of
^Lee Simonson, The Stage Is Set (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932), pp. 365-66.
14
Stark Young, "The Color Organ," Theatre Arts
Magazine, VI (January, 1922), 32.
191
giving us soothing, assuring, spiritual beauty.
Color is, of itself, dramatic. Linked to myster
ious, dramatic, surging forms it becomes infin
itely so. • .15
Whether called a Clavilux, or by any other name, the
machine which projects colored light is a variation of
the surrealist method of automatic production adapted to
mechanical production. The results can be arranged or as
random as the swirl of dye in water, and the imagery may
be completely abstract or suggestive of strange caves.
Patterns need not move; for most plays movement
might be distracting. Again, patterns need not be pro
jected; they can be painted or arranged in layers of
color. Whatever technique is used, the effect may be
that of the surrealist effort to stir the mind into pat
terns of thought suggested by dream or fantasy.
Dada
The three styles described in preceding sections
represent what might be called legitimate art, that is,
something more or less planned, with some concern for the
audience. The fourth arbitrary form is frankly anti-art,
and when carried to the extreme, anti-everything. Dada
is at once Surrealism and anarchy. Its settings are--
whatever they may be. Its importance is that it is a
recurring phenomenon, under different names, such as the
^"Something New Under the Sun," Theatre Magazine,
XXXV (May, 1922), 316.
192
Absurd, the Beat, the Far-out, or whatever. Dada, a name
which means nothing in particular, may serve as the title
of the movements of theatrical anti-art, by whatever name
they may be known.
Dada is the ultimate revolt against what is.
Georges Ribemont-Dessalgnes, one of the original Dadaists
wrote:
The activity of Dada was a permanent revolt
of the individual against art, against morality,
against society. The means were manifestoes, poems,
writings of various kinds, paintings, sculptures,
exhibitions, and a few public demonstrations of a
clearly subversive nature.
The subversive nature is the mark of Dada. Generally it
is subversion by comedy. One reason for such an approach
was given by Georges Lemaitre:
. . . The best way to denounce the absurdity of the
world is to paint it, to write about it, or to
describe it as a blatant absurdity. The systematic
stupidity of the Dadaist productions had an inten-
tention, if not a meaning: its aim was to convey
the feeling that absolutely everything is idiotic
and senseless. . . .^7
Even in the 1920's artists and writers saw the absurdity
of the world and sought means by which to expose it. The
"satanic cycle" was beginning:
Astrologers • . . tell me that we are passing
into the satanic cycle, wherein the absurd, the
ironic, the grotesque will rule the affairs of
the human race. The age of the Bitter Laugh is
^Georges Rlbemont-Dessaignes, "History of Dada,"
Motherwell, op. cit., p. 102.
^Lemaitre, op. cit.. p. 170.
193
at hand. All our certainties will slide Into
their opposites. • . .1°
Dada, as Its contemporary version the Absurd, demonstrated
that certainty is absurd, grotesque, and Ironic, that
existence wears a maBk. Dada attempted then, and attempts
still, to strip away the mask.
In the theatre, Dada is a demonstration of cheer
ful anarchy, blending silent-movie slapstick with the
anti-social outrages of the most rebellious Beatnik. The
audience is not safe, since it is a symbol of what the re
volt is against. It might find itself the target of
buckets of water thrown from the stage or the recipients
of unpleasant insults and obscene suggestions. When con
fined to the stage itself, the production might be like
the Rel^che "ballet" of Francis Picabia and Erik Satie in
1924. As described by Marcel Jean:
The overwhelming impression was of light and
movement. The first act decor was literally
dazzling: scenery festooned with innumerable
spotlights so blinded the public that they could
barely make out, on the stage, a fireman pouring
water interminably from one bucket into another
while chain-smoking cigarettes. In the background,
vague dancers revolved in a darkness where occa--
fiionfcl beams of light revealed, briefly, the
tableau vivant of a couple stark naked represent-
ing Cranach^s Adam and Eve. . .
Benjamin DeCasseres, "The Future Drama: Grotesque
and Satanic," Theatre Magazine, XLV (May, 1927), 16.
•^Jean, op. clt., p. 90.
Even If the audience could see anything beyond the glare
of spotlights shining in their eyes, they could make noth
ing sensible from the actions. The point of the whole
thing was that past knowledge and expectation are no
longer to be trusted. The audience knows that in a
theatre lights illuminate the stage, not the spectators,
but the Dadaists prove that the expectation is wrong and
is mirage only. Even the ultimate event— the living pic
ture of the nude Adam and Eve— is a fraud. In an artists1
theatre in Paris something suggestive, if not obscene,
should be expected, but the Dada dwellers in Paradise are
visible for only half a second in each flash of light,
certainly too briefly to identify as more than vague
shapes.2^ The audience paid their money for admission,
which, of course, was the ultimate joke, the final absurd
ity. Today, it is likely that the audience would merely
applaud and walk out, if not satisfied, at least protest
ing only mildly about not quite understanding. Whether
for comedy, mystification, or something supposedly in
tellectual, the methods of production remain the same,
and the setting is anything that comes to the mind of the
presenter.
Karl Schwitters, who conceived the most Illogical
20
The man was painter Marcel Duchamp, bearded, but
nude. The woman was reportedly young, beautiful, and
also nude. Only the cast could tell. (Man Ray, op. clt..
P. 238).
195
form of Dada and called It Merz, which means nothing,
gave a description of what he thought of as a typical
setting for one of hiB productions*
• • • The materials are not to be used logically in
their objective relationships, but only within the
logic of the work of art. The more intensely the
work of art destroys rational objective logic, the
greater become the possibilities of artistic build
ings. . . . The stage-set can be conceived in ap
proximately the same terms as a Merz picture. The
parts of the stage move and change, and the set
lives its life. The movement of the set takes
place silently or accompanied by noises or
music. . . .
Take gigantic surfaces, conceived as infinite,
cloak them in color, shift them menacingly and vault
their smooth pudency. Shatter and embroil finite
parts and bend drilling parts of the void infinitely
together. • . For all I care, take man-traps, auto
matic pistols, infernal machines, the tinfish and the
funnel, all of course in an artistically deformed
condition. Inner tubes are highly recommended. Take
in short everything from the hairnet of a high class
lady to the propellor of the S.S; Leviathan. . . .
Even people can be used.
People can even be tied to backdrops.21
The odd combinations are Dada, but many of the
ideas have had long use in the theatre. Moving scenery
was a standard part of the Renaissance and Baroque stag
ing and was recommended by Robert Edmond Jones and others
of the New Stagecraft movement. Gigantic surfaces,
imagined as infinite, were suggested by Craig; and expon
ents of lighting urged the cloaking of the set with color.
As for people tied to backdrops, Ziegfeld attached girls
to the settings for his Follies. The rest of the Merz
^Kurt Schwitters, "Merz," Motherwell, op. cit.,
pp. 63-64.
196
method Is an extension of the Commedia dell'Arte.
Antonin Artaud used some of the techniques for his produc
tion of the Shelley play The Cencl:
• • . In this production mechanical devices were
used to create a visible and audible frenzy:
strident and dissonant sound effects, whirling
stage sets, the effect of storms by means of
light . .
And Ionesco "recommends that 'the props have a part, the
objects breathe, the sets come to life.'"^ it is all
part of the attempt to involve the audience by breaking
through normal experience and lifting the mind to a level
which can know the world as illogical and absurd, as
frightening. When the dadaist form is held under some
kind of control, it may be an effective means of il
lustrating a play whose purpose is to shock or amuse in a
manner far removed from the general.
The form of the setting for dadaist productions is
the result of illogical combinations and strange movement.
It is a dis-sensible arrangement of the useless and the
absurd, all gathered to reveal the illogic and stupidity
of the world of mankind. It can represent complete de
struction— an artistic annihilation of the world—
Wallace Powlie, Dionysus in Paris (New York:
Meridian Books, i960), pp. 2Ob-£0 7.
^Quoted in David I. Grossvogel, Four Playwrights
and a Postscript (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University
Press, 1962), p. 73.
197
or something less pessimistic. Yvon Goll, a surrealist
writer, called this sort of thing "the best weapon against
the cliches that dominate our whole life," and
So as not to be a tearful pacifist or Salvationist,
the poet must perform a few somersaults to make
you into children again. For this is his aim— to
give you some dolls, to teach you to play and then
to throw the sawdust of the doll into the wind.2^
The surrealist aim is to use its weapons of surprise,
anger, absurdity, fantasy, and dream to break through
cliche and convention to reach the basic stuff of life
which lies within. The form of the weapons can be as
frustrating or ridiculous as the most dadaist machine ever
invented, even that once unveiled at the Museum of Modem
Art, which, when its motor started, proceeded to destroy
itself. The machine might be taken as a comment on a
world which has the power to start its motors, in
bombers or missies, and then destroy itself; Dada can be
thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Dada has its uses, in the Theatre of the Absurd,
in the avant-garde, in Beatnik readings, even . chil
dren’s plays. Wherever a complete break fror. ’ eality is
the purpose of the production the designer of a stage-
setting can extend his mental horizons, or return to his
childhood, and create the most fantastic set he can de
vise. If it is fantastic enough, and ridiculous, then it
ok
Quoted in Esslin, op. clt., p. 270.
