intervention. Final scene designed by Rabinovich for the Vakhtangov Theatre
the human comedy designed by Rabinovich for the Vakhtangov Theatre
love and intrigue designed by Akimov for the Vakhtangov Theatre
DESIGNERS AT WORK 169
"But there is no such scene called for in the play,” they said.
"No, but there should be,” he replied. "The play must not end with the three soldiers who have decided to forsake the Interventionists for the Reds, standing on the quai, but with their ascent of this great flight of steps of mine into a new future for them.”
The theatre and the author agreed, perceiving that this gave the play stronger significance, so without the addition of a single line, just in a simply executed set and with one piece of business, the play was given by its designer a new punch and a climactic ending which has been hailed by Moscow playgoers as one of the most dramatic moments of the production.
Rabinovich composes with light also, for he believes, like Meierhold, that light has an aesthetic contribution to make to a performance if its use is carried beyond simple actual- ism. He says that scenery should be a kind of "visual music.” One of the few effective lighting innovations in Moscow is his illumination from behind of a cyclorama of translucent glazed material, like tracing-linen. With the projection of soft, half-tone and quarter-tone silhouettes coming from other materials hanging between light sources and cyclorama, he builds up the misty quality necessary to many scenes, best illustrated, perhaps, in some of his sets for "The Human Comedy” and "The Storm” and (without the silhouettes) in some of the sets for "Eugene Onegin.”
Our conversation brought out another point about designers’ work in Moscow. While designers are free to do settings for any theatre they choose (Rabinovich has worked for the Vakhtangov, MX AT and Bolshoi all in one season), and although theatres employ as many different designers as they wish (the Art Theatre had Rabinovich, Dmitriev, Williams and Simov all working on settings for
its different productions simultaneously this last season), the better designers do loosely associate themselves with some particular theatre whose artistic theories most closely coincide with their individual talents. Therefore, while the Vakhtangov does not have Rabinovich on its staff, it frequently calls him in to do a show, and he more readily agrees to collaborate with it than with other theatres because he recognizes that the Vakhtangov’s sharp, vivid, witty and slightly stylized methods come closest to meeting his own. So it is with Akimov and the Vakhtangov, and so it is with other designers and other theatres: Simov and the Moscow Art Theatre, Fedorovski and the Bolshoi, Ryndin and the Kamerny, Tischler and the Jewish, Shlep- yanov and the Theatre of the Revolution. The association is completely informal and reminds one of Robert Edmond Jones’ past collaboration with Arthur Hopkins, Lee Simonson’s work at the Theatre Guild, Jo Mielziner’s association in so many of Guthrie McClintic’s recent plays.
Nikolai Akimov is another artist who considers himself a regisseur-designer, but in a more actual sense than does Rabinovich. It would, in fact, be more accurate to call him a designer-regisseur. He wishes to create in the theatre an entire production, believing that one artist must be responsible for the synthesis of the visual with the intellectual elements of a play. Most of his work as artist-regisseur has been done in Leningrad, Moscow knowing it principally through his brilliant production of "Hamlet” for the Vakhtangov. When he works on the decor alone, as he has done for many other plays in Moscow, he shows his love for the theatre theatrical and for artificiality. He shows us, too, a keen intellectual understanding of the meaning which a particular production is to convey, a marked sense of irony and humor, and a desire to explore all the possible ways of mounting a play, achieving as a result remarkably fresh and novel effects. It was he who
designed the Vakhtangov’s production of ''Love and Intrigue” in which the whole stage became a huge silver disc, tilted at a sharp angle up from the audience and surrounded by blackness. On this disc the action was played and what scenery was used—and there was little—was set. His also were the settings for "Debacle” in which he made an inner proscenium in the shape of a cinema screen which, as in movie closeups, showed only the upper two-thirds of the actors’ bodies.
Ryndin, whose work is most often seen at the Kamerny Theatre where his outstanding productions have been "Machinal,” "The Optimistic Tragedy” and "Egyptian Nights,” is an architect-artist who shows little interest in color and great interest in form. Working almost in monotone which he punctuates with color derived from light, he creates massive architectural effects which are always formal and sometimes tend toward abstract symbolism. This abstraction is strongest in "The Optimistic Tragedy”; in his last work, the settings for "Aristocrats” at the Vakhtangov Theatre, he shows a tendency to adopt a simplified realism which is at the same time powerfully impressionistic. He seems to have been influenced more by Appia than by anyone within Russia. He makes much use of light projection, sometimes for abstract emotional effect and sometimes for illustration of points in the text of a play, as I have described in "Machinal.”
