Directors and Designers

Is there a different direction?

Pamela Howard

The visionary architect Adolphe Appia saw that 'creation' meant the synthesis of space, light and performance achieved by one total personal vision. Diaghilev introduced the painter to the theatre and artisan scene painters such as Vladimir Polunin, previously a bespoke decorator, became an interpreter. In 1935 Robert Edmond Jones observed, "the excitement that should be in theatres is found only in baseball parks, arenas, stadiums and racecourses." In the twentieth century and twenty-first century the move out of playhouses into new spaces demands an exploitation of the architecture before relying on design. Logically this results in the work of designer and director merging to become a single and unique creator of text and vision.

In reality the collaboration between directors and designers is often uneasy. In 1988 at a conference organised by The Society of British Theatre Designers on this subject at Riverside Studios, an entire panel of invited directors declared that they never had 'any trouble' collaborating with designers, and described a life of sweetness and light with ideas flowing freely back and forth culminating in, as they saw it, riveting and groundbreaking productions. A packed house, mostly of designers listened thoughtfully, their minds focussing on the panel of designers who would soon be asked to respond. Many designers had refused to be on such a panel, fearing that were they to voice their views on the director/designer relationship truthfully, they would probably never work again. However, there were some senior designers willing to be on that panel with a large enough reputation to make them able to speak out, and voice the thoughts of many of their more vulnerable colleagues. What emerged were two very different views of the same experience. When a director felt that there was a good 'shorthand' with the designer, the designer often had taken the easiest way out just to avoid conflict. 'Designer speak' and intricate subterfuge was quickly revealed. When a designer saw that the agreed space could be better used, the suggestion to the director had to be framed within a question, "Do YOU think it would be a good idea if. ..." Above all, it emerged, a designer had to be like a wife – supportive, a friend and a partner, ready to co-operate at all times and on all occasions, good with money, decorative, good sense of humour, and accepting that no relationship is finite and when someone else came along, you would be passed over.

At this time there were hardly any designers who were also directors – the one exception being Philip Prowse at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre. Prowse was part of a triumvirate with Giles Havergal and Robert David MacDonald who teamed up in the early 1960s at the Palace Theatre, Watford. They worked on the principle that the most important thing was to be able to do the plays they were passionate about. Their passion would communicate directly to the audience. From 1978 to 1985, they produced plays that could not be seen anywhere else in Britain, and confounding all box office myths, they played to capacity audiences. They educated themselves as well as the audiences, exploring drama, and playing out their individual passions – each of the three making work in their own visual language. They created a generation of daring actors, and used young designers straight out of college that they thought could add to their stable. But Philip Prowse had a very clear individual vision, and at this famous meeting at Riverside Studios he was able to state that, "the best conversation I ever had with a director was with myself in bed at night". In fact Philip Prowse was not really interested in the concept of 'designing'. He did not do elaborate drawings or renderings, rarely made scale models, but created around him a team of interpreters who understood his visual vocabulary which, used similar elements over and over again in different combinations. He was only interested in how to stage plays that he was able to choose himself, and he was prepared to take full responsibility for success or failure. The most original of the Glasgow Citizens' productions, and in particular Philip Prowse's, were usually reviewed as being 'European' and that became the euphemism for designers who dared to break out of their boxes.

In retrospect, it can be seen that Philip Prowse was doing no more than following a vision presented by the visionary architect and theatre-maker Adolphe Appia at the turn of the century. Appia saw that 'creation' meant the synthesis of space, light and performance achieved by one personal vision. The Czech architect and scenographer Josef Svoboda (1920–2002) used exactly the same words in 1973 to define his own works. Although the obituaries carefully used the word 'co-operated' rather than 'collaborate', Svoboda worked with several directors, notably Alfred Radok, but his true contribution to the advance of theatre-making was in his self-authored productions. Here, in total control, he was able to combine direction and design in one creative statement. Working autonomously, he invented and patented lighting and projection techniques that sculpted the dark void of the stage space where creation always meant starting from zero. "Scenery", Svoboda said, "is not an end in itself, but a logical component of the complementary arts of the stage. The scenic artist collaborates on equal terms with the author and the director."