198
might be Dada.
Dada is the ultimate realism, for it Is chaos,
Just as the world was created from chaos and will return
to chaos. The theatre which it serves fulfils a prophecy
of Gordon Craig:
. . . realism produces and ends in the comic—
realism is caricature. The theatre, with its
realism, will end in the music-hall, for realism
cannot go upwards, but always tends downwards.
Down it goes until we reach the depths. And
then Anarchyi Ariel is destroyed and Caliban
reigns.' < ^ 5
Perhaps it is Caliban who reigns temporarily, but it
might be Pan, who enchants and disturbs. It is theatre
which was once, and will be again. Dada serves as a
reminder that old age, whether of men or ideas, cannot
always rule.
^Edward Gordon Craig, On the Art of the Theatre
(London: Heinemann, 1957)* p. 109.
CHAPTER VII
USES OF SURREALISM IN
STAGE-SETTING
In the first play to be labelled surrealist,
Apollinaire's The Breasts of Tiresias, a prologue contains
the line "We're trying to bring a new spirit into the
theatre" and continues:
For the theatre must not be "realistic"
It is right for the dramatist to use
All the illusions he has at his disposal
As Morgana did on Mount Gibel*
It is right for him to make crowds speak and
inanimate things
If he wishes
And for him to pay no more heed to time
Than to space
His universe is the stage
Within it he is the creating god
Directing at his will
Sounds gestures movements masses colors
Not merely with the aim
Of photographing the so-called slice of life ,
But to bring forth life itself in all its truth
This sounds like one of the manifestoes of the New Stage
craft, with its insistence on bringing a new spirit into
the theatre and its call for the presentation of the
^Guillaume Apollinaire, "The Breasts of Tiresias,"
Benedikt and Wellwarth, op. cit., p. 66.
199
essence of life, not life Itself, as the ruling force of
theatrical production. While the methods of the Surreal
ists differ from those of the antl-reallsm rebels of the
early decades of this century, and while the philosophies
differ even more, the basic aim of Surrealism and that of
the New Stagecraft bear a remarkable similarity In their
concern for pushing through the commonplaces of realism
Into a realm In which the Imagination is free to range.
Surrealism Is merely the antl-reallsm revolt forced to an
extreme. Yet, no matter how extravagant the trappings
or bizarre the actions, the search is always for the truth
which Is contained within the play and within man as he
watches. The core of truth is there, transformed some
times beyond easy recognition, but present, as in a puzzle
or cryptogram. This disguised truth is somewhat akin to
that in the masks of primitives, and the civilized as well,
for it represents the secrets hidden within the body of
man and the things of nature. Certainly no man looks like
the masked figure of an Indian dressed as a ceremonial
thunderbird, nor the lion-headed Sekhmet of the Egyptians,
nor the painted warriors of the Kabukl, yet the character
istics of man are present, not as seen, but as conjured up
from inner fantasies. Surrealism is a form of mask, con
juring up Its own visages from Inner fantasies. Just as
masks are not always appropriate to drama so Surrealism
is not the right choice for all plays. When Is Surrealism
201
a valid design method?
If there were a large collection of plays which
could be labelled "surrealist" then the problem of valid
ity of setting for play would be negligible, since style
of design would directly correspond with style of play.
However, there Is no such collection, and Surrealism,
therefore, must be adapted to the existing repertory.
When Is such adaptation a legitimate method of representa
tion? The following criteria are suggested:
1. The implications of the design correspond to
those of the play; that is, the Ideas evoked by the set
ting should be those Implicit in the play. The hallmark
of any good design Is the appropriateness of setting to
the play being acted out in It. Play and design need not
be conceived in the same style, but they must be compat
ible when combined In production.
2. The setting does not intrude into the flow of
dramatic action, except in those instances when such in
trusion Is the actual or Implied Intent of the play.
Surrealism often makes use of moving scenery, mobile props,
and changing patterns of lights In Its search for effects
which aid the process of encouraging the audience to enter
the world behind the surface of things seen. The applica
tion of such techniques should not be a substitute for the
action of the play Itself.
3. Setting and play combine to provide a unity of
202
impression; that is, there is no disparity between the
meaning conveyed by the visual aspect of a production and
the direct or implied meanings of the play. This does not
mean that there must be but a single style of scenery
throughout an entire play, for there are plays which alter
nate between realism and antl-reallsm, but it does mean
that scenery and play combine without contradiction, that
the idea of one carries out the idea of the other in a
manner which leads the spectator in the desired direction.
Unity of impression is the major goal of produc
tion, since It is the result of a close blending of all
elements of the production process, with no creative or
technical contribution standing obviously above another.
It is this goal toward which the designer strives.
All three of the above criteria are based on the
proposition that theatre is a cooperative affair, that the
play exists for the benefit of the actors and other
theatre workers and, in turn, the full facilities of the
theatre are devoted to bringing the play to the audience.
Despite the best of intentions, the result is not always
the desired one. Mordecal Gorelik pointed out a theatri
cal danger when he wrote:
Scenery . . . is not often genuinely related to
the script or to the actor. Time and again the
director has the experience of seeing an acting
sequence which looks Intensely dramatic in
203
rehearsal go Irrevocably dead the moment it is
surrounded by the scenery.2
As Mr. Gorelik would admit, designers do not expect that
their settings will fail to carry out the assigned mission.
Yet it can happen. Reliance on the three criteria sug
gested cannot insure that setting and play will be compat
ible, but it will help. In addition, the kind of play
must be considered, especially when surrealist scenery is
used.
Not all playB can combine with surrealist design
to meet the suggested criteria, since a clear conflict may
exist between the content of the play and the connotation
of the design. It is unlikely that surrealist design
could profitably be applied to Ibsen realism, Hauptmann
naturalism, Restoration Comedy, or any other play prima
rily oriented toward representation of people as reflec
tions of ordinary society. The exception would be when
character or environmental symbolism is to be stressed or,
especially in comedy, when an unusual and decorative set
Is desired.
The avant-garde theatre offers a broad area for
the application of surrealist design, since much of what
is regarded as avant-garde has much In common with Sur
realism. Dream plays, as well as play3 in which dreams are
2
Mordecai Gorelik, "I Design For the Group
Theatre,” Theatre Arts Monthly, XXIII (March, 1939)# l8l.
presented on stage, are also sympathetic to the surrealist
method, since dream revelation is one of the purposes of
Surrealism. There are plays which carry the impression of
being divorced from reality, although they may be realist
or near-realist. Included in this category are varieties
of Gothic Romanticism, in either original or later forms,
as well as ancient and modem mythology, science fiction,
and tales of lost worlds. Some of the poetic theatre
lends itself to surrealist design, especially ballet.
Children's theatre is another area. And finally there are
those plays in which character and environmental symbolism
are important. This latter category is perhaps the most
doubtful one, since It relies more on production intent
than on playwrighting intent, but it is a possibility.
Avant-garde Plays and Productions
Avant-garde is a catchall term of no definite
meaning, although it usually contains the implication of
something removed from the usual pattern of commercialism.
It encompasses experimental and off-beat productions, as
well as various outbursts of Bohemian revolt, such as the
Beatniks of the 1950's and the Pop Artists of the I960*s.
It is in this area that surrealist design is of particu
lar value.
Surrealism
There are at least three categories of surrealist
205
drama: the comic, represented by Jean Cocteau's Lea
Marias de la Tour Eiffel: the neai*-realistic, with Raymond
Radiguet's The Pelicans s b a model; and the extreme, per
haps best exemplified by Antonin Artaud's Theatre of
Cruelty, of which the short play Jet of Blood is an ex
ample.
In the preface to Lea MarlIs de la Tour Eiffel
Cocteau wrote:
Les marles de la Tour Eiffel, because of its
candour, was first of all mistaken for a bit
of esoteric writing. The mysterious Inspires
in the public a sort of fear. Here, I renounce
mystery. I illuminate everything. . . .3
Although Cocteau may publicly renounce mystery, his play
does not. It is filled with the comic mysteries of fan
tasy. The curtain opens and two characters costumed as
phonographs observe the events which take place before
them:
PHONO I
You are on the first platform of the Eiffel Tower.
PHONO II
Look! An ostrich. She crosses the stage. She goes
off. And here's the Hunter. He's tracking the
ostrich. He looks up. He sees something. He raises
his gun. He fires.
PHONO I
Heavens! A radiogram.
(a large blue radiogram falls from above)
3jean Cocteau, "Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel,"
New Directions 1937 (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions,
1937), n.p.
206
The presence of the ostrich Is then explained by a Photog
rapher, whose speeches are spoken by the phonographs:
PHONO I
You haven't seen an ostrich around here anywhere,
have you?
PHONO II
I most certainly have I I'm trailing It right nowI
PHONE I
Well, It's like this: my camera's out of order.