Space prevents discussion of the other good designers in Moscow—of the painter Favorski, who gave to the Second Art Theatre its charming decorations for "Twelfth Night”; of Shlepyanov, in whose work at the Theatre of the Revolution we can trace the emergence of good socialistic realism out of a good constructivism, of the brothers Stenberg who preceded Ryndin at the Kamerny; of Tischler whom someone has called a "revolutionary romanticist,” whatever that means in the U.S.S.R.; of Wil-
liams, a recent arrival in the theatre but a man who shows himself an able graphic artist and a fine colorist in his sets for ‘'Pickwick Club” and the forthcoming "Moliere,” both for the Moscow Art Theatre.
3
it is difficult to make generalizations about the technical processes of work of the Soviet designers, for it has never been systematized like the work of Russian actors and directors, and it is largely a matter of the individual’s temperament. To study it properly, we really should go from studio to studio and report what we find in each. That being impossible, I shall have to attempt generalizations.
There seem to-be two ways in which the designer tackles his problem. Either he will develop his ideas in the form of esquisses, beginning with rough thumb-nail sketches and carrying them through to highly detailed colored plates, or, after a rough sketch or two made only for his own eye, he will proceed at once to work on the maquette. Different designers use the different methods at various times. Certain ones prefer the former system, and in this they betray themselves as painter-artists. Many of those whose conceptions are essentially three-dimensional and architectonic or constructivist go at once to the stage model. A few versatile designers work in either medium, depending on the style they are adopting for the commission at hand.
It is possible to say, however, that the maquette is much more generally used in the Moscow studio than in New York. There are several reasons for this. The first is the ever-present one of time. The Moscow designer has usually anywhere from eight weeks to a year to prepare his production. The New York designer rarely has more than the
same one month that the director and cast are allowed in which not only to design but to execute his plans. During this month he may even be working on one or two other plays. The maquette, if it is to be of any value, must be carefully and exactly made. It is long and tedious work. The American designer, while usually acknowledging the value of it, rarely feels that he has the time to complete one before its practical use will have passed.
Another reason for the use of the maquette in Moscow is that Soviet stage design is principally based either on some kind of definite architectural form or on some derivative of constructivism which, to be understood, must be seen in the round, in space. The possibilities of the spatial stage cannot be adequately explored by the regisseur or the designer from a two-dimensional rendering. The realistic convention of the New York theatre, because of the kind of plays which are being produced, requires that about seventy-five per cent of its plays shall be mounted in some adaptation of the box-set interior. There is little need for a maquette to illustrate such a staging. The box-set, however, makes rare appearances in Moscow.
Almost every theatre in Moscow has a revolving stage; even the smallest stages have their turntables. These are regularly used because so many Soviet productions are of many scenes. Therefore, the audience also will be called upon to see the scenery in the round, and the designer must ascertain what the effect will be. If revolving stages are not used, then some kind of moving wagon or platform stage must be devised, and here again the maquette is of use in working out the feasibility of the designer’s scheme. New York has few revolving stages; the majority of its plays have had, until the last season or two, no more than three sets, and there is little need for rapid-shifting devices. When the American designer is called upon to mount a production of many scenes, he is apt, incidentally, to make
use of a model, which proves that he appreciates its value under such conditions as he then must work—conditions which are the daily ones of the Soviet artist.
The maquette has come to be so depended upon in Moscow studios that if the designer has not seen fit to make one, then the working staff of the theatre for which he has prepared his esquisses may very probably make one- inch scale models for itself from his sketches. Some theatres even provide permanent models of their stages which the designer is expected to use in his work. All these maquettes are carefully and beautifully executed. Photographs of them might easily be confused with ones of the finished product. All furniture and the tiniest props are made to exact scale and there is usually an effort to work out the lighting as well, although the electrical equipment of the models is not usually very complete. I am sorry to say that often the maquette of a setting is more effective than the finished set.