In his note to the third edition of The Development of the Theatre, Allardyce Nicholl describes his, "belief that we stand in an age where there is urgent need of a boldly fresh orientation toward stage form, involving an abandonment of worn out devices, and the creation of new theatrical concepts." In the preface he draws attention to the American stage pioneers Lee Simonson, Donald Oenslager, Jo Mielziner and Robert Edmond Jones, crediting the American public as being, "specially sensitive to visual appeal." Nicholl's readers are directed to read the visionary lectures of Robert Edmund Jones, who, in Theatre Arts Monthly of 1941, warned of the imminent death of the realistic theatre stating, "... the best thing that could happen to our theatre at this very moment would be for playwrights and actors and directors to be handed a bare stage on which no scenery would be placed, and then told they must write and act and direct for this stage. In no time we should have the most exciting theatre in the world." As a further warning, Jones observed, "the excitement that should be found in theatres is only found in baseball parks, arenas, stadiums and racecourses" – a view many people hold today. However, a deep division had already happened with the evolution of two distinct creative pathways – the director and the designer. Way back in 1911, while Appia was experimenting with space and light and human form at Hellerau in Germany, Diaghilev, the impresario extraordinaire, was inviting painters to create scenery and costumes for the theatre, and creating an incredible synthesis of colour, music and movement that enthused the world. Masked balls were held with the 'Ballets Russes' theme, and fashion designers such as Patou and Chanel were inspired to use the bold patterns and colours that were seen on stage. The word 'theatrical' became descriptive of expressive and individualistic dressing and decoration, and the concept of 'stage décor' was born.

These artistic collaborations between composers, painters and choreographers naturally brought together the primary artists commissioned to create new work that had a sensual non-verbal impact on the spectators. The parallel stream of Drama that used words and therefore actors, while creating new works with writers, also took the responsibility to re-create the dramatic repertoire, and needed a manager of the stage at the very least to make sure the actors went in the right doors and did not crash into each other. Producers, who financed and planned productions, devolved this responsibility to a new breed of people known as Stage Directors. These Stage Directors were charged to realise the Producer's wishes, and over the course of the century have developed into 'signature' performers in their own right. The rise of the Stage Director meant that the artisan scene painters who had previously provided stock scenery to suit all needs, found themselves working with a specified designer who provided drawings and even models for made-to-measure scenery. Thus, these two interpretive professions evolved, and before long had become accepted as the way things worked, for better or for worse. But this was never, from the beginning an equal or balanced relationship. Crucially, it meant that designers, or visual theatre artists could only, and more or less can still only, work through the directors. The designers cannot choose the play they really want to do and then hire the director they would like to work with. A Designer may long to work on a particular drama or opera, but the likelihood that a director's choices will coincide with the designer's dreams is remote. Paradoxically, at the turn of the century it was normal for visual artists to initiate productions and add to their theatre work, writing, graphics, interior design and architecture. Vladimir Mayakovsky, and the Czech scenographer/director Frantisek Zelenka (1904–1944) are just two examples. These cross-disciplinary artists also extended their vision to embrace the new arts of film-making and projections, using them creatively as an integral part of the staging. However, by 1972 despite the exhortations of Robert Edmond Jones, the American lighting designer and scenic pioneer Joe Mielziner was telling design students at Yale University that, "the designers never precede the dauphin in the theatre. They are hardworking worms." The accepted role of the designer became not only the logical mission to serve the play, but also to be the servant of the director. And just like in novels, the more obedient and obsequious the servant, the more the master classes believed they were good and enlightened employers, enjoying a unique and trusting relationship. In theatre terms this led to the illusion that the ideal collaboration involved artistic shorthand where the designer was so tuned in to the director that he, or sometimes she, could interpret what was in the director's head and produce it on the stage without prolonged discussion. Ralph Koltai defined and refined this as the art of, "giving directors something they have never envisaged."

Custom and practice is an insidious thing. In a very short time, it seems impossible to remember that things can and often were done differently, for on the whole it is often easier not to upset the applecart, but to find devious methods of operating within the system. In many ways the theatre hierarchy replicates the architectural structures in which they operate. Producers and management offices are usually on the upper floors of the building in good light with perspective views, while the theatre artisans are usually located in basement workshops along with the heating plant and boiler room and no natural light. The axis of staging goes through the centre of the building from the stage to the director, who in rehearsal sits behind a production desk in the centre of the auditorium, much as a monarch sat in the Royal Box in earlier days. As the playhouse has developed in the twentieth century the degrees of separation have become intensified, so that once the pre-production collaboration with the Director and Designer has been completed, the model agreed between them, the designer continues to work with the interpreters, while the director attends to the actors. Of course the designer is always welcome to rehearsals, and usually finds a chair free at the back of the room. A designer in rehearsal is like a bag person carrying bits of models, portfolios, bags of fabric samples, reference books, and art materials from place to place, for there is never a dedicated space allocated for designers to put their things.