Usually when I say Steady, now, watch for the
little bird,— a little bird comes out. This
morning I said to a lady, Watch for the little
bird!— and out came an ostrich. So now I am
looking for the ostrich In order to make It get
back Into the camera.^
In passages such as these we see at work the chief
aspect of the comedy of Surrealism— the readily-accepted
appearance of Illogical phenomena. How often does a
hunter shoot ostriches on the Eiffel Tower? This kind of
thing happens throughout, as people and animals spring
from the camera, radiograms dance about, people are killed
and come back to life, and the ostrich becomes Invisible
by putting on a hat. The story is of no Importance, only
the incidents. The setting Is as ridiculous as the Inci
dents .
A different kind of play is The Pelicans, by
Raymond Radiguet. It is a family drama, but the family is
quite eccentric, not absolutely unreal, yet not one which
would be found in a Broadway play. The servants are also
divorced from the ranks of the usual valet and governess,
^Ibld., n.p.
207
as a stage direction Indicates: the valet "folds up the
governess and puts her in his suitcase."5 it is one way
to elope with a girl.
The play begins with the set description:
A billiards room. In the center a billiards table.
To the right, a blackboard. A rope ladder dangles
at the left.6
The table is transformed into a garden, the rope ladder is
used to climb up to a hammock, the blackboard contains a
message for the mother, who, clad in bathing suit, rides
in on the back of the swimming instructor.
The total impression conveyed by the play is that
these peculiar people act in peculiar fashion. They are
not distorted beyond recognition. Rather, they are almost
real, and the setting which surrounds them should be al
most real.
The extremist of the avant-garde Theatre of
Cruelty is Antonin Artaud. Whatever one may think of
Artaud, the importance of the man's theories cannot easily
be discounted. A typical comment is that of critic George
Wellwarth: 11. . . All of the plays of the current avant-
garde experimental drama have a common source in the
theories of Antonin Artaus."^ The part of the Artaud
^Raymond Radiguet, "The Pelicans," Benedikt and
Wellwarth, op. cit.. p. 120.
6Ibid., p. 119.
^wellwarth, op. cit., p. 15.
208
theory which most concerns the scene designer may be summed
up in the sentence: "We intend to base the theatre upon
spectacle before everything else.1 '® A sample of the Artaud
variety of spectacle is contained in his short one-act
play Jet of Blood. One direction reads:
. • . two stars crash into each other, and we see
a number of live pieces of human bodies falling
down: hands, feet, scalps, masks, colonnades,
porches, temple, and alembics, which, however,
fall more and more Blowly, as if they were falling
in a vacuum. Three scorpions fall down, one after
the other, and finally a frog and a beetle
Some of the other directions are more violent and are per
haps beyond the technical capabilities of the theatre, but
the violence and the extravagances are part of the Artaud
method, combining with a shocking story to force the audi
ence into a weird emotional experience of a kind which is
intended to immerse the spectator into the vortex of a
terrible, blasphemous, forbidden world. The author de
mands an emotional reaction, not understanding or accept
ance, but emotion. His is a theatre of violent exagger
ation.
No designer could hope to illustrate completely an
Artaud play, even with the use of complex stage effects
and film, but he can create settings which suggest the
Q
Artaud, op. cit.. p. 124.
^Antonin Artaud, "Jet of Blood," Benedikt and
Wellwarth, op. alt.. p. 223.
209
abnormality of the play and the attitude of the author.
For Artaud, and thoae who follow hla theories of staging,
the material Is surrealist; the design should be.
Expressionism
Expressionism Is extraverted Surrealism, sometimes
crude, often massive, oriented more toward the emotions of
the crowd than the Individual. One of its manifestoes con
tains the words
. . . Intensity, the roaring fire of intensity, the
bursting, splittings, explosions of Intensity. In
tensity overshooting Its mark ... We want to bring,
for one brief moment, intensity into human life. We
want to arouse by means of heart-shaking assaults,
terrors, threats, the Individual's awareness of his
responsibility in the community
Artaud's intensity, assaults, terrors, and threats are
here too, all the excesses, although the target 1b society,
not the universe, and the excesses are not so extraordi
nary. All of these are to be depicted less as realism than
as idea, according to Ernst Toller:
. . . The Expressionist wanted to do more than take
photographs. Realizing that the artist's environ
ment, as it were, penetrates him and is reflected
in the mirror of his soul, he wanted to recreate
this environment in its very essence. . . • Reality
was to be caught in the bright beam of the idea.**
Ludwig Rubiner, "Man in the Center," Anthology of
German Expressionist Drama, ed. Walter H. Sokel CGarden
City, rt.VT: Doubleday, 1^63), P* 3»
^Emst Toller. "My Works." Tulane Drama Review,
III (March, 1959), 100.
210
And so an Expressionist play may begin as does
Oscar Kokoshko's Murderer the Women’s Hope, with a tat
tered, murderous mob swarming around a Man in Blue Armor.
The setting:
Night sky. Tower with large red iron grill as
door, torches the only light: black ground, ris
ing to the tower in such a way that all the fig
ures appear m relief
Woman kills Man, lusts after his corpse when it is cof
fined within the tower cage, and then, when her desire
resurrects*the murdered man, fallB dead at his touch. The
man, freed now, plunges down the steps to kill randomly.
The place of such a play cannot be an ordinary city, but
rather a city of the imagination.
Theatre of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd is an inexact name for a
collection of plays which range from the comic parody of
The Bald Soprano to the disturbing drama of Professor
Taranne. The designer takes as his point of departure the
anti-realism which is the common denominator of the genre,
and then interprets each play in terms of its particular
approach to the existence of man in a world which is il
logical and arbitrary, and where life is often a futile
struggle against the strictures of society. The plays are
12
Oscar Kokoschko. "Murderer the Women's Hope,"
Sokel, Anthology, p. 17.
211
often riddles, with no particular solutions given or even
expected, thus confronting the designer with the problem of
how to Illustrate something which Is never made clear. It
Is a shared problem, as Martin Esslln pointed out:
. . • the spectators are, In the Theatre of the
Absurd, put In suspense as to what the play may
mean. • . • Each of them will probably find his
own, personal meaning, which will differ from
the solution found by most others. . . .*3
The designer can only offer the solution determined by his
own analysis of the play.
The Bald Soprano is perhaps the best-known repre
sentative of the comic Absurd. Ionesco called It "a
completely unserlous play ... a parody of human behavior,
nlii
and therefore a parody of the theatre too. He further
stated:
... It was not for me to conceal the devices of
the theatre, but rather to make them still more
evident, deliberately obvious, go all-out for
caricature and the grotesque . . .15
The purpose behind this, for Ionesco at least, Is to
bring laughter to "a world that now seems all Illusion and
pretense, In which all human behavior tells of absurdity
and all history of absolute futility . . The setting
^^Martin Esslln, "The Theatre of the Absurd," Tulane
Drama Review. IV (May, i960), 14.
14
Eugfene Ionesco, "The World of Ionesco," Tulane
Drama Review. Ill (October, 1958), 46.
^Eugfene Ionesco, Notes and Counternotes, trans.
Donald Watson (New York: Grove Press, 19t>4), P* 28.
l6Ibld.. p. 163.
212
for this kind of play also reveals the Illusions and pre
tence of an absurd society.
The designer now has several clues as to the Ab
surdist approach to the physical appearance of the play.
The setting represents: (l) parody of environment, (2)
parody of theatre, (3) caricature, (4) the grotesque, and
(5) revelation of what lies beyond the illusions of every
day life. All of these fit easily into the comic surreal
ist scheme.
Professor Taranne. by Arthur Adamov, represents a
second approach to the Absurd. It is a waking dream about
a man who is denied a personal Identity and is thereby
subjected to whatever arbitrary accusation those with
legal identity care to bring against him. Taranne is like
a stateless refugee stripped of nationality, home, money,
everything which might give him the protection inherent in
membership in a recognized social unity. He is the emo
tional kin of the ordinary man entering prison for the
first time, not quite understanding his situation nor
able to fight his persecutors. He sees a world which he
cannot quite recognize, since he is seeing it as an out
sider; he no longer belongs. Like a dreamer he wanders
through his experiences, watching as the shapes of reality
and dream flow back and forth, as emotion replaces reason
and is then replaced. It is all part of "an amorphous
213
nightmare world Inexplicably crystallized Into reality.
The design probably never pictures the normal order
of things, although the Police Station and the Hotel— Its
two general locales— may be close to reality. The unreal
continually Intrudes as Taranne sees himself carrying out
the acts of which he Is accused or as he meets those who
should know him but deny him. He stands in the Police
Station, explaining himself, then:
1 was walking quietly at the edge of the lake
and then suddenly I saw them. They were there,
quite close, they surrounded me. . . . And others
appeared, from everywhere at the same time. They
all came at me. Then I began to run. I don't
know why I ran • . .1“
The picture fades away and he Is back in the Police Sta
tion, until the next dream experience. The surrealist
elements are strongly In evidence in the play and in the
visual images which the play calls forth.
Edward Albee combined the comic and the ruthless
in The Sandbox. The young discard the old In this play,
as they often do in life. The Idea 1b real enough, but
the method is not, nor is the place. Where is this beach
that Death and the Disposers meet? It is nowhere. The
place might be suggested with a backdrop and constructed
objects reminiscent of a Tanguy painting. In the design
(fig. 44), the beach to which the young bring the old to
17
Wellwarth, op. cit.. p. 34.