His final drawings or his models having been completed and turned over to the working staff of the theatre, the designer’s work is theoretically finished, for they are supposed to be so accurate in every way that their exact reproduction will give the designer what he wants without further bother on his part. Actually, however, the designer’s duties continue, for he wishes to supervise the execution of the setting, props and costumes, and he will oversee the final arrangement on the stage. He will also supervise the execution of the actors’ wigs and make-ups for which he will have made sketches.
Although the designer is not on the theatre’s staff, the staff does include a permanent ''artist,” a technical director, an assistant technical director, and sometimes one or two art assistants. It is to them that the production now goes. They are directly responsible for executing the
designer’s plans, and it is with them that he works. The designer himself makes no architectural drawings, no working or mechanical drawings of any kind. He employs no assistant or draughtsman of his own to do this for him; his work is done alone, usually in his home, and it does not involve ground plans, elevations or detail sheets. If there are any, the technician or the artist of the theatre’s staff will do them. But in most cases there are no formal working drawings made by anybody for a setting. The technician simply applies a scale rule to the designer’s scaled model or the one which he has made himself from the designer’s sketch, jots down the dimensions he finds there, makes, if need be, a few constructional notes or perspective sketches of details on a piece of scratch paper or the back of an envelope. These he then turns over to the carpenter or the property man. There are no blueprints to be shown to the inquiring visitor because no blueprints have ever been made.
In America dimensions must be down in black and white (or rather, in blue and white) so that scene shops may have them as a basis for estimates of cost to regulate their bidding for contracts. That is one reason why accurate blueprints are so important in New York’s professional theatre. But since every theatre in Moscow has all its own shops where it does its own building and painting of scenery, manufactures all its furniture, props and effects, there is no advance estimating and bidding and no contracts let. These shops are all situated in the theatre’s building and are manned by a permanent staff of workers who execute all that theatre’s scenery only. This is another reason why working drawings are so little used in Moscow. The technician who is executing the settings may have his office just adjoining the shops, he can pay them twenty visits a day, he can if need be show the workers
personally how every piece is to be made and finished, and the maquette or sketches are at hand for any workman to see at any time.
The technical department of the Moscow Art Theatre is the largest and most complete of any dramatic theatre in the city. There are 260 members on its staff and it occupies parts of four buildings. A five-story scene "factory” is being built which will have much better equipment than the present shops, and into it they will be transferred within a year or two. The technical director is today a little apologetic when he shows an American visitor the equipment, for much of it was purchased before the Revolution. But in extent there is nothing in America comparable to this department save perhaps the "warehouse” of the Shubert Corporation in New York.
We should start a tour of the technical department in the studio and offices of its director and his assistant, in which the staff artist lays out certain details, patterns for upholstery for instance, and where the models are made and exhibited. These rooms open off the foyer of the balcony and are far from the scene of execution which is half a block up the alley. We go first to a low building which contains the carpentry and iron-working shops. In the carpentry shop we see that much heavier lumber is being used for frames of "flats” than the American theatre uses, that there are a great many more solid units being built, that probably because cloth is expensive and scarce and wood is plentiful, canvas yields to plywood in covering many surfaces. In the iron shop we discover that the theatre makes its own lighting units—floodlights, stands, clamps, etc.—as well as its own rails and corner irons for building support. The department supplies any metal fittings that may be needed in a production: it will turn out a sixteeth-century hanging lantern, an eighteenth-century
musket barrel, or a twentieth-century door latch or pair of handcuffs as the play requires.
From this building we go to the other buildings along the alley which house the other departments. The Art Theatre has its own paint shop, where we observe that the Soviet scene painter does all his painting with the material lying flat on the floor; no paint frames or vertical scaffolds are in evidence. In the prop shop we find complete woodworking equipment, a little antiquated but quite adequate, and we see a dozen Russian Empire chairs being made to match a single original, all of them to be used in the new sets of "The Cherry Orchard. ,, All kinds of props are being manufactured there. Adjoining this is the upholstery shop where all upholstering is done. In the artificial flower department are artists of that craft who have been working there ever since they provided the first cherry blossoms for "The Cherry Orchard” thirty years ago. In another room many women (wives of the men who work elsewhere in the MX AT shops) are making artificial leaves for trees.