What is now needed is to find a different direction for directors. To end once and for all the master servant relationship, euphemism for collaboration and to develop real working practices which are appropriate for the theatre of today. It is clear that some people are born with spatial imaginations and some people are born with literary imaginations and in theatre terms, these have become translated into two separate strands called Director and Designer. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. Even the great and famous partnerships have their flaws. The Italian painter architect and scenographer Luciano Damiani who created so many memorable productions of incomparable beauty with the late director Giorgio Strehler, observed that the disposition of the scenic space dictated the structure and organisation of the productions, and this did not always create a space in which the dialectics of the drama could be played out. Damiani first created an entirely new playing space in Trieste, and later, at his home and studio on the Testaccio Hill in Rome. His Teatro Di Documenti consists of a series of carefully constructed inter-locking polyvalent spaces that can be used individually or in series. The spaces possess an empty beauty, painted a uniform patina antique cream. The large ideas he developed in staging with Strehler, Ronconi and later Roger Planchon, can be seen in close up in this theatre of memory. Each tiny object perfectly made and placed in the spaces accumulates layers of unspoken poetic meaning, and conjures up the entire world of the play. Ariane Mnouchkine at her Théâtre du Soleil collaborates creatively with the architect scenographer Guy-Claude François to alter the vast playing space at the old Cartoucherie in the Bois de Vincennes in Paris. Each time the audience enters the building they find a different configuration re-designed to suit the needs of the production. The decisions about the form of the production evolved after many months of research, study and development. The spectator's experience begins as soon as they enter the building from the street. They confront the world of the play, through the research pictures on the wall of the foyer café and the menu that changes in harmony with the production. In The Open Circle by architect and scenographer Jean-Guy Lecat, he describes his search with Peter Brook to find how to create the best relationship in the space between the performer and spectator at the Bouffes du Nord Theatre in Paris, and then how to recreate that relationship in the many different spaces Brook has used. In a career of sixty years, and after his debut productions in the boulevard theatre of post-war Britain, Peter Brook has used very few stage designers. Brook has often 'designed' his productions himself even from the early days, and recognised the value of collaborating with architects who respond to the quality of the playing space before imposing scenic solutions. There are many instances of directors taking total charge of all aspects of the production, particularly in opera, as well as actors, and writers 'becoming' directors. There are comparatively few instances of designers crossing those boundaries, except for a few male designers in opera. There are hardly any women designers who have been able to do this, though several have tried. In an exhibition at the Prague Quadriennal in 1999, the Berlin-based artist, teacher and creator Achim Freyer showed his creations for Mozart operas, remarking that no director would have had the courage to even try the ideas he so successfully demonstrated through drawings and production videos.

These few examples, and there are many more, point to a different direction, in which 'designers' become architects of the space and the space itself becomes a major player in the production. The moment it is decided to move a production out of the theatre building or where a decision has been made to re-evaluate how the theatre building is to be used – the collaborative structure has to change. Firstly, the designer can no longer be a decorator of directorial concepts, but has to be an architect of the imagination, looking for all the spatial possibilities to exploit. This demands a real rigorous understanding of the needs of the text, ignoring spurious and artificial divisions between text-based and physical theatre. All that matters is that a harmonious creative language is invented for the production. As theatre moves forward, either textually or physically, there is little doubt that the actor/performer becomes the primary visual element to be enhanced with light, sound and movement, rather than constructed illusions. Thus, the director has to work in partnership with the movement director who becomes almost a co-director and the scenographer – the writer of the stage space – who becomes a visual director. This then allows the scenographer to collaborate with a team of other interpretive artists – sound artists, light artists, object makers, textile artists, costume makers, who should be part of the creative rehearsal process, and can see what is needed to make a moment in performance clearer to the spectator. In other words, a lateral collaboration rather than the more common vertical or linear management structure is needed.