18
Arthur Adamov, "Professor Taranne." Two Plays.
trans. Peter Meyer (London: John Calder, 1902), p. 16
FIGURE 44
Edwin Carnes: Design for The Sandbox
die is not bounded by any of the earth's oceans, but is
the coast of the unknown. The horizon is distant and the
sky clear, but no ships will ever sail the sea, nor will
any child play with the shells and stones of the beach.
The place is dead and desolate, Just as the people of the
play are dead and desolate.
Dada and Other Strange Entertainments
When Tristan Tzara wrote of his Dada classic The
Qas Heart "it is the only and greatest three-act hoax of
the century, he expressed the philosophy of at least
one branch of the recurring phenomenon of the theatrical
oddity, those performances which seem to mean something,
and may, but probably do not. When performed seriously
this kind of thing may evolve into something like the
Theatre of the Absurd or, less seriously, into a stock
burlesque sketch; but plays and entertainments of the
Dadaist kind are serious only if the implications of the
anarchy of their performances are taken as vivid repre
sentations of the anarchy of society. Dada is an extreme
form of revolt, for its attempts to make all recognized
values tumble before exposure of the uselessness of
society's cherished ideas, actions, and objects. Dada is
difficult to understand intellectually, but it is not
meant to be understood; nor is it meant to be accepted
19
Tristan Tzara, "The Qas Heart," Benedikt and
Wellwarth, op. cit.. p. 133.
23.6
by the general audience, for Its purpose Is to mock that
audience. However, It need not be completely chaotic, as
a serious Beatnik reading may show. Yet the Dada spirit
always pushes a production toward chaos, whether the art
ist intends a serious or comic regard for his work. There
is no limit to Dada.
One manifestation of modern Dada is the so-called
"happening,1 1 which is a sort of "living-picture" tableau
with movement added. As described in an issue to Time:
. • • Viewers trooped from room to room artfully
littered with nets and old bottles, the walls
splashed with weird designs and slogans ("Dirt
is indeed deep and very beautiful— I love soot
and scorching"). Somewhere, a voice was count
ing in German.20
One of the "happenings" at this particular exhibit was
entitled Duet Por a Small Smell and was
introduced by the burning of sulphur which put the
audience into paroxysms of coughing. That made them
"part of the act," . . . At the climax, a girl
stabbed a dummy, but not too violently. "A violent
stabbing would be much too literary."21
There is little difference between this sort of thing and
the oddities of the productions of the Dadalsts forty
years earlier. It serves as a reminder that the spirit of
bizarre revolt is a persistent one.
Music can also be part of the same tradition, and
though music seldom is played with any setting other than
2^"Up-Beats," Time, March 14, I960, p. 80.
21
Ibid.
217
a bare backing, there la no reason why some of the frauds
and near-frauds of modem music might not be. There are
several works which might be entitled something like
"Concerto For Silence," in which the players sit and look
at their instruments for a time, sometimes without move
ment, other times with gestures which could be Interpreted
in various ways. Even when the music is played, it makes
no sense to anyone, except, if meant to be serious, a tech
nician. Here is an area for scenic exploration. Possibly
there might be projections in motion, or mobiles, or
decorative drops and props. The designer might even find
a composer to write directly for him, possibly a "Hex-
ameron for Piano and Piccolos in the Style of John Philip
Mozart With Swirling Dye Screen and Jack-In-the Box." It
is a suggestion.
Much of Dada-oriented entertainment is performed
outside usual commercial channels. One of the kinds of
theatre for our time is what might be called Coffee-
House Theatre, the locale of which is a cafe or room with
a stage and an atmosphere conducive to acceptance of what
ever is offered. The program might be a play or a musical
satire or a "happening." Or the audience might be treated
to a poetry reading with Jazz background, especially Beat
nik poetry and cool Jazz. The combination may pretend to
be more serious than Dada, but there is a similarity in
performance technique and literature. For example, there
218
might be a reading of the Beatnik Classic "Howl":
What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their
skulls and ate up their brains and Imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth1 Ugliness! Ashcans and
unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under
the stairways! Boys sobbing In armies! Old
men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the
loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy
judger of men!22
And so the lines roll, lines almost surrealist in effect,
and in origin:
I had an apartment on Nob Hill, got high on
Peyote, & saw an image of the robot skullface of
Moloch in the upper stories of a big hotel glar
ing into my window; got high weeks later again,
the Visage was still there in red smokey downtown
Metropolis, I wandered down Powell Street mutter
ing, "Moloch Moloch" all night . . .23
So a surrealist setting for a surrealist poem called Beat.
So much of Beat poetry and prose lends itself to
public performance; much of it, indeed, was written to be
read aloud, often with musical accompaniment. "A poem
is a score,Thomas Parkinson observed of Beat poetry.
When read aloud for an audience, it becomes a substitute
for a play in public performance and thus could be given
a stage-setting.
Allen Ginsberg, "Howl," "Howl" and Other Poems
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1959)» P« 17*
23
Allen Ginsberg, "Notes Written on Finally Record
ing 1 Howl,1 1 1 Casebook on the Beat, ed. Thomas Parkinson
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1961), p. 28.
2^Thomas Parkinson* "Phenomenon or Generation,"
ibid., p. 287.
219
Like so much of the avant-garde, the Dadaist
productions offer a refuge for the highly-lmaglnatlve and
the rebel, thus offering opportunities for an Imaginative
style of scene design. Whether as a play, a part of a
play, or a performance which Is not a play, the avant-
garde offers a challenge to the audience and to the de
signer.
Unreal Plays
The unreal may encompass the Jacobean tragedies of
Webster and Tourneur, with the grand-gulgnollsh atmosphere,
as well as an adaptation of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake
or a modern ghost story. Since one of the purposes of
Surrealism is to explore the world of the unknown and that
removed from the normal patterns of experience, the use of
a surrealist stage-setting In plays which suggest the in-
trustion of horror or hallucination Is a valid one.
"In the theater," Antonin Artaud wrote, "there is
a kind of strange sun, a light of abnormal intensity by
which It seems that the difficult and even the Impossible
suddenly becomes our normal element."2^ it is the kind of
strange sun which flares in the palace of the Duchess of
Malfi when she is forced to watch the dance of the eight
madmen, who carry their madness Into her own mad world,
and it is the sun which glares harshly as the executioners
2^Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, p. 30.
220
enter, with a coffin ready for their vietim, the cords to
strangle her, and the bell to toll her fate. It is the
strange sun which shines on Vendici as he poisons the lips
of the corpse of his murdered lover and finds his Reveng
er's Tragedy. Such scenes might have happened in Renais
sance Italy, but they are scenes far removed from the
history told in the pages of a textbook. On the stage the
world is twisted into something belonging more to night
mare than to reason. Madness and murder are the normal.
H. P. Lovecraft, one of the outstanding writers of
the modern weird story, wrote that in the horror tale
a certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable
dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and
there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness
and portentousness becoming its subject, of that
most terrible conception of the human brain— a malign
and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed
laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against
the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed
space.26
Whether the horrors be reflections of the excesses of man,
as in Jacobean Tragedy and, more magnified, in Grand
Gulgnol, or the invasion of normal experience by the in
humanly- abnormal or the supernatural, the atmosphere of
dread pervades the psychic and physical environment of the
characters. Creation of this atmosphere is the most im
portant task of the designer. "Atmosphere is the all-
important thing," Lovecraft wrote, "for the final
2^H. P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature
(New York: Ben Abramson, 19^5)# P« 15*
221
criterion of authenticity Is not the dovetailing of the
plot but the creation of a given sensation. "27 The de
signer's attempt is to create the sensation suggested by
the writer.
The Impact of horror lies In the possibility that
such scenes could be:
. . . Against our logic, these abstract tales of
monsters and Draculas, the influence of the moon
on our fate, the phenomena of the sky and the
mysteries of the night, touch atavistic memories
from a dim antiquity when our ancestorsAhuddled
in caves and dreaded the unknown dark.2* *
Plays of this genre attempt, however feebly, to dredge up
the sense of dread which still lingers In the unconscious
mind. The design for such plays must somehow convey the
feeling that there are things in the unknown dark waiting
to break through. Strange shapes Inhabit strange shad
ows, as in Kurt Brunning's one-act The Insatiate Beast,
never quite seen, but always there, waiting for those who
stray into the lair of the terrible beast. What thing is
it that waits? There is no answer, only the suggestion.
Part of the responsibility for that suggestion lies with
the designer.
The world of Michel de Ghelderode remains within
the boundary of the known, but his characters and their
2Tibid., p. 16.
28
Curt Siodmak, "In Defense of the Ghouls,"
The Screen Writer, I (February, 19^6)» 2.