There is a dye shop where all kinds of materials are colored in quantity—goods for costumes, velvets for cyclo- ramas, carpeting, drapery material, sky drops. Special dyes are mixed here to be sent to the paint or to the upholstery departments for use in particular painting-with- dye processes. In the same little house with the dye shop is the theatre’s laundry which shares with the theatre’s dry- cleaning shop, also installed there, the responsibility of keeping the costumes and draperies for all the plays in the repertoire fresh and clean. This is quite a task in a theatre which may continue to perform a play for ten or twenty years without changing its costumes.
The costume shops are situated in the theatre building itself, and here all costumes are made, both men’s and women’s, which are to be worn on the stage, including modern gowns and men’s suits. Some of the period cos-
tumes are refashioned out of materials already at hand in the costumes of plays which have been withdrawn from the repertoire (Stanislavski has never allowed the robes of the original "Tsar Fyodor” production to be touched), some gorgeous materials are available from confiscated ecclesiastical and royal regalias, but most costumes are completely new creations. Adjoining the costume shops on one side is the hat shop where all kinds of hats and head- gear are made, save metal helmets which come from the metal-working shop; on the other side is the bootery where shoes and boots of every style and period are manufactured. The wig department has a dressing room situated near the stage door, for the wigmaker creates his wigs and beards at home and uses this room only for dressing and caring for those wigs which the actors bring to him at the theatre before or after performances. As part of the equipment and staff of the technical department must be included two scenery trucks and the truckmen who haul sets back and forth from the shops and from the large MXAT to its small affiliated stage six blocks away.
This part of the technical department is concerned only with the preparation of a production, with the execution of the artist’s designs in their dozen different aspects. It is possible for these shops to be preparing three productions simultaneously—"Enemies,” "Moliere,” and the new mounting of "The Cherry Orchard” were all in work there in January, 1935. The shops may require from four weeks to four months to do a complete show, depending on the complication of its designs. We have now to consider the assembling of the production on the stage and the organization of the technical crew which runs it. I should like first, however, to describe the stage of the Moscow Art Theatre on which they have to work. It is not very new or unique, but it is, I believe, the largest and one of the best equipped dramatic stages in Moscow.
(The Kamerny’s stage is the largest of the newer ones and it has much better lighting equipment than the MXAT, the best in Moscow, in my opinion.)
The most spectacular feature of the Art Theatre’s equipment is the huge turntable, fifty-five feet in diameter. To encompass so large a revolving section, the stage is sixty-three feet deep, which makes the space of the stage floor very nearly a square. (The average depth of a stage in New York is about half that.) This characteristic the Art Theatre shares with almost all Moscow theatres, for they have uniformly deep stages. Within this revolving space are two rectangular sections which are capable of rising six feet above the floor level and of sinking six feet beneath it. The turntable may revolve in either direction and at various rates of speed. The rising and falling sections may be in movement while the turntable is revolving.
There are sixty-six sets of lines on the gridiron, sixty- eight feet above the stage floor. There are two basements, the revolving stage being controlled electrically from the first. Here also is the furniture storage, with an elevator which brings props up from there to the stage level during a scene shift, thus allowing the stage floor to be free of unused furniture and props. Here also are some of the sound effects; others are elsewhere. There is a pipe organ in the back wall of the stage itself and a set of full-sized church bells hangs from a gallery. From the first basement one enters the booth which contains the switchboard, situated next to the prompter’s box beside the footlights. From here the electrician may see the entire stage and control his lights accordingly. He is in telephonic communication with the stage floor. In this the MXAT has served as a model to most other Moscow theatres, for almost everywhere the switchboard is in a box under the stage with an opening which commands a view of it. Rarely is it found in the wings. The Art Theatre has also set an example to
the other Moscow theatres in the matter of the house curtain. The Maly is the only theatre I have seen in the city which has a drop curtain; in all the others, like the MX AT, the curtains part.
Of the 260 members of the technical department of the Art Theatre, considerably less than half form the stage crews in its two theatres. These crews are divided into two sections; one which is on duty on the stage by day, arranging sets for rehearsals, preparing for the evening performance, and one which runs the show at night. It is obviously much more difficult from a technical point of view to present a different play every night, as the repertory system requires, than to keep the sets of only one play indefinitely on one’s stage. That is why two crews are required—many "lines” must be cleared each day, new sets hung, lamps rearranged, flats restacked, old props cleared and new ones stacked—enough work for one whole crew, considering that this must be done before eleven or after four in the afternoon, the only times when the MXAT’s stage is not being used for rehearsal of one play or another.