222
stories partake of the atmosphere of the unknown. Hop
Signor is a play of dwarfs and executioners, of ugliness
and beauty, of lust and murder. Its scenic description
calls for a garden In ruins, and its story calls for an
Impression of moral and physical decay. A surrealist
design (fig. 45) might aid In suggesting the atmosphere of
the play. The ruined garden Is there, with a strange,
stunted statue of an unidentifiable something; and the
decaying walls of the house which harbors the lovers, the
murderers, and the freaks seem to hold captive, In stone,
witnesses who have watched and have been silenced.
The unreal need not be tinged with horror.
Anouilh's Euridlce is close to naturalism in its story
telling and presentation, yet there are always reminders
that the characters and their story are not those to be
found in an ordinary railroad station or cheap hotel.
Something beyond the normal is suggested, just as it is in
other Anouilh plays of what might be termed the "time
remembered," to borrow a title from one of his plays. It
Is not present time, but a time which was and somehow is
brought into the present. The displacement might be con
veyed by a realistic approach, but the surrealist setting
(fig. 46) might invest it with an even stranger atmosphere
and so remove it further from the present.
An ancient dramatization of another Greek legend—
223
FIGURE 45
Edwin Carnes: Design for Hop Signori
224
FIGURE 46
Edwin Carnes: Design for Burldice
225
PrometheuB Bound— could find Its setting In a mountainous
landscape (fig. 47) which could be found nowhere, because
the world of the ancient gods exists nowhere but In the
mind of man.
Both the future, since It Is not yet, and the past,
since It can never be again, are part of the tradition of
the unreal. Solence fiction and tales of Lost Atlantis
call for scenery of unusual shapes and colors, related to
the kitchen sinks and patterned wallpaper of today, but
not replicas of them. Their locales are products of the
mind, not of science, and their emergence on the stage
should conjure Images of strange lands which cannot exist,
yet somehow may be found somewhere, sometime. They are
reflections of all that lies within the subconscious, a
visual rendering of the dwellings of monsters and gods,
of men like us and yet strangely unlike, of frighteningly-
enormous buildings and caves which occur nowhere but In
fantasy and dream.
The spectrum of the unreal is so broad as to re
quire decisions by the designer. The purpose of the
author might be to make the unreal seem ordinary, and in
such a case Surrealism would not offer the proper environ
ment; but if the unreal is to be emphasized, then surreal
ist methods may be used to underline It.
Dream Plays
There are plays which rely upon dream-like
226
FIGURE 47
Edwin Carnes: Design for Prometheus Bound
227
Impressions for their effect. Sometimes they are called
dream plays. In his preface to his * A Dream Play.
Strindberg explained:
In this dream play* as In his former dream play
TO DAMASCUS* the Author has sought to reproduce the
disconnected but apparently logical form of a dream.
Anything can happen; everything is possible and
probable. Time and space do not exist; on a slight
groundwork of reality* Imagination spins and weaves
new patterns made up of memories* experiences*
unfettered fancies* absurdities* and improvisations.2^
And so he can begin with "An Impression of clouds* crumb
ling cliffs* ruins of castles and fortresses"3° and go on
to castles which grow In fields of giant hollyhocks and
theatre alleys in which enormous monkshoods tower above
the street. Everything Is possible.
One scene dissolves and another appears:
The new scene shows an old derelict wall. In
the middle of the wall a gate opens on an alley
leading to a green plot where a giant blue monks
hood is growing. . • .31
The design could be a realistic presentation of a walled
garden, but in dreams reality is only a partial character
istic. The place is one which Strindberg himself remem
bered, but transformed Into a mental landscape. The
design (fig. 48) might also be a transformation of the
29
August Strindberg, "A Dream Play," Plays. trans.
Elizabeth Sprlgge (Chicago: Aldlne Publishing Co., 1962),
P. 521.
3°Ibld., p. 525.
31Ibid., p. 531.
f
228
FIGURE 48
Edwin Carnes: Design for A Dream Play
actual, as It may have been filtered through Strindberg's
troubled mind. The wall takes on another meaning, for It
Is vaguely human, and diseased human at that. The monks
hood Is no simple flower, In size or In meaning. It Is a
phallic symbol and It Is poisonous. Both meanings are
suggested. The design Is not a pleasant one, nor Is It
meant to be. It Is one representation of a Strindberg
hallucination.
All life on the stage Is a form of dream, since
nothing is real. Only the illusion Is maintained. When a
dream sequence is Introduced into a play, other than Into
one expressly designated as a dream play, it presents the
interesting problem of doubling the illusion, of incorpor
ating a dream within a dream. In most cases the problem
is solved through the willingness of the audience to ac
cept as real what is seen on the stage, since that is part
of the convention which makes theatre possible, and to
then convert its thinking processes to further expand the
convention and accept the dream for the acknowledged
fantasy which it is intended to be. Surrealism offers a
method by which the process of conversion is made easier,
removing the dream sequence from the others through visual
imagery which is unmistakably part of a different world.
Surrealism revealB "paradises comparable to those
proferred by HashiBh," Yves Duplessls commented, and
continued, "Under its influence the whole of life seems to
230
I
take refuge In a sort of mobile Intoxication, which makeB
reason stagger and opens the door of the unknown."^2
Dreams in drama attempt to provide at least a taste of such!
a phenomenon. They cannot transport the spectator Into the^
hashish-conjured paradise gardens of Persia's Old Man of
the Mountains nor hurl him into the fierce nightmares of
an addict for whom paradise has been swept from heaven
Into hell, but they can suggest such experiences. The
play-dream cannot possess the power of the spectator's
own, since it does not directly represent the personal
desires and fears of any one mind; It Is usually a general
ization and is meant to be accepted as such.
The design for a dream may specify some of the
dream content, although such components may have little
apparent meaning. If the characters are surrounded by
obvious symbols in waking life, then these may well be in
corporated into the design, Just as might those which have
strong subconscious implications for the people of the
play. If the playwright has provided clues in his script,
whether through a particular scene description or through
the action and dialog of the characters, then the de
signer's task of communicating with the spectator is
■^Duplessls, o p. clt.. p. 71. Baudelaire and Rim
baud advocated the use of hashish to reach their "Arti
ficial Paradises," but the Surrealists never made a cult
of narcotics or alcohol. Perhaps they considered that
Surrealism Itself was enough of a mental stimulant.
easier than It would be if the symbols are purely arbi
trary. Sometimes the aim of the design is not to empha- !
size the meaning of particular symbolism as developed in
the play; it may be simply to indicate that the stage is
a place removed from that found in waking life. In such
a case the setting becomes a generalization, in the same
way that an expanse of sagebrush and sand offers a gen
eralization of the Old West or a mass of brush and hanging
vines stands for a jungle. Settings are usually a form of
generalization— that is why the old stock settings were so
valuable— and one which Immediately tells the audience
that it is all part of a dream is part of the theatrical
tradition which takes the general and then adds the
Bpeclflc when needed. Just as the Western town of the
movies may serve for a thousand pictures by changing a few
signs or a fence or two, so the dream place of the stage
may be basically the same for any play, with the proper
additions or subtractions, of course. Again, as with all
design, the intent of the effect controls the method. In
one Instance the dimming of the lights, coupled with the
introduction of a character known to be at some psychic
or actual distance, may serve. In another case, a layer
of fog may be sufficient. The play, and the wanted
effect, will determine the minimum sense of transforma
tion of reality.
When the need for the suggestion of a dream-world
232
requires a definite transformation of ordinary experience,
Surrealism, with its obvious strangeness and feel of fan- I
j
tasy, can be of special value in suggesting a departure
from an external frame of reference to the internal. Sur
realism then can function as a symbol of transference and
so direct the manner of audience interpretation. It makes
a proclamation, as it were, that what is seen on the stage ;
cannot be seen with ordinary eyes but only through the
magic spectacles which permit the wearer to see what lies
beyond the material things which block the view of the
things of desire. Surrealism suggests that the imagination
is to see what the eyes cannot, and it provides a glimpse
I
of the sort of world which the imagination is supposed to
build, the world in which the characters of the play must
travel and into which the audience enters as an invisible,
untouchable companion.
Werner Haftmann observed that the "Surrealist
turns his back on the visible appearance of the outer
world and takes refuge in a magic realm of unreality where
man’s inner self is revealed in d r e a m s ."33 it is the pur
pose of the surrealist design to picture at least a part
of the dream revealed in the play.
Poetic Plays and Ballet
Surrealism and poetry have been closely related
Berner Haftmann, The Mind and Work of Paul Klee
(London: Paber and Faber, 1944), p. 140.
233 '
from the beginning; but the poetry is of a special kind,
and the poetic theatre which lends Itself to surrealist
design Is also of a special kind.
One of the most poetic of modern designers wrote:
"The artist should omit the details, the prose of nature
oil
and give us only the spirit and splendor."-’ Like many
others of the New Stagecraft, Robert Edmond Jones was
concerned with the triumph of realism In a theatre which
he thought should be r b chamber In the House of Dreams.1,33
So too other designers seek ways to wrest the poetry of
plays away from the prosaic confines of a box-set and to
bring It onto the stage with a proper visual counterpart. .
Since poetry is not quite real, Its setting cannot be quite
real. "The special aspect of our poetic drama lies In the
destruction of the traditional scenic world,a German
critic wrote, and the Surrealists would agree. Much con
temporary poetry is almost indistinguishable from standard
prose in appearance, and sometimes in aural effect, yet
somehow the feeling of poetry must be conveyed. The de
signer Is often the agent of the poetic impression; he
shows what cannot always be heard.
^Robert Edmond Jones in Jones, op. clt.. p. 82
35Ibld., p. 82.
3^Siegfrled Melchinger, "German Section," World
Theatre, VI (Spring, 1957)* w.
234 |
In a play auch as William Saroyan's Love's Old
Sweet Song the form is not verse, yet the Intent is cer- j
talnly not that which would ordinarily be described as
prosaic. It is a play which calls for the destruction of
the traditional scenic world, as Siegfried Melchior had
said of Kafka and his poetry in prose. As John Mason
Brown described it:
The result was less like Bitting before a play
than having dropped in one's lap from the stage a
series of fragments from a torn surrealistic valen
tine Mr. Saroyan had forgotten to deliver. . . .37
Such a play would be out of place in an ordinary living
room. It demands something removed from the ordinary way
of life. Another similar play is Sweeney In the Trees.
Sweeney is two people and sometimes inhabits a tree, while
various people kick money around the floor until they de
cide that the money is real. At the end: "JIM swings
down from the tree. Looks around. Walks out. A white
bird flies out of the tree. ONADA and his son do
acrobatics."3® Plays such as these might be labelled sur
realist, or they might be theatrical poetry with surreal
ist overtones. Whatever name might be attached to this
sort of play, the author of them seeks to remind the
^John Mason Brown, "Review of Love's Old Sweet
Song." Critic'b Theatre Reviews 1940 (New York:
Critic's Theatre Reviews, 1940), p . 320.
3®wiiliam Saroyan, "Sweeney In the Trees," Three
Plays (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 194l),
p. 210.
audience that they are not to look for a newspaper meaning
but an Imaginary one. The poetry need not be as strange
as that of Saroyan; It Is enough to suggest that life Is
something more than an after-work conversation between two
tired people.
The poetic theatre Is perhaps best represented by
a play like Maeterlinck's Pell£aa and M&Llsande. which
"drifts before us like mist and music."39 The play Is a
violent one. If event alone Is considered, but In atmos
phere It Is a fragile piece of fairytale, "an Intense,
haunting mystery of human life like a dim ghost.
Characters and setting are part of a shadowed, moody
world, where dwell only dimly-remembered spirits of a
distant time. Bring them Into the sun and they vanish,
for they are of the twilight, caught forever between day
and night. They are beyond reality.
The key to the poetic theatre is contained in an
essay by W. B. Yeats, the Irish poet and playwright:
Even if poetry were spoken as poetry* it would
seem out of place in many of its highest moments
upon a stage, where the superficial appearances
of nature are so closely copied; for poetry is
founded upon convention, and becomes incredible
39
Frank M Whiting, An Introduction to the Theatre
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954)* P*
40 ,
Macdonald Clark, Maurice Maeterlinck (New York:
Frederick A. Stokes Company, i$l6), p. 239.
236
I
the moment painting or gesture remind us that
people do not speak verse when they meet upon
the highway. • . . 1
On the surrealist highway poetry may he spoken without
danger, and here may be found Maeterlinokean characters of
mist and music.
In ballet, which sometimes is called poetry danced,
some form of Surrealism is often found, both since it
' j
I
serves well to illustrate the themes of ballet and also be
cause it lends Itself to the kind of scenery which ballet
generally uses— the painted backdrop. Dali, Sellgmann,
Ernst, Flnl, Mlr6, and Tanning are among the Surrealists
who have designed ballet. Kurt Sellgmann suggested one
reason, that the surrealist techniques !
cause a chord to resound in our unconscious; they
free the spectator's memories and create a dream
like mood, an expectation of the marvellous. The
shock element properly used brings about displace
ment or alienation. When placed where they do not
belong, objects with or without immediate symbolic
meaning may create a poetic mood. . • .42
The marvellous and the poetic— these are the keys to bal
let, for ballet is frankly theatrical poetry, and its scen
ery is part of the effect it conveys. "Poetic quality—
that is the prime consideration in ballet decor,wrote j
4lW. B. Yeats, Ideas of Qood and Evil (London:
A. H. Bullen, 1914), p. ld4.
| l o - -
Kurt Sellgmann, "The Stage Image," The Dance Has
Many Faces, ed. Walter Sorell), p. 78*
^Baird Hastings, "The Designer," Dance Magazine.
XXV (May, 1951), 24.
237
a critic, and a designer echoed the thought:
. . . there can be no sacrifice of poetry and magic,
for ballet virtually demands a free imagination,
unencumbered by those naturalistic exingencies
which are the bane of play designers*44
The design for the backdrop of a ballet based on
Poe's poem "The Haunted Palace" (fig* 49) is an attempt to
carry out the choreographer's idea that the palace is a
place where the past is held captive in the very walls.
There are faces in the walls, to carry out the choreo
graphic scheme, as well as to suggest Poe's own descrip
tion:
And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh— but smile no more*45
It is a place of ruin, and with the proper lighting, and,
most importantly, with the dancers, it becomes a place
where madness stalks the celebrants.
Children's Plays
Children's theatre provides an area in which Sur-
44
Cecil Beaton, "Scenery and Costume Design for
Ballet," Stage Scenery and Design, ed. Orville K. Larsen,
p. 215.
^Edgar Allan Poe, "The Haunted Palace," The Poems
of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Killis Campbell (Boston!Ginn
and Company, 1917)* P* 104.
FIGURE 49
Edwin Carnes: Design for The Haunted Palace
239
realism, with Its suggestion of horror, fantasy, and humor,
can play an Important part. In fairy tales especially the
surrealist setting fits the mood of the play, since a
fairy tale is dream organized and covered with a veneer of
censorship. All of the dream-like atmosphere may be ex
ploited, without the danger of exaggeration which might be
inherent in the same sort of presentation for adults.
Children do not demand a forest of real trees or a witch's
cave surrounded by heavy rocks; they will accept fantasy,
since that is the expected part of any fairy tale. As
with any design, the Betting must look right to the audi
ence, to the children, even if the adults disapprove or
fail to understand. We are reminded:
... A child's conception of the visual elements
in a play, including setting, is perhaps more
understandable to an audience of children than
is the conception of an adult. . . .w
Although an adult might dictate what the child is to see,
it is the child who is the judge and the one to be satis
fied. He is closer to fantasy than the average adult.
The sexual symbolism of so much of Surrealism
would have no meaning to the children, but they do ap
preciate marvels such as the strawman who danced and the
tinman who squeaks along through The Wizard of Oz; and it
^Burdette Fitzgerald, "Report of the Fourth Annual
Children's Theatre Conference," Educational Theatre
Journal. I (December, 19^9), 103.
is such marvels that Surrealism can provide, with its liv
ing statues, haunted gardens in which princesses sleep on
beds made of swan's wings, staircases that wave back and
forth in snaklsh ribbons of ever-changing color, and a
myriad of imaginable, but unworldly, locales and objects.
"Somewhere and nowhere," is the location of one play,
where:
The stage suggests a wind-swept hill on the edge of
a desolate world. A huge rock dominates upstage
left, a strange, blue-colored object growing at its
center. On closer inspection, this object turns
out to be a bush of peculiar composition.47
Desolate, strange, and peculiar are adjectives already
present in surrealist description. A surrealist backdrop
(fig. 50) could provide the beauty for which Winifred Ward
asks as part of the theatrical experience for children:
The play should be an escape for them, an
escape from sordidness, from experiences no child
ought to have. For a thrilling hour or two they
may live in a delightful world where life is
absorbing and colorful, and vicarious adventures
satisfy their longing for excitement. It may be
a dreary drop to go back to real living, but
they carry something lovely with them. . . .4o
The playwright provides the adventures; the designer gives
his audience of children a delightful and colorful world
in which everything is possible.
47
Gertrude Lemer Kerman, "The Blue Bush," Plays
and Creative Ways with Children (Irvington-on-Hudson,
New York: tfarvey House, i£6l), p. 216.
^®Winlfred Ward, Theatre for Children (Anchorage,
Kentucky: The Children's Theatre Press, 1950), p. 123.
241
FIGURE 50
Edwin Carnes: Design for The Blue Bush
242
Plays Stressing Character or
Environmental Symbolism
The theatrical use of the term psychoanalytic li
not equivalent to the aclentlfio meaning, but Is a conven
ient way of expressing the layman's idea of what Freud,
Jung, Adler, and the other psychoanalysts have learned
about man, his dreams, actions, and motivations. The
ideas, according to one critic," have coalesced and have
created a murky background against which to Judge and de
pict human personality.1 1 ^ The murky background is what
the surrealist stage-setting emphasizes, not the clinical
reports on the people who live their lives out in shadows.