The size of the crew that works a performance varies, depending upon the heaviness of the production. From seven to twenty-five carpenters, from six to eight prop men, and from six to eight electricians form the regular crew. The "boss carpenter” is in charge after the first dozen performances which are personally supervised by the technical director. The stage manager of a play does not have responsibility for the technical details which the New York stage manager must assume. His only concern is with the actors. He has a small booth-like office in a rear corner of the stage where he can see the entrances from the dressing-room corridors on to the stage and keep an eye on his cast. His assistant sits in the prompt box with the script. The Vakhtangov Theatre, incidentally, has no
Stage Model: eugene onegin at the Bolshoi Opera
Stage Model: the Spanish curate at the Second Moscow Art Theatre
twelfth night. Designed by Favorski for the Second Moscow Art Theatre
DESIGNERS AT WORK 181
prompter and no one at all holds the book during performances.
The routine of running a performance in a Moscow theatre is so similar to that in America that I see no point in describing it. I also see no need for describing the back stage mechanics of other theatres in Moscow, for all those which I saw were more or less modeled on the Art Theatre, though on a smaller scale. The Vakhtangov, for example, has only eighty-four men on its technical staff!
Lighting in the Soviet theatre has little to recommend it to the foreigner. The equipment is poor and clumsy (the Art Theatre has two American spotlights and two German; all the rest are home-made and look like it). The effects achieved are not remarkable. In many theatres footlights have been abolished (not so at the MX AT and Maly), and their place has been taken by front floodlighting which involves wide spilling and a general illumination of everything that lies within a wide circle of the proscenium. Front lighting by spots is customarily effected by the use of arcs or sometimes by incandescent lamps which are operated from side proscenium boxes. Each box may contain two or three spots under the control of one or two operators, usually young apprentices who make distracting movements as they adjust their lamps during the action. These lights are used as ‘'follow spots” and are constantly moving to cover the business of the leading characters. To supplement these side lights from the front, and at the MXAT to replace them, some theatres have a battery of spots on a bar hanging above the proscenium and about twenty feet in front of it. Onstage lights are few and crude, old-fashioned borders with a few spots and floods.
There is little effort to eliminate unnecessary shadows. Very little color is used in lighting acting areas. Clear light predominates, to be varied occasionally by a bright
amber, pink or blue. The use of frosting is apparently unknown and many sets are confused by the sharp line of the spotlight’s focused circle as it hits the contours of the setting without any softening. I am, of course, aware that many times the sharp beam of a clear spotlight is tremendously effective, and that it is often consciously used, but I think that the Soviet theatre employs that method of lighting to such an excess as to spoil its dramatic quality when it is used properly. Certainly the realistic theatre errs when it practices Meierholdian lighting technique in an otherwise natural setting.
Again I admit that I generalize in leveling this criticism; Meierhold himself and one or two designers (I have mentioned Rabinovich in particular) make fine use of light, but with the exception of their work and of a few excellently lighted -performances at the Kamerny Theatre, I saw no play in Moscow which New York could not and would not have lighted better.
At the present time there is no training school for theatre technicians in Moscow. Each theatre has a certain number of young people who serve as apprentices in various departments and after a period of training and experience become full-fledged members of the staff. There is, however, a central school about to be opened by Narkompros to which the theatres will send a few of their younger technicians. There they will have a more formal training in engineering, electricity, and various other subjects which will equip them better for work as theatre technicians. As I understand the plan, they will continue to serve as apprentices within their theatre, and while going to school by day will gain practical experience from helping to work the regular evening performances on their home stage.
To conclude, the decor of the Moscow stage is brave in conception, weak in execution. The designer is an artist
who rarely has to have the particularized knowledge of the New York designer, but who, possibly for that very reason, contrives backgrounds that are bold and sometimes very beautiful. They are executed by the staffs of each theatre which, while amazing us by the number of crafts represented, yet turn out productions which are regularly cruder and sloppier than our own. Again we are up against that characteristic of the Russian people which Western engineers and architects working in the Soviet Union know so well and curse so heartily: the Russians can plan magnificently—dream dreams of surpassing beauty— yet they know not perfection of manual workmanship. But perhaps the theatre needs more dreams and fewer well- built door frames.
CHAPTER SEVEN