Many plays of the modem theatre are concerned with
the psychology of their characters. David Sievers went so
far as to state:
. . . The most significant fact in the history of
the modern American drama is its overwhelming in- j
debtedness to the concepts of behavior developed
and systematized by the psychoanalystic movement,
and most particularly by the genius of its founder,
Sigmund Freud.5°
In most of these plays the presence of a fantastic setting
would be an Intrusion, since the object is often to show j
the effects of the unconscious on characters as they go
about their ordinary business in an everyday environment. ;
Bryllion Fagin, "'Freud' On the American
Stage," Educational Theatre Journal, I (December, 1950),
296.
5°w. David Sievers, Freud On Broadway (New York:
Hermitage House, 1955)# p. 454.
Here the illusion of reality Is a necessary part of the
environment.
If the designer Is willing arbitrarily to Invest
a play in a surrealist setting, one with a psychoanalytic
slant would provide an excellent subject. He is more
likely to emphasize symbols already present than to create
a wholly surrealist setting, thus pointing up the Freudian
intent without distorting the environment completely. In
a play such as Rain, the John Colton and Clemence Randolph
adaptation of Somerset Maugham's tale of sin, seduction,
and suicide in the South Seas, the elements are already
present and waiting for an Interpretive treatment. Sadie
Thompson, the prostitute who is tempted by religion and,
in her way, finds a form of salvation, possesses a symbol
In the door to her room "entered through a bedraggled
Japanese bead curtain, stringy and bitten and very
old."51 Freud's genital symbol is present, and it can be
as bedraggled as Sadie herself. The room is lighted by a
lamp hanging in chains from the ceiling and casting a red
light, red for whoredom and red for passion. To represent
the Reverend Mr. Davidson, who bears his cross in the
Samoan Eden, there are the pillars which hold up the roof
of corrugated iron. The pillars might be tied together
-^John Colton and Clemence Randolph, Rain (New York:
Liverlght Publishing Corporation, 1923)> P« 2.
244
near the top to resemble crosses pulled off-center by the
vines and perfumed flowers of a tarnished Paradise. Where-'
ever the eye turns are reminders of Torquemada lost in an
Eden which he desires and yet cannot understand. There
are pictures on the wall and pornographic plants swaying
Just beyond the railing of the veranda. All about Is the
evidence of the conflict between the viciousness of a
narrow approach to religion and the seductiveness of the
world as It was and always will be. It Is a tale of the
madness which possesses a man and a woman and their self-
destruction after a seduction. The design of Joe Horn's
run-down hotel in the harbor area of Samoa can be a col
laborator in the play about the two sinners.
Whether or not a designer may legitimately take
liberties with the rooms and props of a play supposedly
realistic in approach is a matter for debate. Certainly
it has been done and, indeed, is more often the case than
not, if the entire history of design is considered. It is
a suggested use of Surrealism in stage-setting, especially
if done subtly.
I
CHAPTER VIII
SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, SUGGESTIONS
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
Summary
The purpose of this study was to analyze the
reasons for the use of Surrealism in the theatre and to
describe the form of the setting which results.
Chapter I set forth the problem, defined the terms,
and reviewed the literature of Surrealism and Its applica
tion to the theatre.
Chapter II presented an analysis of four general
purposes of a stage-setting of any style: (1) isolation
of the dramatic act from the actual event, (2) provision
of space for the actor, (3) visual accompaniment, and (4)
decoration. The first is basic to any setting, since it
is rooted in the fundamental convention of the theatre,
which is that the play is the representation of an act and
not the act itself. The second category satisfies the
physical needs of the actor with regard to the space he
requires and further suggests the emotional differences
produced by space usage. Visual accompaniment may be
subdivided into the classifications of environment,
245
246
atmosphere, action, and neutral background, each of which
may be exploited at the option of the designer. Decora
tion Is of less Importance than the other purposes, al
though It is a feature of many productions and has been of
significant Importance throughout theatrical history.
Whatever form the stage-setting takes, Its purpose Is one
or all of the above.
Chapter III explored the purposes of Surrealism
as a part of theatrical production. Four categories of
purpose were established: (1) search for Inner vision,
(2) destruction of accepted patterns of thought, (3) pro
motion of surprise and wonder, and (4) decoration. With
the exception of the fourth category, the purposes all
tend to force the imaginations of designer and audience to
^look beyond the apparent, conventional world of experience
and to reach into the unconscious for the Imagery and
emotion stored within.
Chapter IV described the general content and tech
nique of the surrealist setting, as it has been adapted
from sources such as Neo-romanticism, Freudian psycho
analysis, and automatic production. Neo-romanticism pro
vided much of the haunting atmosphere of one character
istic kind of Surrealism, while the ideas of Freud sug
gested a means of breaking the barrier between the deriv
ative art of the consoious and the interiorized art of the
tinconscious, thus freeing the creative powers of the
artist and suggesting that the audience also might allow
Its Inner Images to flow freely In response to the picture
set before its eyes. The surrealist idea finds representa
tion primarily through object displacement and symbolism.
Object displacement is the use of animate or inanimate ob
jects in a manner not ordinarily accepted as part of their
usual function, or as the combination of objects in a
usual or bizarre fashion. Symbolism is primarily that of
dreams and fantasy, arranged to have some possible meaning.
Chapter V contained a description of the form of
Surrealism which might be termed unreal-realism. This 1b
the unreal seemingly made real, as though a photograph has
been taken of a scene or object which does not exist.
Among the artists who best illustrate this form are Salva
dor Dali, Yves Tanguy, and Max Ernst, and it is to their
pictures that the stage designer may look for suggestions.
The physical form of setting is comparable to that for any
other kind of scenery; that is, composed of backdrops,
flats, props, projections, and other usual components of
scenery.
Chapter VI described the abstract form of Surreal
ism. Much of its effect is accidental, based to some ex
tent on the original idea of Surrealism— uncontrolled,
automatic production. The linear style of Klee and the
Bhapes of Mlr6 suggest an Interior world. The amorphous
248
style of Matts, In which color and random patterns are of
more Importance than suggestion of shape, Is especially
valuable when used In lighting and moving projections*
Dada Is an expression of the revolt against convention.
With Its destructiveness and Its ridiculous humor, Dada
attempts to reveal true reality by annihilating accepted
reality. Its methods are moving scenery, meaningless ob
jects, painting with no logic, and whatever else the de
signer might Include to shock or surprise the audience.
Chapter VTI sets forth criteria for the valid em
ployment of Surrealism. These are: (1) the implications
of the design correspond to those of the play, (2) the
setting does not Intrude Into the flow of dramatic action,
except in those Instances when such Intrusion Is the ac
tual or Implied intent of the play, (3) setting and play
combine to provide a unity of sensual and intellectual
Impression. Plays which can be adapted to meet these
criteria include those of the avant-garde, those which
emphasize the unreal, the dream, character and environ
mental symbolism, the poetic, and, finally, children's
fantasy.
Conclusions
1. The problem of design is a complex one, but
it may be simplified by a determination of the primary
and secondary purposes which the setting Is to serve.
249
This is a fundamental concept, one which would appear quite
obvious, yet it is one which can be overlooked in fulfill
ing the ordinary task of satisfying the staging require
ments of playwright and director. The mechanics of
blooklng are certainly of importance to the designer, and
this is admitted, but beyond this lies the area of visual
implication, which is the core of the design problem.
What impression is to be conveyed to the audience? Each
design style carries its own particular implications,
Inescapably, since the setting is an obvious physical
presence, with its own connotations of shape, color, and
plcturisation. Style thus requires a commitment to its i
!
possibilities and its limitations— realism makes one set
l
of demands, anti-realism another. If no such commitment
is made, the production as it finally appears on the
stage drifts between two goals, approaching first one then
the other, but never reaching either. The result is audi
ence confusion and a consequent dissipation of dramatic
effectiveness.
Surrealism is one of the many anti-realistic
styles, with its own possibilities and limitations. It
is a difficult style, for designer and audience alike,
since it is an attempted expression of Imagery which is
emotional, and therefore not readily pictured. Surrealism
often falls, Just as tragedy falls, or comedy, but it
cannot eaally be dismissed for such failures, for it must
be Judged by its accomplishments. For every Lear there
are thousands of dismal old men plagued with suffering,
but the seed of tragedy is present In the lesser figures,
even if it never flowers. So, too, with Surrealism. The
design may not achieve its goal, but the potential is
always present. It is this potential which the designer
strives to exploit.
2. The surrealist setting fulfils the general
conditions required by the conventions of the theatre and
the demands of the play. First, by its unnatural appear
ance, it strongly indicates that onstage action is not to
be construed as anything but a theatrical event, thus
effectively separating dramatic illusion from actual ex
perience. Second, the physical requirements of the actors
can be met as well by the surrealist setting as by any
other kind, since preemption of acting space by scenery is
not a usual feature of the setting. Third, the setting
provides the necessary scenic background for those plays
which lend themselves to surreal design. And fourth,
when the requirement is mere decoration, or when decora
tion is an integral part of the production, Surrealism
offers a wide variety of pictorial forms. In no way does
the ordinary surrealist setting conflict with the expected
functions of scenery.
251
3. Surrealism's main purpose is to provide a
ohain of personal associations, triggered by the stage
picture and emphasized by the play. Surrealism suggests;
the spectator imagines. The audience then becomes some
what like another character In the play, participating
rather like a party guest who stands spart from his fel
lows, observing, listening, but Just as often merely
allowing his own thoughts to range over private sceneB
suggested by what he seeB and hears. The experience is a
common one, whether at a social gathering, or when reading
a book or listening to music. Attention wanders from
stimulus to fantasy, and, depending on the individual
imagination, the focus is stronger on one than the other.
There will be objections to such a position, for
audience attention is not always fixed on the play itself.
Yet what is the purpose of theatre? Certainly it is not
merely intellectual acceptance. A printed play may be
analyzed and annotated, but the produced play is an
emotional experience and reaction to it is emotional and
instant. Criticism may enter, but the essence of theatre
is fairy tale, in sophisticated and disguised form, but
fairy tale nevertheless. Theatre exists only because
it satisfies the need for fantasy. It brings fantasy to
life, and whatever point of view may be imposed on the
fiction, the story remains and with it the power to evoke
the personal imagery of each spectator as he associates
himself with the actors of the play. Theatre, when it
succeeds, briefly entwines the fictional lives of actors
and audience, making them part of the playwright's story.
Then there are no spectators; they are all participants•
Such is the goal of theatre, and such is one goal of
Surrealism.
Another purpose of Surrealism is to reveal the
absurdity and falsity of accepted social and artistic
concepts. Surrealism was bom as an expression of revolt
against the past, of all that had led to the physical and
moral destruction of World War I and its aftermath, and
much of the original philosophy remains. Some Surrealism
is deliberate fraud, and if accepted as art, which it
often is, becomes another exhibit in the brief against
ordinary standards of Judgment. However, the purpose is
more often a serious one. It is significant that one of
the heroes of^Surrealism is Einstein, who destroyed a
cherished belief by showing that a proven reality was not
the actual reality. Newtonian mechanics remains, but
Relativity stretches science to the stars. Einstein de
stroyed, only to build; yet the old remains, now in its
proper place. So it is with Surrealism. There 1b no in
tention to annihilate society and art, only to change it
through revelation of the falsity of long-held beliefs.
This part of Surrealism is too often dismissed as ridicu-
Ioub or meaningless, but it exists as a purpose. It is
253
part of the theory which holds that until familiar surfaces
are stripped away from an idea no progress is possible.
If no questions are raised, no answers are forthcoming and
life remains static. Surrealism provides some of its own
answers, but it raises even more questions. Why is the
i
world the way it is? Look at it the way it really is, the
Surrealists demand. Look, and then act; but look.
4. Purpose finds its expression in form. Form is
a compromise between idea and representation and so can
never accomplish all that is intended. This is very true
of Surrealism, since its purposes are often too divorced |
i
from normal experience to be adequately pictured. Fur- j
thermore, there is no standard method of representation.
Unlike realism, cubism, and many other styles, Surrealism
is so varied in appearance that description is difficult.
Description is probably best accomplished by comparison to i
pictures and objects of selected artists, especially
Salvador Dali and Yves Tanguy, as painters of unreal real
ism, and Paul Klee and Matta, as painters of non-real
shapes and color patterns.
For the most part, conversion of design to scenery j
presents no particular problems, since the usual scenic
devices will serve— flats, drops, and lighting. At times
projected scenery is required, both mobile and stationary;
at other times, film. Surrealist design may require a
full extension of technical facilities but should not
254
demand the Impossible*
5* Surrealism Is not a universal Btyle, but rather
a special one for special situations* When used properly
It Is perhaps as effective a method of design as can be ap
plied to solving the problem of proper setting for chosen
play. Surrealism belongs to the magic tradition of the
theatre, In which the play becomes part of a fantasy trans
ferred to the stage* It Is effective when the magic and
fantasy are present In the play and In the production, for
It Is In this realm that It functions best.
The major contribution of surrealist design will
be In three areas: the avant-garde, the unreal, and the
dream, for here departures from realism are expected* In
none of these areas do the ordinary rules apply, for the
usual concept of reality is absent* Since the reallstlo
setting would be an anomoly In such situations, an anti-
realistic setting must take Its place* Because of the
close affinity of the surrealist material and technique to
that of the three categories named, surrealist design
should be an acceptable choice.
6. There are dangers In the use of Surrealism*
The most apparent Is that design may conflict with play.
This, of course, may happen with any design for any play,
but may be reduced by limiting its use to those plays
which already tend toward the surrealist purpose and form*
Another danger is that the scenery overwhelms the
255
I
play, or at least does not maintain the necessary degree
of neutrality which Is required If the actors are to re
main the center of attention. This Is a criticism which
has been levelled at some of the ballet scenery of Dali,
Sellgmann, and Tchelltohev, and rightfully, since an
already-striking painting magnified to the size of a
theatrical backdrop becomes a sheer mass of color and form
which seldom retires to the background. The spectator
then becomes too conscious of the background, and of the
meanings which It holds, and finds himself drawn away
from the actions on the stage.
Then, Surrealism is subjective, and Its explana- j
tlons are often those provided by the Individual artist
and the spectator. This causes confusion, since meaning
is often only that determined by a particular reaction at
a particular time. It Is a property which alienates
that part of the audience demanding a readily-interpreted
picture, and it is probably for this reason that Surreal
ism Is not often used In the theatre. The audience wants
to direct Its energies to following the story, not to
solving a puzzle. This Is perhaps the primary danger of
Surrealism, for audiences generally accept only that which
Is already familiar. Not only the play but also the audi
ence must be carefully chosen if a surrealist design Is
to succeed.
7. Surrealism in its pure form is probably of
less use to the theatre than an adaptation. Many of the
Ideas are acceptable— the strange landscapes, weird ob
jects, and dreamlike scenes. Adaptation is the key, for
it keeps some of the unreality and grafts it onto a famil
iar frame, thereby retaining some of the Intended effect
while, at the same time, molding it into material which
can be recognized and accepted. Surrealism, when stripped
of its excesses, is, after all, only a variation of
realism.
Suggestions for Further Research
Certain topics for further research were suggested
by this study.
1. A study of audience awareness of setting.
If theatre history is a guide, the appearance of a
setting has mattered little to an audience, except as
picture or spectacle. Even in contemporary theatre there
seems to be no difference In the acceptance of a play pre
sented in a realistic or non-reallstic settings. What,
then, does the audience see?
For example, the ordinary stage floor is usually
bare wood, no matter if the scene is supposed to be the
granite palace of a Roman Emperor or a tropical rain for
est. The floor often shows signs of having served many
past productions— paint spills, markings for flats and
furniture, and perhaps a revolving stage or trapdoors.
257
If close attention Is paid to the details of scenery,
costumes, and acting, why is so vast and obvious a space
generally left naked? It seems that most producers decide
that it makes no difference. Evidently there Is little
critical or audience objection.
The example of the bare floor can be multiplied
with things like the improbable expansion of a tiny steam
ship cabin to fit a forty-foot proscenium, the wire-and-
papler-mache tree placed precariously in the midst of an
array of genuine plants rented from a nursery, a sky of
color never met in nature pooled spottily across wrinkled
and waving canvas, an ocean of fluttering china silk, and
even the common practice of spattering flats with various
colors which are supposed to blend but seldom do. Every
setting is possessed of incongruities which if found in a
painting would probably elicit cries of "amateurism.'’
Yet in the theatre something happens to make the improba
bilities working accessories for the dramatic illusion.
How aware is the audience of the contradictions and the
artificialities? What does it see?
2. A study of the process of closing the gap
between the visual aspect of a production and the mental
image.
As a continuation of the problem of audience
awareness, an investigation might be made into the process
by which the contradictions and artificialities of a
258
setting are transformed by the spectator Into a mental
Image oompatable with the Idea of the play.
Is the acceptance of scenery a produot of time;
that Is, Is there a desire for one kind of scenery at one
period and for another at some other time? Could this
be a partial explanation of critical attention to the
problem of design In modem theatre, when, before the rise
of realism, it made little difference? A case might be
made for the reassurance conveyed by the reallBtlc set In
a world In which the safety of mankind Is increasingly
threatened. Realism— the familiar— may represent reassur
ance. On the other hand, much contemporary scenery Is
|
antl-reallst. What effect does this have on the audience?
How does the audience resolve its own personal conflicts?
Even without regard for societal behavior, an
Investigator might be able to make some determination of
the mental adjustments which a spectator makes in order to
accept and reject parts of what he sees and then form his
selected images into a pattern necessary for his involv-
ment in the dramatic action. What happens in the mind
of the spectator?
A Summation
Scenery is something more than a pretty picture
or three-walled box placed in limbo. It is a complex
part of the even more complex theatrical experience.
Like much of the magic of the theatre it can be explained
and reduoed to theory, but, like all magic, the mystery
remains•
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Creator Carnes, Edwin Hammond (author)

Core Title A Descriptive Study Of Form And Purpose In The Surrealist Stage-Setting

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest,theater

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Stahl, Herbert M. (committee chair), Butler, James H. (committee member), Casson, Allan Perham (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-364620

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Legacy Identifier 6506900.pdf

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